Let the Planting Begin!

We've had a couple of nice days in a row, and I decided today was the day I needed to get out and begin planting. I probably should have gotten some of my seeds in earlier, but I've had a lot going on.

I managed to re-till 2/3 of the garden, which I had tilled a couple of weeks ago during another nice day. I pounded in the fence stakes and got some fencing up around the section I planted (about 1/2 of what I've tilled).

I managed to plant a lot of the early summer crop--lettuces, spinach, beets, radishes, and peas, as well as some marigolds along the fence line. I wanted to till the last 1/3, but I think the tiller ran out of gas...and I know I did!

I really need to get my seedlings started, but I'm wiped out from today's work. Those will have to wait until sometime this weekend, I'm afraid. But I feel good that the garden is started! Now, if Mother Nature will bring us a nice, gentle rain to get those seeds germinating...

Planning This Year's Garden

According to The Old Farmer's Almanac Frost Chart for United States, April 22 was the last frost date for our area...which means it's time to get planting! I probably should already have started seedlings for some plants--I'm not very good at knowing when to plant things--but I should be able to plant early crops now, like beets and carrots and lettuce and such.

I've tilled through the garden once during one of the warmer dry spells we had recently, tilling in some organic mushroom compost and tilling under the newspaper shred and grass clippings from last year. The dirt looks better than last year; I hope it is. Enough rabbits pooped in it during growing season that it should be fertilized pretty well.

I have all my seed packets, and then some. I bought the majority of my seeds from four sources this year: Seed Savers Exchange, Seeds of Change, Park Seed, and Ferry-Morse. I tried to select as many organic and heirloom types as possible for variety. So here's the rundown of what I plan to plant this year:

Greens

• FM Organic Spinach, Bloomsdale, Long Standing
  
• SOC Organic Red Oak Lettuce
• SSE Grandpa Admire's Lettuce
• SSE Flame Lettuce
• SSE Red Romaine Lettuce
• SSE Yugoslavian Red Lettuce
• SSE Bloomsdale Spinach

Herbs

• SOC Organic Dukat Dill
• SOC Organic Genovese Sweet Basil
• SSE Cinnamon Basil
• SSE Grandma Einck's Dill
• SSE Giant Italian Parsley
• PS Organic English Thyme
• PS Organic Italian Oregano
• PS Organic Parsley, Italian Flat Leaf
• PS Organic Dill Bouquet

Tomatoes

• SOC Organic Peacevine Cherry Tomato
• PS Organic Kellogg's Breakfast Tomato
• PS Organic Cherokee Purple Tomato
• PS Organic Cherry Sweetie
• SSE Red Brandywine Tomato
• SSE Martino's Roma Tomato
• I'll also be planting tomatoes purchased from Richland Community College's horticulture program sale: Beefsteak, Best Boy, and Sun Sugar.

Peppers

• PS Organic Peppers, California Wonder
• SSE Sweet Chocolate Peppers
• SSE Napolean Sweet Pepper

Cucumbers

• SSE Bushy Cucumbers
• SSE Double Yield Cucumbers

Beans

• SSE Purple Podded Pole Bean
• SSE Provider Bean

Peas

• SSE British Wonder Pea

Zucchini

• PS Organic Zucchini, Black Beauty (and no, I won't be planting 12 plants this year--only 2 or 3)

Eggplant

• SOC Organic Turkish Orange Eggplant
• PS Organic Eggplant, Black Beauty

Radishes

• PS Organic Radish Sparkler
• SOC Organic Cherry Belle Radish

Beets

• SSE Edmunds Blood Turnip Beet
• FM Beet, Tall Top Early Wonder

Other

• SOC Organic Red Wethersfield Onion
• PS Organic Carrot Nantes
• PS Organic Okra Clemson
• PS Organic Broccoli Raab
• SSE Petite Yellow Watermelon
• SSE Sunberry

Edible Flowers

• SSE German Chamomile
• SSE Arikara Sunflower
• FM Organic Sunflower, Mammoth

As you can see, I have way too many seeds as usual. But I will plant a little bit of everything and see what happens! Every year is an experiment, and I learn a little more about what to do and what not to do. For instance, last year I learned that 12 zucchini plants were WAY MORE than a healthy-sized army could consume in a year, so I'll only be planting a few of those.

This year, I'll also plant marigolds and white alyssum to try to keep bugs away from some of the plants, and I'll probably plant some nasturtiums to add to salads. They're quite good, having a kind of peppery flavor.

So, there you have it. OCD kicks in again this gardening season. If you'd like to trade some seed varieties with me, let me know asap before I plant them all!

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back into the Garden...

It was sunny and 70+ degrees today, so I decided it was probably time to hit the garden and yank out the sunflower, okra, and tomato stalks and throw them on the burn pile. I managed to get out the sunflower and tomato stalks, but couldn't budge the okra stalks (picture at left). I had forgotten how thick they get and how tightly they hold the ground, unlike the sunflower stalks, which are a bit easier to remove. My low back was already hurting a bit from lugging boxes of books around inside to put on the Ikea book shelves, so I didn't have much oomph to put into the okra. I'll have to see if I can talk hubby into digging them out for me.

A few days ago, I decided it was time to harvest the last of the green peppers, no matter how small they still were. I had diligently covered them with kitty litter buckets at night and on days when the temperatures were supposed to get near freezing, and they had been uncovered for several days where lows were in the 40s. But then, when I went to harvest them, they clearly had not survived the cold, wet weather (picture at right). The plants were shriveled and brown, and the peppers were a sickly green, wrinkly, and sporting black rotting spots. Only a week before they were green and healthy looking. [sigh] The moral of the story is, I guess, to plant green peppers much sooner in the season. I knew it was a crapshoot when I planted them, but I was hoping to get at least one pepper! At least I have several bags of diced green, yellow, red, and orange peppers I nabbed at the farmer's market over the summer.

Once I had all the sunflower and tomato stalks on the burn pile, I took one last quick survey of the garden. I need to rake the grass clippings and compost a bit more evenly over the garden (a job for another day, because the garden is still a bit muddy). It's a very different sight from the lush, green garden of summer.

But wait...are those onions?

Yes! They are! I couldn't believe my eyes. The cold and wet had taken out my precious pepper plants, but the white onions I couldn't find because of all the other encroaching plant cover were growing up through four inches of grass clippings, and looking pretty healthy at that! I wasn't sure at first whether they were onions or shallots (I never did find my shallots), so I dug a couple up. They were small white bulb onions. The outer couple of layers were slimy and clear--probably destroyed by the cold--but the rest of the bulb looked healthy. They were too small to do anything much with, so I left them to rot in the garden, to provide nutrients for the soil for next season. What amazed me is that they had about 12 inches of green on them from the top of the bulb to the tip of the green! They really wanted to get to that sunlight!

Loading the Freezer

I spent some time in the kitchen today doing a bit of rearranging. I put all the jars and bags of frozen food into the chest freezer, leaving mostly meat and some other odds and ends in the fridge freezer. It took 3 pictures of the freezer to get in all that I have preserved this summer. Keep in mind that I've already supplied several friends with food from the freezer and have used some of the tomato sauce and diced tomatoes now to cook with.

On the left, you'll see the bottom area of jars are stacked about two deep; the tray to the right of it slides over the top.

In the second picture, you see the more recent foods preserved (I want to make sure I eat the oldest first, moving to the most recent last). Some of the jars are stacked 4 high. I couldn't stack all of them that high, because in some of the smaller jars, I didn't leave enough head space, which caused the metal lids to puff up. When I use those jars, I'll toss the old lid and use some of the Ball plastic lids I picked up at Rural King.

Next to the jars, you'll see I have some of the shredded zucchini. I still have a LOT of bags of zuke shred, slices, and chopped pieces for winter soups and breads. Oh, yeah--and you'll see some chapati (whole wheat) flour I bought at the Indian grocery store. Reasonably priced and much healthier than white flour.

The last picture shows the freezer section that contains more chopped zucchini, the 5 lbs. of onion I chopped earlier in the summer (I've used a bit of that already, too), several bags full of 1/2-cup packs of chopped green, yellow, red, orange, and gypsy peppers, a pack of sauteed button mushrooms and a pack of sauteed portobello mushrooms. I picked up a couple of packages of oyster mushrooms on manager's special yesterday that I need to sautee and add to these.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this summer's preservation efforts. We won't have enough food to keep us through the winter, but we'll certainly have enough to supplement what we have to buy at the store. Cooking is much easier, too, when you don't have to take the time to saute mushrooms or chop onions--just open a bag and dump them in!

Next year, I need to get more organized about preserving. That will give me something to blog about this winter: changes I'm going to make to simplify or make more efficient the food preservation process.

The Bug Yeller

I know she looks sweet, but she is really quite fierce. Well, not fierce, exactly. Her name is Davita, but she goes by various other names that may not be repeated here. She can be quite loving, but what gets her into trouble is chewing on anything that looks like a string. That includes string, iPod earphones, electrical cords, fringe, sweat pants ties, shoestrings, yarn, and more.

Her role in our little homestead is to yell at bugs. She doesn't really catch them, although if they are slow enough and within reach, she might eat one occasionally. Mostly, she just yells at them in this strange, chatty, broken squeak.

The problem is this: the bugs don't listen.

We still have some flying gnats, although I've trapped and drowned most of them with my apple cider vinegar trap. I expect they'll be gone soon. But now, of course, we have the Asian ladybeetles attempting to invade. In fact, our sliding glass door strip is littered with their dead bodies.

I'm still nursing my pepper plants along in what's left of the garden. Each has at least one pepper growing on it, and a couple of them are soooooo close to being large enough to pick! I've had the kitty litter buckets off of them for the last few days, and as long as the temperatures stay in the 40s-60s range day and night, I'll let them breathe. I'm watching carefully for any impending frosts, and will probably simply cut my losses and pick the peppers before then.

Tonight I chopped up 12 peppers--9 green and 3 gypsy peppers--from last weekend's farmer's market. They're in the small freezer in 1/2-cup packs, and tomorrow I'll put the bags in a larger Ziploc in the chest freezer. I also purchased several herbs at this weekend's farmer's market: parsley, sage, rosemary, and lavender (nobody had thyme, so I can't sing the song). The sage is spinning in the dehydrator as I write this; tomorrow, in will go the lavender. I don't like to dehydrate more than one herb at a time; I want to concentrate their oils and scents rather than mix them. I am, however, looking forward to trying some recipes with lavender, perhaps even some lavender sweet tea. Mmmm.

Of Geese and Gardens

It is always a sad day for me when I see geese migrating. I know what that means...winter is on its way.

While I am happy to be slowing down on the food preservation (and will be happier still when I get rid of the last of the gnats that are plaguing our kitchen right now), it's sad to see the garden lose its foliage and color. In fact, that's one of the things I dislike so much about fall and winter; once the leaves are done turning, the sky and land turn gray and seem to stay sunless and gray until mid-March.

I put up 5 1/2 pints of tomato sauce tonight, the last batch of tomato anything I'll be freezing for the season. I did cut the heads off the sunflowers and will try hanging them in the garage to dry, but it may have been a bit too early to cut them. I didn't have much of a choice, since we have had dire frost warnings lately.

The only item left in the garden that's producing at this point are my pepper plants. I covered five of them with kitty litter buckets to protect them from the frost and left two exposed. I was so tired by the time I got the five buckets out and cut off the sunflower heads (it was 41 degrees and I had a raging head cold), that I gave up on the other two plants. I feel bad about that, but a person can only do so much. I peeked under one bucket yesterday, and the little peppers seem to still be growing. We'll see, I suppose. One pepper: that's all I ask. Give me one pepper from my plants this year!
Yesterday, hubby and I did a bit of garden work. He mowed the yard and bagged it, dumping the mowed grass and leaves into the garden for winter mulch. He also took down the garden fence and pulled up the fence stakes.

My work took place in the garden itself. I pulled up all the tomato plant stakes and separated out the good stakes from the bad stakes. Bad stakes went into the burn pile; good stakes went into the garage for next year. Bamboo stakes I will never use again--I nearly put my eye out on one of them when I was harvesting tomatoes about a month ago. Plus they don't bear weight very well: they bend. The green bread ties (well, they aren't really bread ties; they're much longer. But they look like bread ties) are NOT going to be used next year--they cut into the tomato plants as the tomato plants grow and have to be pulled off the stakes at the end of the year. I'll have to try something softer, more pliable, that can simply be allowed to stay in the garden to become compost at the end of the year.

I used the compost from the compost bin and the still-rotting fruits and veggies in the bin to layer over part of the garden. Then, newspaper shred over that, and the grass and leaf clippings on top of that. Some of the garden still isn't covered, but I have more time to do that before winter sets in. If, that is, we get one more good mowing day in at least. I still have to take down the okra stalks, too.

I definitely need to pay a lot more attention to my compost bin this year. I basically ignored it this year and didn't get the amount of compost out of it that I should have and could have. I'll make a checklist over the winter based on my blog entries of things I want to do differently for next year's garden.

Slice 'Em and Dice 'Em...But Then What?

Yesterday I hit the farmer's market. I had planned to purchase more pork and chicken from my favorite meat vendors, but Twin Oak Meats and TJ's Free-Range Poultry weren't there. (The other meat vendors who were, unfortunately, finish their cows on corn. No. No. No.) They're excused, though, because it was a crappy day--rain off and on, chilly, and overcast. Not many customers were there, either. I was feeling better (had a fever all day Friday from some unknown bug) and decided to brave the weather anyway.

So I bought some lovely peppers from Blue Schoolhouse Farm and some tomatoes to supplement my recent meager harvest. I bought the tomatoes from O'Rourke Family Farms, and they have some lovely Valencia tomatoes--the big orange ones in the picture. They are almost Beefsteak-like in their meatiness and juiciness, but a bit sweeter and maybe even less acidic. At least it seems so to my lay palate.

One of the things I love about the farmer's market is the friendliness and generosity of the farmers. Often you can get a deal without even asking for it! Buy enough, and they'll often throw in some slightly damaged or overripe goods that are still perfectly fine. In this case, Mr. O'Rourke (I'm making assumptions here) threw in some tomatoes that had spilled on the ground, keeping him from selling those to a customer. I wash my tomatoes anyway before processing, so it was no biggie to me. Thank you, O'Rourke Family Farms!

Now here's the problem: what do I make with all these tomatoes? I skinned and diced them this evening and put them in the refrigerator until tomorrow. I've ruled out salsa--I already have more than I can probably eat over the winter. The plum tomatoes I'm saving to add to others I harvest from my garden (no frost yet) or buy at farmer's market; I'll turn those into tomato paste. I don't use tomato paste very often at all, so I don't think I'll need a lot. The rest of the tomatoes will either become chili sauce (although again, I think I have more than I can eat), tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, or perhaps both. I do know I won't have many more tomatoes from the garden for a batch of anything, and there are few tomatoes at farmer's market since tomato season is essentially over.

But maybe I should turn the diced tomatoes into something else. Any suggestions? I'm new at this food preservation thing, so I'm open to advice from you more experienced gardeners.

Oh, and by the way, the 9-grain bread turned out really well. I love breadmakers!

Attack of the Killer Wasp Babies

I've mentioned hornworms before and provided pictures, but those hornworms were healthy (until I picked them off and threw them into the sun for the birds, stomped them, hit them with a dropped rock, or placed them in a spiderweb). I haven't seen any healthy hornworms in the garden for a little while, and the picture at left provides some evidence for why that may be so.

This hornworm is dead. See the little white things hanging all over its body? Those are the parasitic wasp eggs I have mentioned. You can't tell from this picture, but these eggs were actually wriggling when I took this shot. See the brown marks all over the hornworm? Those are where other egg sacs were attached; then the wasp babies actually hatched and breakfasted upon Mr. Hornworm.

When you see a hornworm with wasp egg sacs, you are supposed to leave it, so I did. Feed on, little babies!

The Last Harvest of the Season?

It is supposed to get down to 35 degrees tonight, which is very close to frost temperatures. If it frosts, my garden is finished, so even though I didn't feel well, I got outside this evening and harvested what I could.

My tomato plants have just about stopped producing altogether, and the little bit of color you see in the picture at left comprises the remains of tomatoes that worms, grasshoppers, and other vegetarians have left me.

Still, I managed a small harvest today: 2 Best Boy, 1 Genovese Costoluto, 10 plum, 1 yellow, 3 purple, 2 Orange Banana, 1 Beefsteak (albeit with some flesh wounds from some critter), 2 Brandywine, 101 Sun Sugar, and 6 Sungold Select. The tomatoes are scarred, eaten on here and there and, in some cases, really picked a bit too soon. I'll need to place them in the windowsill to ripen, but I thought it best to bring in any that had the potential to ripen so they weren't wasted by frost.

In addition to the tomatoes, I ended up with 2 green onions (I planted these very late as seed, and although I planted an entire row, the cucumbers choked them out and only two survived), 11 okra, and a last handful of green beans.

What saddens me the most about this harvest being potentially the final harvest of the year is the fact that my pepper plants are just starting to produce peppers. I have baby peppers on each plant, some larger than others, and would like to see a few of them grow into a more edible size. Even if we don't get a frost tonight, I fear that a frost is just around the corner. I mean, look at this little guy, trying so hard to grow! But you can see that the plant itself, while green, is showing some signs of disease, probably brought on by the overabundance of chilly rains lately.

Also, I'm sad that I won't get any sunflower seeds. The heads are heavy with seeds, but the seeds won't have a chance to finish and their shells harden before a frost comes along. I was really looking forward to roasting those seeds for winter consumption.

I Hope There's Chili Sauce in Heaven

Tonight I cleaned the now-ripe tomatoes from the window sill, took the previously washed tomatoes out of the refrigerator, and cored, peeled, and diced them for--you guessed it--another batch of freezer chili sauce! (The recipe for this scrumptious sauce is provided in my previous chili sauce post.)

I took a picture of the diced tomatoes before I added any of the other ingredients. I wanted to show the variations in the coloring from the different heirloom varieties that combine to make this sauce. I like knowing that my chili sauce is special, created from tomatoes that have been grown for years, perhaps even centuries, the seeds passed from one farmer to another. Who knows how old some of these varieties are! The combined flavors make the chili sauce different every time, which adds to its specialness.

After adding the remaining ingredients, I brought the mixture to a boil at about 8:30 p.m., which means I'll be periodically stirring to keep the sauce from burning on the bottom (although the nonstick surface of the pan is a tremendous boon in that regard). That means I'll be up until about 11:30 this evening stirring chili sauce, but oh my, it is definitely worth it! I did take a nap today, so I'm good to go.

The pungent smell, a mixture of cider vinegar, tomatoes, and the sweet odors of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and more, are already wafting in from the kitchen as I write this, and I think Heaven can only be heaven if there's chili sauce.

Catching up the Harvests

It's bad enough that we have soybean aphids plaguing us outside here in Central Illinois, but worse is the fact that I have fruit flies or gnats in my house. I've harvested three times this week, and I can't keep up with the produce...which is good news for the fruit flies, because they get to feast until I get the food processed.

At left you see harvest #1 (Monday): 4 Brandywines, 1 Peach Tom, 1 Orange Banana, 2 greenish yellow, 6 purple, 8 plum, 21 Sungold Select and 53 Sun Sugar tomatoes. Oh, yeah--and 5 okra. I read that I could dehydrate okra to use in soups, so I experimented with these five. I sliced them thinly, placed them on the dehydrating tray, and--voila!--24 hours later, I had tiny little withered okra slices. The dehydrating worked well, and I stored the dehydrated okra in a canning jar.

Harvest #2 (Thursday): I didn't feel like picking sun sugar tomatoes again, so I skipped over those. We had gotten some rain we've been needing, and the tomato plants seem to be perking up again. As long as they are making fruit, I'll continue to find uses for the tomatoes! At this point, since I've been making tomato sauce and salsa, I'm just combining all the varieties together. The flavor of the finished sauce or salsa is different every time depending on the kinds of tomatoes that went into the sauce, but it's all good. This haul brought in 10 more plum tomatoes, 1 Genovese Costoluto, 3 Orange Banana, 3 Brandywine, 2 greenish-yellow, 4 Best Boy, 2 Yellow, and 6 purple. Plus, I harvested a handful of greenbeans (I'm not going to count them, sorry) that I cooked up for dinner. They were very tasty! The green beans were hiding beneath the zucchini, and now that those plants are gone, the green beans are taking off. I only have a couple of good plants (thank you, bunnies), so I'll be lucky to get a couple of meals worth.

Harvest #3 (Sunday/today): As you can see, the tomatoes keep on coming, thanks to the recent rain, and the okra is now producing well. Today's take included 2 Beefsteaks, 2 Brandywines, 3 Best Boys, 1 yellow, 1 Peach Tom, 2 Orange Bananas, 12 plum, 2 purple, 22 Sungold Select, and 74 Sun Sugar tomatoes, with a side of 20 okra.

I've got another layer of okra dehydrating (some of the larger okra), and tomorrow I'm going to fry up some okra for dinner. Meanwhile, I got all my tomatoes washed, and the ones I haven't processed yet are in the refrigerator, protected from the house gnats.

Yesterday's Harvest; Today's Market Purchases

While I was out taking pictures of my creepy bug infestations yesterday, I also grabbed a few tomatoes that caught my eye: A couple of brandywines, a Best Boy, and a plum tomato.

I was very pleased to note that my pepper plants are getting blossoms on them now. I am worried, however, that I won't get peppers from them quickly enough to beat the frost. We'll have to see. I don't know if I have the energy to build a cold frame for them--I'll have to do some looking online and see what it takes. I just planted too late, I think, but time will tell.

I stopped by the Bloomington Farmer's Market today and picked up some Italian flat-leaf parsley, some Ropp cheese (cojack; garlic-bacon cheddar, and tomato-garlic-basil cheddar), some beets, 4 anjou pears, some salad lettuce, some heirloom tomatoes ($1 a pound for defectives, many of which had hardly any defects) for salsa making, some green, yellow, and red sweet peppers, and a bag of peaches. The peaches are huge, and I hope they are sweet! The crap they call "peaches" in the store are never ripe when you buy them, and if you try to ripen them on the counter, they go bad overnight. Blech. All of what I purchased was fresh, herbicide- and pesticide-free, and from local farms. I also purchased another 1.5 pounds of bacon made from pastured piggies. Yum!

I'm hoping, too, that the sunflowers, which are now all open, will develop their seeds before the frost. I'd really like to be able to roast sunflower seeds this year.

I need to order a cover crop for the garden. I'm thinking hairy vetch instead of winter wheat, to help break up the soil. Any suggestions?

Using Up My Tomato Stash

I washed up my tomatoes from the last few harvests, tossed a couple that had gone bad, and then peeled them all. At first, I thought I might turn them all into salsa, but then I worried that the salsa might not turn out, and I would hate to waste all those tomatoes on nasty salsa. So I split the batch, turning half of them into tomato sauce and the other half into salsa. I was very happy with the flavor of the salsa after refrigerating it for about an hour, so I went ahead and put it into freezer jars (although one of the pint jars ended up in the refrigerator for tomorrow night...I just have to get some chips to eat it with). I ended up with 3 1/2 pints of tomato sauce and 3 1/2 pints of salsa.

I still have some tomatoes left over, ripening fully on the window sill, so I may go ahead and make another batch of salsa in a few days, adding to it any other sizable tomatoes from the garden.

Now, if I could only figure out some way to freeze the overabundant sun sugar tomatoes without going through the peeling process...

Squash Bugs Are Called that Because They Deserve to Be Squashed

I managed two harvests this week. Monday I pulled in the last 3 zucchini, and then pulled the plants. The leaves were completely covered with powdery mildew, although the zucchini themselves were fine.

And then, when I pulled up the plants, I found something I hadn't missed at all.

Squash bugs. [shiver]

These creepy crawlies look almost spiderlike, particularly when they are small, and can quickly devastate your squash plants. I didn't think I'd have to worry about them this year, since this is the first year of squash plantings. How wrong I was! I'm just thankful the zucchini was at the end of its season before they presented themselves.

In addition to the three zukes, I managed a handful of green beans--the first (and perhaps even the last!)--as well as several more tomatoes. The tomatoes are clearly losing steam, and I didn't think I'd feel this way, but I'm a bit glad. I hauled in 2 Peach Toms, 3 nameless yellow tomatoes, 4 Best Boy, 1 Beefsteak, 1 Costulouto Genovese, and 4 purple tomatoes--not sure what kind. I've been calling them Brandywine, but today I realized they aren't. I also harvested 95 sun sugar tomatoes and 11 Sungold Select.

Today I harvested a second time this week and picked my first 9 okra! The okra plants are tall and strong, despite the chewed-up parts of several leaves where the Japanese beetles have been feeding. We can't seem to get rid of those little buggers!

I also harvested 7 plum tomatoes of some kind, 3 Peach Toms, 3 Beefsteak, 4 Brandywine, 3 purple tomatoes, 2 yellow tomatoes, 3 Best Boys, 101 Sun Sugars, and 16 Sungold Select.

My goal tonight is to make a batch of salsa and what will probably be the last batch of tomato sauce this season.

Freezing Frenzy

One of the hardest parts of this experiment called "Playing in the Dirt" is finding the time and energy to cook, process, and put away the harvest food before it goes bad.

I managed tonight to process the tomatoes into tomato sauce (8 pints) and also ended up with 4 pints more of diced tomatoes. The Best Boy tomatoes seem to work best for dicing, while the meaty Beefsteak tomatoes work really well for the tomato sauce. I threw into the tomato sauce this time the few Costoluto Genovese tomatoes I had as well as several Orange Banana tomatoes, which are very sweet and meaty. Interestingly, the flavor of the tomato sauce is very different this time--definitely sweet. I think when I make tomato soup this fall, I'll use this particular batch of tomato sauce. I think it will make very tasty soup to accompany my grilled cheese sandwich! The round dots on top of each jar are labels that I've scribbled the contents, month, and year on so I can identify the frozen foods and also know which to use first.

I also put up most of the rest of the bread and butter pickles, which have been curing in the refrigerator for about a week. Unfortunately, I ran out of jars before I could get all of them put up, so I moved the rest into a smaller container until I can pick up more freezer jars. I did have one marinated artichokes jar on hand that I had just washed, so I used that for some pickles for the refrigerator--I'm not certain that the jar is freezer safe like the canning jars.

I'm pretty happy so far with what I've put away in the freezer for winter. I feel a bit like a squirrel preparing for the cold, foodless months, but at least I know where I hid my food.

Tomatoes Fizzling Out

The unseasonably early cool weather--including some nights in the low 40s--and too much rain has definitely caused my tomatoes growth to come nearly to a complete halt. On Monday, I was only able to nab 3 Best Boys and 2 Beefsteak tomatoes. The zucchini, of course, will never die, and I managed to get two more of those picked. I also decided that before the next series of rainstorms moved in, it might be wise to dig up the onions. I can't believe how tiny they are! I've got 5 white onions (which might add up to one whole onion) and 38 yellow onions, some of which don't look much bigger than the sets I planted. I'm not sure what went wrong, other than perhaps I planted them too late in the season (very likely). I will definitely be reading up on onion planting over the winter so I can have a better crop next year.

Today I went out to harvest again, and true to form, found 3 more zucchini. Can I take a contract out on these plants legally? Sheesh! I also hauled in 163 sun sugars, 13 Sungold Select, 2 Costolutos, 1 Peach Tom, 1 Mystery tomato, 9 Best Boy, and 12 Brandywine. I'm having to pick the tomatoes a little earlier than I'd like because the bugs and other critters seem to be gnoshing on them as they begin to ripen. I placed several on the windowsill and, in a day or two, they'll be just fine for slicing. I think that unless we get a warm, humid spell, my Beefsteaks are about done producing. Sad--those are my favorite! I think I'd like to get one more round of BLTs eaten before summer fades away.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 110
Cucumbers: 178
White Onions: 6
Yellow Onions: 40
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 1,123 (broke 1,000: woot!)
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 56
Best Boy Tomatoes: 64
Cosmonaut Volkov Tomatoes: 2
Sungold Select Tomatoes: 40
Peach Tom: 4
Brandywine Tomatoes: 20
Orange Banana Tomatoes: 3
Costoluto Genovese Tomatoes: 6
Mystery Tomatoes: 4
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

Waxing Poetic about Sunflowers

There's something really appealing about sunflowers. They seem stately, somehow, elegant. Of all the plants in the garden, the sunflower towers over all as it stretches its stems upward to worship the sun. When it is in full bloom, the head drooping heavily, laden with the burden of seeds, it seems a reflection of the sun looking down upon us, its seed center a full eclipse upon the sun's flaming beauty.

My sunflowers are indeed stately, standing soldier-tall, heads facing directly up to receive full benefit of the sunlight. The spiky head leaves are a direct contrast to the softer, more graceful arms. The stalks are thick, strong, and stable, supporting not only the weight of the flowers-to-be, but also the weight of the cucumber vines that have used them as trellises over the last few weeks. The last cucumbers I picked were hanging from the sunflower stalks and were blemish-free; they had rested protected beneath the sunflower's shady leaves.

I'm hoping our first frost is far enough away that these sunflowers have a chance to bloom and develop seeds; I want to enjoy the flaming beauties before fall takes a foothold. I want to be able to save and roast the seeds, to enjoy a taste of sunshine until spring, when I can plant these beauties again.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Well, the tomatoes didn't attack me, exactly--the mosquitoes did. I will say, however, that some of these tomatoes probably weigh close to 3 or 4 pounds each, and the basketful was heavy! They might have killed me under just their weight alone!

OK, enough melodrama. I brought in a pretty good harvest of 'maters today: 159 sun sugar tomatoes, 20 Sungold Select, 1 Cosmonaut Volkov, 1 Orange Strawberry, 2 Orange Banana, 11 Best Boy, 1 Peach Tom, 8 Beefsteaks, 2 Costolutos, 5 Brandywine, and 2 mystery tomatoes that I can't track to the originating plant. Check the harvest count at the bottom of this post for a current tally--I'm amazed at how many I've harvested so far.

Oh, and the cucumbers haven't quite given up yet (but are very, very close): I harvested 3 more today. I think I'll use those to make some Italian pasta salad this weekend, and it looks like I'll be dicing up tomatoes and making some more tomato sauce for the freezer.

Also, I'm delighted that one of my students brought me a sizable bag of green beans today, along with a few kohlrabi! Woot! I'll cook up some of the green beans, but will probably blanch and freeze the rest. I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, this cooler weather looks like it hasn't been very friendly to the tomato plants. Many of them are getting yellowed leaves. I hope some warmth kicks back in, because it would be nice to get a couple more really big harvests in so I can continue to stock my freezer. I don't want to have to buy tomatoes or tomato sauce at the store. Blech.

I did see one huge zucchini out there...but I couldn't bear the thought of picking one more zucchini. Enough is enough. Seriously.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 105
Cucumbers: 178
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 2
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 960
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 54
Best Boy Tomatoes: 52
Cosmonaut Volkov Tomatoes: 2
Sungold Select Tomatoes: 27
Peach Tom: 3
Brandywine Tomatoes: 8
Orange Banana Tomatoes: 3
Costoluto Genovese Tomatoes: 4
Mystery Tomatoes: 3
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

Heirloom Tomatoes Join the Harvest

I finally have a few heirloom tomatoes ripe that I was able to add to yesterday's harvest: 1 Cosmonaut Volkov, 1 Peach Tom, and 3 Sungold Select. The problem is that the heirloom tomato plants are laden with tomatoes, but something is eating them--seriously eating them. I would suspect hornworms, but I don't see any evidence of them. These are the first heirlooms I could actually harvest that weren't eaten up (even though the bottom of the Cosmonaut shows a little eating damage).

In addition to the heirloom pickings, I also raked in a regular harvest of 153 sun sugar, 3 Beefsteak, and 8 Best Boy tomatoes, 8 zucchini, and 8 cucumbers. The zucchini and cucumbers are essentially done; the vines are withering. I'll be yanking the zucchini plants out this weekend (they are covered in leaf mold) and will probably dig up my onion bulbs. I doubt I'll have much size to them, but they should be edible anyway.

The okra plants continue to grow skyward, but I have yet to see any okra. I know it will come, but I'm anxious to fry up that first batch!

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 103
Cucumbers: 169
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 2
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 686
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 39
Best Boy Tomatoes: 35
Cosmonaut Volkov Tomatoes: 1
Sungold Select Tomatoes: 3
Peach Tom: 1
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill

The Monster [Tomato] that Ate Manhattan

Well, it didn't really eat Manhattan. But it does look like one tomato started consuming a whole bunch of others, particularly if you look at the bottom side of the tomato. This mutated marvel is a Beefsteak tomato that has gotten totally out of control. I'm pretty certain it will end up as tomato sauce rather than sandwich slices, because I can't quite fathom where to begin slicing on this one. Notice that it has two stems at the top that merge into the vine! Somehow, it began as two tomatoes and then mutated into one. It's a pretty good size, too--I've provided a sun sugar cherry-size tomato to help give you a sense of scale.

All in all yesterday, I collected 5 Beefsteak tomatoes, 8 Best Boys, and 170 sun sugar tomatoes. Add to that the 8 cucumbers I picked today, and I'd say that was a decent harvest. Since the sun sugar tomatoes just keep on producing, I took the freshly harvested ones to church this morning to spread the golden wealth around.

TOTAL PRODUCE COUNT TO DATE:
Zucchini: 95
Cucumbers: 161
White Onions: 1
Yellow Onions: 2
Sun Sugar Tomatoes: 533
Beefsteak Tomatoes: 36
Best Boy Tomatoes: 27
Herbs: cilantro, mint, dill