A new low...

....is reached when your husband is apologizing to the insurance man for the state of the vegetable garden.

I will try to weed and tidy this weekend, really i will.....sigh.

my bad

Sorry, i should have written 'i know nobody but Catherine reads this blog'. Because i know you read it! And welcome to my blog, FarmgirlCyn!

I know i am supposed to be on hiatus but i logged on here to share photos of a minor miracle -- it looks like we will have melons! But i can't find the USB cable so i can't download the pics from my camera...ridiculous!

Another day, though...

Eggplant 'Rosa Bianca'

Has no eggplants yet but it has beautiful hairy purple flowers.


Not that anyone actually reads this blog but i will be off for a little while. I will try to post more pictures when i have them though...

gardening with small children

...is very rewarding, to someone anyway -- not sure who that is. I submit that it takes a great deal of patience. They run the other way when you try to suggest an activity...
...they seem to enjoy picking the green tomatoes and ONLY the green ones....
...they won't hold still when asked to pose with that first big tomato...
and they would rather smash the foods than eat them.
okay, i don't have a picture of the actual smashing process, but you can rest assured that within several seconds the small tomato pictured near her hand was pulp ground into my french tablecloth. Well, c'est la vie...

I look forward to next year, when she will be a little older and even more inclined to 'help'!

PS. please don't inquire about the choice of rain boots with a miniskirt. C is very headstrong about certain things, and in the matter of dress i sometimes figure it is easier not to argue...

Turkish eggplants

Tonight, the dh was grilling, so i picked the most orange of the 'Turkish Orange' eggplants for dinner. They are still the size of golfballs or, well, eggs. They never got any bigger. Here they are on the plant
and on the table
and in the pan ready for cooking.
What he does is put the vegetable in the iron pan, drizzle with olive oil and salt, and put it on the grill. Some magic happens which i cannot reproduce (one time A & i tried to turn on the grill when the dh was away, and managed only to make a fireball which burned A's eyebrows off. So i won't touch the damned thing now.) and we have grilled eggplant for dinner:
We have yet to find the vegetable that is not good prepared this way. Broccoli, for example, is completely scrumptious. These eggplants were overall good, but one piece was very bitter and unpleasant. So it must depend greatly on 'how' ripe they are. Of course they all look equally ripe to me so it is a crapshoot, really.
C didn't like them at ALL and demanded steak and potatoes instead.

oh, those red ones

I forgot to mention those red tomatoes. I have no idea what the hell they are.

At the garden sale aforementioned, i bought two tomato plants. The 'black pineapple' and a plant of 'yellow pear'. I thought it would be cute to grow the yellow pears in a pot on my balcony, so that Chloe could go out and pick them and eat them. This is what i got from my supposed 'yellow pear' plant:
So i don't know what they are. Also they were not entirely ripe when i picked them...but some animal had discovered them and was pecking at them, so i didn't have much choice. The taste of these mystery tomatoes was insipid at best. Kinda tasted like supermarket tomatoes.

Now THAT was a nice waste of two dollars, if you ask me.

and here we have....

The first pile of tomatoes of the season!

You will notice i have artfully arranged this pile so that you cannot see the blossom end rot on the yellow ones...ha ha.

This is how they looked cut up for dinner...we just ate them straight, with a little salt.

That one which looks greenish is the dark one on the right in the first photo. It is a variety called 'Black Pineapple' that i got at a local garden sale. I am very very taken with it, it was by far the best tasting of the bunch. (though i must admit, the yellow ones were nasty because of the rot, it is not their fault really). I will surely grow this variety from seed next year.

Anyway, i am always interested in the comments of others, so there i am at the dinner table badgering my husband -- 'so what do you think of this black pineapple tomato? How do you think it compares to the other varieties that we usually grow? Isn't it wonderful?...Don't you think it is good? Do you not like it!?!?' .... he is sort of poking at his food in a desultory fashion and staring into space....perhaps i should not attempt to get a proper critique out of a guy who just came back from India the day before and is totally jet-lagged to hell....ya think??

zucchini

I am not growing zucchini in my garden. My family likes it but does not love it, and it seems that somehow someone is always growing it and there is more than enough to go around. So that was the case this year as well, when i found myself with three huge zucchinis to dispose of. So i found this recipie for Zucchini and Rosemary Soup and we all really enjoyed the result so i thought i would link it here. It is easy, tasty, and fresh...and uses up ALOT of zucchini. I recommend it.

Maybe next year i will even grow zucchini, for the flowers.

Oh....mid-july

I am very behind in my posts, i am going to try to post them all today and catch up. Ha! Just wait until august....

really this time

First tomatoes!

These are the 'White Currant' tomatoes. 'White' in tomatoes apparently means very very pale yellow...actually i think these are still slightly unripe from the flavor but i could not resist.

I also have several which are starting to turn the right colors nicely, i will take pictures in the next few days. Maybe the dh will have some fresh tomatoes waiting for him when he comes back from his trip!

culinary notes

I was just flipping through the pictures of the garden from before and thought i would make a few notes....

- the rocket bolted like, nearly instantly. It is amazing to look at it now in full flower and recall that it was baby rocket a mere month ago. I cannot eat it straight now. However, it is still very good to put a few pieces in with the other salads (they are working on bolting but have not gotten there yet). It is still bitter, but there are several things which have worked. One is to pair it with a vinagrette made with lemon-infused olive oil and with parmesian cheese. That works fairly well (of course when Catherine & Sarah came over i forgot the cheese....oops). The whole lemon-infused olive oil was an accident too -- we ran out of ordinary olive oil and dug up some specialty stuff that had been a gift. I think it would also taste very good with some nut oils, like walnut oil or pistachio oil. Not that i know where to get those in the States. Another thing which works is to put it with a sweet dressing, like a raspberry vinagrette. If you like sweet dressings, that is (the males in this household give them a big thumbs down).

- the 'White Wonder' cukes make great pickles (we know this from a few years back) but they make lousy table cucumbers. Or to be clearer -- the skin is very thick. So if you want to just eat them, you have to spend the time to peel them, and then they just look like regular cukes, nothing exciting. But i suspect the thick skin is exactly what made them such excellent, crispy refrigerator pickles. I really hope i can reproduce this effect this year, if we eventually stop eating them all at the table so there are some to pickle.

- maybe we should try a green tomato recipie, we seem to have tons. Well, when dh gets back...

Actually, there is one tomato of 'Cherokee Purple' variety which is starting to turn! It is now a pinkish color, they are very dark (almost purple) when ripe. I will be watching carefully...

more pictures

We picked our first cucumber (sorry for the lousy picture)
and i gave C a basket to pick beans but she lost interest after picking two.
Apparently she prefers to play with Nicolas' pinwheel.


These are not tomatoes, they are the 'Turkish Orange' eggplants. They seem to be starting to turn color, but they are very small -- just about golfball size. I hope they grow bigger!


The other eggplants ('Rosa Bianca') are alot further behind -- they JUST put out some flowers. So...i guess it will be awhile.

a disappointment

I saw a lump of yellow in the tomato patch and thought i had my first ripe tomato! Unfortunately what i had was my first case of blossom end rot.

Further investigation revealed that it was not at all the only case.

Stupid rot! I then remembered i had this problem before with this variety -- these are 'Yellow Bell' and they are very susceptible to it. It is a yellow plum tomato. I also remember that when i had it before, i still had more than enough Yellow Bell tomatoes to go around, because the plants are quite prolific. So here's hoping that is the case this year also...

success!!

Beans! I have beans!! It was a big suprise when i saw them!

I guess i was not expecting them yet. I was dancing around waving my handful at A, he said 'gee that's great mom, now can you come put C to bed?'
I tried to get her to pose with the beans, before going to bed -- but she was more interested in the latest DVD to come from Netflix. Ah, the younger generation.

These beans are called 'Royalty Purple Pod' and they are quite tasty. They are quite pretty too, the shade of purple doesn't look right on my picture -- they are a really eggplant- like purple. The seed catalog says they turn green when you cook 'em, but i did not bother to cook 'em, we just ate them fresh and raw. I say 'we', because A did try them, and in fact he must have liked them because he ate about half of them (well, okay, he ate three -- there weren't that many yet). This is unusual for my vegetable-disliking children. We will see if C will eat one, tomorrow.

And, further investigations revealed an almost-mature cucumber! Hmmm, we might just have an interesting salad with our pizza this weekend ;)

before leaving

i took this last picture, please excuse the state of the lawn. I broke the lawn mower several weeks ago.

I took it mostly to show that i DID weed, and also i tied up the tomato plants in my own extra-special way. I had originally planned to tie each plant very carefully to it's stake, like a proper person should do. But since it was so out of control when i got back that i could not even see the path, i instead did it differently -- i tied rope around the perimeter of each bed, in effect making four giant tomato cages.

It seems to have worked. So far.

Look, proto-eggplants! These are that Turkish Orange variety.

When i was away, my neighbor came and ran the sprinkler for my tomatoes, and on one occasion she brought her father-in-law. Apparently he was really eyeing my tomatoes, with comments like 'wow, i have not had a good home-grown tomato in ages'. Uh-huh. Good thing i planted around 50 plants -- there should be enough to go around...

overgrown

i go away for a week and the whole place goes to hell in a handbasket
and this is the after picture. After some hours of weeding, that is. Not enough. You see i still need to go back and tie up the tomatoes some more, before i leave town again. This summer travelling stuff is not really a good idea for gardeners i guess. And don't even ask about the state of the grass!!

Lots of tomatoes though....


I hope some of them will be ripe next week when Catherine comes to visit. Maybe that is asking too much, but i think it would be nice. Or we can always make fried green tomatoes...


Bush beans? These are supposed to be bush beans? Looks like someone messed that up...i will have to stake these too.

The cucumbers are growing well. The melon vines are growing but more slowly, i don't think i will have melons this year. I should have started them inside...

Also the eggplants have set some teeny tiny fruits! But i forgot to take a picture. Next time...

This is just another gratuitously cute picture. Though there are some vegetable plants in the background.