Category Archives: Tomato

Spider hat, garden vegetables 2021-06-28

A common occurrence in the woods: a banana spider on my hat.

[Orb weaver spider on hat]
Orb weaver spider on hat

These golden orb-weavers, genus Nephila, weave webs many feet across between trees, often at human eye height.

I left this one on a nearby bush.

Here are a few vegetables from the garden that day. Continue reading →

Garden mowed 2020-06-21

You can almost see it’s a garden, after weeks of weeding and Gretchen had just finished mowing between the rows.

[After weeks of weeding and mowing]
After weeks of weeding and mowing

Visible, left to right: cucumber, yellow squash, okra, eggplant, tomato, corn (maize).

-jsq

Johnsons with okra, corn, and pitcher plants 2019-06-24

Tom H. Johnson Jr. and Mary Caroline Pindar wanted to see the garden at Okra Paradise Farms.

That one, Okra

Abelmoschus esculentus, okra, lady’s fingers, gumbo, ngombo, bhindi, vendakkai, and many other names. Possibly from West Africa, or Ethiopia, or South Asia. Requires full sun and hot temperatures with good soil. Continue reading →

House of Hope: Gardening for Recovery –Sharon Wagner

Sharon Wagner, ex-Director, South Georgia House of Hope, will talk about “His Tomato Girls” from Seed to Salsa, at South Georgia Growing Local 2014:

Why we started an organic garden.

How we grew heirloom tomatoes.

What we have learned about ourselves in the process.

Her conference bio:

Sharon Wagner — Executive Director

Sharon’s background includes a 15-year addiction to cocaine which she overcame in 1987 with the love of God and the discipline of Teen Challenge. While at the Walter Hoving home in New York, Sharon received a vision to provide a home for women — a place of safety and healing. In 2005, out of a passion to bring healing and freedom to women struggling with alcohol, drugs, and abuse, Sharon and her husband rick founded the South Georgia House of Hope here in Valdosta, Georgia. This began a journey of faith that will last a lifetime.

Sharon has personally experienced the healing power of organic foods as part of the recovery process. It is her desire to teach the ladies the importance of not only growing but also enjoying fresh and healthy food. This is an essential part of detoxification — replenishing nutrients that have been lost through years of drug and alcohol use. The organic garden at the House of Hope teaches the ladies how to work together as a team, while also building healthy minds and bodies.

Come to SOGALO2014 and hear Sharon Wagner talk about tomatoes and recovery!

-jsq

Okra seized by SWAT team

An anonymous tip was the basis for a warrant for a SWAT team to hold small farmers at gunpoint in handcuffs while the cops took their okra and tomatoes and code compliance officers mowed the grass. Is your grass mowed to code? If sometimes not, maybe you’ll agree police militarization has gone too far.

As Monika Diaz put it for WFAA on 12 August 2013, Owner irked after raid on Arlington’s ‘Garden of Eden’.

Shellie Smith, the owner of Arlington’s “Garden of Eden” says police and code enforcement agents “destroyed everything” in a raid on August 2, 2013.

You might be irked, too.

Radley Balko wrote for Huffpo Thursday, Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid,

Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, Continue reading →