tomato tastings 2007 postscript

So here it is mid-October & i was cleaning out the flower garden. Lo and behold i noticed that my 'Persimmon' tomato, which had previously produced two dry, rock-hard items that could barely be classed as tomatoes, was now laden with huge juicy offerings. I mean really big ones, and very tasty too. Not sure what happened there, but i did enjoy them! I would say now that i would grow it again, if i wanted an orange tomato.

Also the green tomato, 'Aunt Ruby's german green', got some sort of blight & dried up. So though it was prolific before then, it is a mess now.

from August

We grew a giant zucchini! It was so big C could hardly lift it. The neighbors said we should've entered it in the state fair...however we were really hungry so we ate it instead.

kate's tomato tastings 2007

If you recall, i was too busy being pregnant to actually start seeds, so i got all these from a local plant sale. The twins arrived safely and now i am too busy being mommy to actually weed the garden. However in the intervening time i was able to throw some plants in the ground and eat some tomatoes. Here are my (albeit brief) impressions:

-Arkansas Traveler. My hubby picked the first one of these and i didn't believe him when he said it came from our garden -- it looked like a storebought one. They are about the size of a peach and perfect perfect perfect looking red tomatoes. The taste is kind of average though, i wasn't impressed. Probably be a good tomato to sell or something, but i like a tomato with some kick.

-Aunt Ginny's Purple -- not much kick here either, and the plant wasn't very prolific. Another average one.

-Aunt Ruby's German Green -- OH MY GOD I LOVE IT. This is my favorite this year, i will have to find where to buy the seeds. These are huge and flavorful and there are alot of them. They really are green when they are ripe, though, so you have to keep checking and feeling them. They look lovely in a tomato salad or as pasta fresca. Here are some pictures:

-Black from Tula -- another good one. This one almost made up for the fact that i didn't have any Cherokee Purple this year. Prolific and tasty.

-Great White -- another good one! OK, all the good ones are together in the list. A big tasty sweet yellow one! It is now my favorite yellow tomato. Well, ok, 'white', but can i say in the yellow family? I will grow it again and again and again and again....the pic is of Great White & Black from Tula.

-Mortgage Lifter -- this plant got choked out by weeds so i got nothin'. Dommage....

-Paul Robeson -- the squirrels love it. I had one not-quite-ripe tomato from this plant, that i managed to pick first. I did not think it was as good as 'Black from Tula' but it is hard to compare....simply not enough data. Maybe it just wasn't ripe enough. Thieving bastards. I swear one day i am going to get a gun.

-Persimmon -- not sure what happened here. Partly the plant was choked by weeds.... but i did get some tomatoes. They were kind of hard & leathery, and didn't taste very good. Looks pretty chopped up with others though. I think something went wrong, i don't think it was the fault of the variety.

-Yellow Pear -- was mismarked & was in fact Red Currant (or some related variety). Well, screw that. The squirrels liked these too, and they are welcome to them. I mean, they are cute as a salad garnish but other than that i don't have a lot of use for currant tomatoes.

My garden, though, is chock full of them -- the 'White Currant' from last year seeded themselves with a vengeance. I didn't quite manage to pull them out and as a result they are everywhere. Which is in fact kind of convenient, because i have plenty of tomatoes to give away and i didn't do anything to get them. Saves face, somehow.

sunflowers

just a cute pic. All the sunflowers are volunteers, coming up in various places in the vegetable garden. The sunflower on the right is 'Lemon Queen', a 'decorative' variety that i planted last year. The one on the left is the one from the birdseed. C loves to fill the bird feeder but tends to drop seed everywhere, so these are coming up all over the place. Oddly enough, i think they are alot prettier than the so-called 'decorative' ones.

bastards

Something ate most of my squash seedlings, and a few of the others. The basil has not sprouted at all. The weeds are growing just great.

Gardening sucks!

my seeds sprouted!

summer squash, cukes, beans, zinnias, and lettuce did, anyway. Still waiting on the rest of the stuff. Hopefully we will see more of them after this weekend's gentle rains (because i have not yet managed to set up a sprinkler, so nothing has been watered since i put it in, oops) Of course, more weeds will sprout too, but whaddya gonna do?

i did plant veggies after all

Here is a lousy picture, i mean i could explain the thing of the leaves-as-mulch and all that, but i will keep that for another time. I will try to get better pics soon. None of the seeds have germinated yet so there is nothing to really see, except some tomato plants and whatever is left over from last year.

I got some heirloom tomato plants (9 in total) from a local plant sale, i will have to look up what i got because i don't even remember. It was not what i planned to get.

So what is in there?

-Those tomato plants and a bunch of volunteer tomatoes from last year. We will see what actually comes of it.
-Leeks from last year (they are getting kind of fat finally).
-Beets (mix of three kinds, will list later...they were planted too late though)
-Rainbow Chard (ditto on planted too late, i guess we will just eat the baby greens)
-Lettuce -- merveille des quatres saisons & black-seeded simpson, like last year, also planted too late. But actually we have some volunteers from last year that we are currently eating at dinnertime
-Arugula volunteers from last year
-bush beans, royalty purple pod
-cucumbers, white wonder
-summer squash, blend of 7 varieties, will find & list later
-basil, sweet genovese
-dill, i forget which variety
-silver thyme & greek oregano plants
-some sunflower volunteers
-flowers for cutting -- cosmos (seashells blend) and zinnias (state fair mix)
-marigolds, for keeping off the bugs. This year i got a flat of the orange two-toned ones, called 'disco queen'...just to be different from last year.

Nothing is planted in the center oval, just some marigolds, because C loves to fill the birdfeeder & watch the birds. So we will keep the shepard's crook which refuses to stand straight and the tiny birdfeeder there (so she can fill it every day! Oh the fun!)

How am i going to keep this garden from getting away from me, when twin boys arrive in three weeks (knock on wood)? I won't, it is not possible. But my neighbors needled me until i planted veggies, because they want enough to share, and promised to help with the watering & weeding. So, when it all goes to hell, i can blame somebody else, and that's really the most important thing.

***********

Edited to add -- if anyone actually reads this anymore, i should answer the question that will undoubtedly be asked: how do you plant a garden when you are 34 weeks pregnant with twins, and thus cannot bend down? The answer is you crawl around a lot, and hope noone is watching you. You may laugh, but it works...

Tomato varieties 2007

I have to list the varieties i have here and now, before i forget and it is never done. So we have one plant each of:

-Arkansas Traveller
-Aunt Ginny's Purple
-Aunt Ruby's German Green
-Black from Tula
-Great White
-Mortgage Lifter
-Paul Robeson
-Persimmon
-Yellow Pear

I have actually never had any of these before (except the ubiquitous Yellow Pear) so it will be interesting. I hope i will have time to record my reflections on these tomatoes here. I am upset because i have no Cherokee Purple, which is my all-time favorite...they did have them on the list at the sale but by the time i got in, they were all gone. We were there, in time, before the opening even....but some people had already gotten in the day before because of an error in the paper. So i was really annoyed. But i am hoping that either Paul Robeson or Black from Tula will prove an adequate substitute. I have little expectation for 'Aunt Ginny's Purple' which is described as 'deep pink productive beefsteak'. Well, if it's pink, it ain't purple. Maybe Aunt Ginny couldn't see very well...

The volunteers i have in the garden are probably from the White Currant tomatoes from last year, and i see one Brandywine volunteer. There is one that i am hoping is a Cherokee Purple but i am not holding my breath. I am surprised there are no Yellow Bell volunteers, but maybe the leaves on that bed were just too thick....

strawberries

"C, do you want mommy to plant strawberries in the garden this year? So you can have strawberries in summertime?"

"No, I no yike it."

"You don't like them? Really? Well, ok...."

"I want cookies."

"But I can't grow cookies in the garden."

"Candy?"

"No, not candy either, sorry."

"M&M's?"

More planning

Well, dh and i had a small discussion about the vegetable garden. Ok, it became more of a fight, and rather an unpleasant one at that. He seems not to understand why i (1) want to plan it now and (2) don't think i can just do everything. Let's not go there.

"Why do you have to start seeds anyway?" he says "it is just a mess and takes up space. Why can't you just buy some plants and put them in, they don't have to be heirlooms and all that you know, and A can take care of it if you are too busy"

Heh, where do i start with that??? I had to leave the room in sheer disgust.

Men.

It occurs to me, though, that if i *do* grow just a few tomato plants, i will then have a supply of vine-ripened, bug-ridden, half-rotten tomatoes available to throw at my husband if necessary. Hmmm......

seeds

Ordinarily, it being january i would be spending hours perusing seed catalogs trying to decide which tomato seeds to buy this year. But so far so good on the pregnancy front, and we are expecting two babies in June. So i don't foresee doing a vegetable garden this year, unless for some odd reason my husband agrees to take it over.

So, my garden plan is the following: In March, or as early as humanly possible, the boy and i will throw a very very thick layer of mulch all over everything -- flower beds and vegetable garden alike. Thus hoping against hope to keep down the weeds. Then, in early May, we will plant a geometric, victorian carpet planting of annuals in the veggie garden, and simply ignore it for the rest of the summer. I promised C some strawberry plants, so i *may* plant those in the center.

But now, actually thinking about paying for the number of annual plants necessary to make such a planting is rather daunting, even if you can get 3 flats for $21 around here. I didn't actually compute it but i am thinking like 20 flats might be required? Not, ahem, cost effective. Especially with the upcoming big event (knock on wood). And all that mulch is going to cost me a bundle already, but i can't do anything about that, because if i don't mulch i might as well just forget the garden entirely.

So i will have to start the flower seeds....and that is what this blog will be about this year, an annual flower garden, planted in garish Victorian carpet planting 'spendor'. Did i mention i hate Victorian carpet plantings? But i honestly can't think of what else to do with that space, except let it run to weeds. So i am open for suggestions... I will not change the title of this blog, hoping for a nice vegetable garden in the summer of 2008.

Undoubtedly there will be volunteers from all the tomatoes that rotted last year, so...perhaps my carpet planting will have tomatoes growing through it. That should be....interesting...uh, we'll call it 'eccentric'.

abandonned?

Ah, this blog joins the long list of abandonned blogs sitting around in the blogsphere. Perhaps not totally abandonned...but how can you really blog about the vegetable garden when it is winter? And i do not know what the plans will be for it for next year, if i will do a vegetable garden or not. That will depend on the outcome of a new venture. We will see.

So perhaps next year i will just use the template of the vegetable garden and plant a bunch of colorful annuals in obnoxious patterns. I hate that, but it's certainly quite Victorian....

just a few green tomatoes

Anyone have any clue what i should do with all of these? C seems to enjoy using them as projectiles...

first frost tonight

Crap!

marauders!

A few days ago:

Today:

Look at this mess!


I noticed this as i was leaving for work this morning, and when i came back in the afternoon i thought i would take a picture of the damage and spend some time speculating as to the culprit. However, when i went back there to take the picture, the identity of the culprit was immediately clear.

The damned things don't even run away anymore when they see me coming. They just saunter, slowly, because their bellies are so full that they can't actually move fast. It is really irrirating. I am going to have to break the squirrel trap out again, and trap them all before the cold weather comes and they take refuge in the attic. Yuck, what a chore. And sorry, Catherine, i was going to send you some sunflower seeds but i think they ate them all.

Perhaps i will take up my neighbor on his offer and just borrow his pellet gun...

a recipie

I did mention earlier that i would be putting up some recipies, so without further ado i present for you

Kate's twice-burnt yellow tomato sauce

for 4 people

Ingredients:
-about a dozen yellow plum tomatoes
-some leftover red onion (about half an onion)
-6 garlic cloves, minced
-thyme
-fresh basil
-salt
-parmesian cheese
-juice of one dessicated lime

1. Saute onion & garlic in some olive oil until soft.

2. Here i thought i would be clever. I hate blanching tomatoes to peel them, so i thought i would just throw them in with the onions, turn the heat up to high, and wait a very short time. Thus, there would be enough heat to peel off the skins without having to go through that blanching routine. In theory.

3. Answer ringing phone and immediately find yourself deep in a conversation with a friend

4. Strong smell of burning onions wafts through the apartment. Uh, oh, strike one. Burning onions are not pleasant, but i thought -- hmm, maybe they will lend some flavor of caramelization to the sauce, i'll go with it.

5. Peel tomatoes, using tongs and fingers. This worked fairly well, though the blanching thing does work better. When the tomatoes are peeled, turn the burner on to low and cover the pot -- they need to stew and become sauce.

6. Check your email.

7. Recieve email you have been waiting for for 2 weeks!!! (in my case it was a file from my colleague which hopefully will enable me to finish up our joint paper. So i immediately launched myself into doing some math....)

8. 45 minutes later, strong smell of burning tomatoes wafts through the apartment.

9. Oh shit!

10. Gently scrape what looks like a scant handful of smashed yellow tomato pulp off of the thick black burnt layer on the bottom of the pot, and put it into another pot.

11. Desperately attempt to salvage the situation by throwing anything and everything available in this new pot. This includes, but is not limited to -- water, olive oil, parmesian cheese, thyme, basil (fresh), and a little juice that i managed to squeeze out of an extremely old lime that was on the bottom of the fruit bowl. (the yellow tomatoes are very sweet so the sauce needed a touch of acidity).

12. Serve on top of angel hair pasta, with a sprig of basil for decoration, and when they ask what it is, don't tell them.

My dh ate three servings.

hyacinth beans

These are purely ornamental, i think you can actually eat the beans if you want but they don't taste good. I planted them in the middle of the garden and they are finally starting to do something. Next year, i will start them inside or something, because they took too damned long. Anyway, the flowers are pretty.

melon picture

[photo removed]

Here is A with one of our melons. I let them ripen more and they are good now. They still sound the same to me, but they seem to be nice and yellow inside. I have one left, when we cut that last one open i will take a picture of it for you. A was very disappointed that they were yellow -- 'YELLOW watermelons? Can't you grow anything NORMAL?'

Uh no...why would i grow it if i can buy it at the store....duh.

kate's tomato tastings 2006

This post idea is blatantly stolen from Hanna but she did ask us to post our own so i am doing so. Not in as great a detail as she is doing, though, for which i thank her! The penny in each picture is for scale -- i could not find a quarter....



This is 'Cherokee Purple', currently my all-time favorite tomato. 'Purple' in tomato-speak seems to mean very dark pinkish-red. These are meaty and juicy and very very flavorful. They are, in fact, the veritable embodiment of what i think of as 'tomato'. This is the archetypical tomato that i have been searching for all my life.

That said, i am a little displeased with the quality of the seed that i got for these this year. I ordered most of my varieties from Baker Creek and i have been happy with all of them but this one. (in years past, when we lived in Virginia, i ordered everything from Southern Exposure.) The resulting Cherokee Purple plants were really kind of spotty -- most of them were true to what i know of as 'Cherokee Purple' but at least two plants (out of 12) are producing tomatoes which are not 'purple' enough. They are still tasty -- but even my dh (who is not particularly interested in gardening per se) said 'but these are not Cherokee Purple!"

So i am hoping that was an aberration, because all of the other tomatoes i got from them were fine.



These are 'Yellow Bell' that i ordered from Southern Exposure. They are extremely prolific and a favorite from many years of gardening in Virginia. Here in MI though i admit to some real disappointment. They are not anywhere near as sweet as they were in VA. In fact they are kind of tasteless, suitable perhaps for canning or yellow ketchup or a sauce -- but i swear i used to just pick them off the vine and enjoy them straight and they were my favorites, when we lived in the south. So maybe they really need the hot humid weather to be good. Of course we had hot humid weather in spades this summer (hotter than i remember ever in VA even!) so i don't know what is up with that. Maybe they need hot weather EARLY in the season. Anyway, regardless of my worry about blossom end rot earlier, i have these blasted tomatoes coming out my ears now. I do not think i will plant more than 2 plants of it next year.

New this year, here are the 'insurgent tomatoes', Rouge d'Irak...i try to stay away from politics on my blogs but when i read this description in the catalog of course i had to order these tomatoes:


Medium-sized fruit are finely flavored; good yields, too. This variety is endangered even in its own country, where saving seeds was made illegal under the "Colonial Powers" of the United States. Under the new law, Iraqi farmers must only plant seeds from "protected varieties" from international corporations. Is this our unique way of making democracy?

Don't know if that is true but if so it will not do....however the tomatoes unfortunately will not do either. They are even and globular and red and blemishless and produce wonderfully -- every visitor to my garden wants one. Half the time when you cut it open there is some rot inside. If there is no rot, it looks pretty but it still doesn't taste any good. I think this is a the great-grandchild of a Monsanto product masquerading as an 'Iraqi Heirloom'. Which brings up the question -- have the people at Baker Creek had much experience bartering for goods in Muslim/Middle eastern countries? Because i have tried this myself, and even with good knowledge of what i was buying i still got fleeced from head to foot (compared with the local economy). This is not an easy thing for westerners to do, the culture is totally different over there.

Brandywine. The ubiquitous heirloom -- when we were down in VA you could even get Brandywine plants at Wal-mart. I personally don't particularly like them, but i got a free packet with my Baker Creek order so i started a few plants. Other people do like them -- they are tasty and big and funny-shaped. It is a pink tomato, not quite 'red' but still very flavorful.

'White Currant'. These are lovely, though they are not 'white'. They actually start out whit-ish but if you leave them out there they turn properly yellow. They are very sweet, prolific and flavorful currant tomatoes and i am very pleased with them. Definitely a keeper.

Finally, at the last minute i went to a sale and bought two other tomato plants. One was mismarked and i have no idea what it is and it sucks anyway so never mind about that. The other is 'Black pineapple' which i totally love and will grow next year. It is beautiful -- color goes from green to deep purple on the same tomato, it is very flavorful (though a little on the 'green' side of tomato flavor) and the few i had grew nice and big...

melons

How in the heck do you tell when watermelons are ripe? I followed my mother's advice of 'knock on it, it is supposed to sound like your hardwood floor'. So i have been knocking on these melons regularly, and recently one started sounding like my hardwood floor, kind of. So we excitedly picked it and cut it open.

It was nowhere near ripe.

So apparently i need further direction...