Not so Goliath Tomatoes

I planted 3 tomato plant late in mid-June. They were called Bush Goliath. I had dreams of huge plate sized tomatoes and mouth-watering BLTs. My dad is quite the gardener and always has quite the crop. One of them had fruit on it when I planted it. They were coming along pretty nice, but then some critter ate the first couple tomatoes when they were still green. So I built a cage over the plants and didn't loose any more to critters.

I started seeing signs of orange early last week and got quite excited. I picked up a nice dense head of lettuce and a pound of bacon. My dreams of BLTs were coming true. Friday after work, I opened up the cage and to my surprise the it wasn't one goliath tomato, but two dwarves. And yes, that's a quarter for reference.

I cut them into wedges. Pam and I had them with salt and pepper. They were tasty, if not plentiful.

There are lots more green fruits out there, so I have my fingers crossed.

I thought I had chosen a nice sunny place for the plants, but I think they really only get sun from 11am - 5pm. I've been scouting out better spots for next year.

DIY Neptune Pedestal

I bought a new 135 gallon reef ready acryllic aquarium a month or so ago. It's a Tenecor. It's really nice and I'm happy to pay for it. But Tenecor wants crazy money (>$1000) for a stand. So I'm going to build my own. I'm not a cabinet maker, but I'm a decent enough carpenter.

I looked at a lot of DIY stand designs. Some would require a table saw to make laminated beams from 3/4" plywood. Others simply required more skill than I have. I found a simple to build design on Reef Central's DIY forum. The design is by RocketEngineer and can be found here. Before I trust my new aquarium, the fish and my carpet to a DIY stand, I decided to use this design to build a riser for our front loading Maytag Neptune washer (MAH8700)/dryer (MDE6700) set.

We didn't buy the pedestals (MAL1800) when we bought the washer/dryer, because we read a lot about vibration problems. After having them a year, my wife is tired of bending over all the time. We were ready to take a chance on the pedestals. So off to Ballio's we went. We soon discovered that when Whirlpool bought Maytag, they discontinued the pedestals. The Ballio's parts guy checked for an alternative riser (MAL2000) that is designed to hold both the washer and dryer. It too was unavailable. So I said to my wife, "I can build one of these for half the cost." She's heard this before (structured wiring, hot tub circuit, etc). I always get them done. It just takes a while. I actually managed to finish this project in 1 week.

Here's a shot of the open space in the laundry room.


Here's a shot of the riser when I was waiting for the paint to dry. You can see the 2x4 frame skinned with 3/4" MDF.


Here's a shot with the riser and washer/dryer back in place.



It works really well. It's rock solid. I was testing it out before I put on the front panel...to see if I needed any shims. The whole thing vibrated really bad. I used shim after shim and decided I was chacing my tail. Every shim led to another shim. So I took them all out except a couple in the front middle, put the front panel on and ran a load of towels. They are heavy and cause the most vibration. It is rock solid. I have no concerns about the stability of this design. Just concerns about about getting good straight 2x stock.