Rotten Tomatoes

Even bad news is simply feedback.  Today, I finally got to the line item, on my list, of sorting through the tomatoes I stored at the end of summer.  Each one, I had very carefully wrapped in paper at the recommendation of a super nice woman I met recently.  She told of how, in Washington where she is from, she did this for several years running and had ripe, fresh, red, round, juicy tomatoes into February.  Dutifully, I did what she suggested.  The boxes, filled no more than 2 layers deep, were stashed in the coldest, driest place I could find.  This location happens to be a largely-unused bathroom downstairs off the kitchen.  Since it does not have a tub or shower installed, there is a large wall-surface area upon which I installed shelving for storage.  The thermometer in there sadly, registered too warm much of the time, 60 to 65 degrees depending upon when the temperature was taken, and up to ~70% humidity.  The squash is doing ok in there.  The potatoes are sprouting.  The tomatoes mostly all ripened and rotted.  Tsk, tsk - I should have started monitoring them sooner.  The garlic and onions started sprouting, too, although Kristin noted that some of them have come from the store that way - by the time we get them  they have already experienced detrimental conditions which set an irrevocable reaction into motion.
As I write this, I am revising an idea I had.  The pages on this blog should be about various storage places I determine through trial and error to be the best condition for what list of vegetable(s), instead of a page about each vegetable and the conditions it likes.  Hmmm.

Right now, my computer is broken and I'm competing with Andreas for this one until (if) that miserable Cody gets finished with my desktop.  So Andreas is out, taking advantage of the short window of sun while I 'waste' it inside computing.  It is almost closing now, the clouds are rolling over as I write this, but I feel guilty because we are finishing the last of the stupid, glorious irrigation project.  Burying pipe was my part of the agreement, and it takes longer than one might think to pack soil around all those many pipes.  So, out I go.  Time to compute more later!