A radish revelation and more rotten tomato luck

Went to the garden again this morning for a check up and a wee bit of watering.  I found even more rotten roma tomatoes.  This is getting very depressing.  I’m also finding perfectly round holes in some of my tomatoes.  I asked my plot neighbor Trisha about them and she thinks it might be birds.  She had some suggestions for how to scare the birds off, including suspending shiny objects like foil pie plates or old CD-ROM above the plants.  She also told me about a solution that a friend of her’s suggested.  While the tomatoes are still green, put a shiny red metal ball ornament, like for a Christmas tree, on the plant.  Birds will peck at it, get no satisfaction, and won’t bother the plant again.  That seems pretty ingenious to me.

Trisha also related something she recently learned about radishes.  She acquired her plot later in the season after someone else had given it up.  There were already some radishes planted that didn’t produce very well. Trisha hadn’t gotten around to pulling them and they bolted.  They are producing nice little pink flowers that the bees seem to love. Better yet, the seed pods that form are delicious! They have the same sharp taste of the radish root.  Trisha has a pretty good crop of radish flowers/pods going.  She picks the pods when they are about 1/2 inch long.   She tosses them in a salad where they make a nice crunchy tasty garnish.