I did a little math today and calculated how many pounds of tomatoes I have harvested for the season. The total? 58 pounds 4 ounces. That doesn’t include the (likely) 10+ pounds I threw into the bushes because of slug damage or the cherry tomatoes that didn’t make it to the scale (num num).
I’ve given away sacks full, put more than my fair share on salads (unfortunately my lettuce crop has run dry and my beds are in no shape to replant), I made and canned 5 quarts of salsa, dried enough for 2 pints (and more are in the dehydrator), made caprese salad, thrown tomatoes into every dish we eat and generally snacked. I also took my giant basket to my grandfather’s birthday party and told my aunts, and great aunts to take some home.
I still have at least another 30 pounds on the vine. At least. The one day record was over 18 pounds. The single largest tomato was a pound and a half and the size of a small cantaloupe.
Am I tired of tomatoes? Heavens no. There is something therapeutic about growing tomatoes. Will I grow fewer next year? Probably not. I might grow more, but not less. I will reinforce my support system and revamp the way I tend to the plants. I’m frustrated to have sacrificed to many large fruits to the slugs. Live and learn.
We are starting to get creative around here as to what to do with the hoards of tomatoes. Last week I canned 5 quarts of salsa, gave away 5 bags and dried about 2 pounds. I am doing my best to not let anything go to waste.
Since I have a wide variety of types of tomatoes (and none are dedicated “sauce” tomatoes) I thought I would give drying a try. I was lucky enough to receive a food dehydrator from mom a few years ago that comes in handy ever now and again. I pull it out during apple season to make chewy apple chips or banana crisps. I pulled it out a few weeks ago to dry some peppers that were on the verge of going bad.
I did some looking on the internet to make sure that using a food dehydrator for tomatoes would actually work, and sure enough there was plenty of information. In addition I recently purchased “Canning & Preserving Your Own Harvest” by Carla Emery & Lorene Edwards Forker at the suggestion of Willi at Diggin Food. The writers of the book had a great idea on preserving dehydrated tomatoes. It doesn’t even require boiling giant pots of water.
My version is slightly different than the book, but this was a trial run.
Clean all of your tomatoes. Spray the racks of the dehydrator with cooking spray (if you don’t oil the racks you will say bad words later, learned this with apples and bananas). Slice tomatoes in 1/4″ slices and remove the white core part. Place on dehydrator racks without the tomatoes touching. Turn on dehydrator and let go for what seems like eternity (mine went all afternoon and night). 1/2 way through the drying swap the racks. Put the top ones on the bottom and the bottom ones on the top. The tomatoes are done when they feel like leather and are still pliable. Some of mine were a little crispy. Turn off the dehydrator and let them cool. Once the slices are cool put them in a bowl and toss them with a little plain white vinegar. Take them out of the vinegar and pat them dry with paper towels. Allow them to dry completely. Place them in sterile jars and cover with olive oil (I happen to use grapeseed oil since I’m quite allergic to olive oil). Place a lid on and keep them in a cool dark place. Apparently you can keep them for up to a few months. Refrigerate after opening. So simple! They look pretty to boot.
This is a gardening site isn’t it? I probably should tell you about a few plants other than tomatoes. Part of the point of this site was to inform readers about some of the not so common, yet easy to find landscape plants available in your local nursery. I intended on starting with my all time favorite tree, but lighting conditions were such that photographing it didn’t work out quite right. Instead, I’m going to tell you about my husband’s favorite tree.
The idea is to create a little bit of an information sheet that you could print out and add to a collection of “cool plants I’d like to have.”
Variegated Box Elder or Acer negundo ‘Flamingo’
Height: 20′
Spread: 15′
Hardiness: USDA zone 3 – 9
Habit: rounded pyramidal and often irregular. Somewhat of a scraggly appearance. Not your full and bushy tree
Texture: coarse in winter, medium in leaf
Culture: adapts well to many conditions, full sun, wet, dry or poor soils. Often short lived
Pests: few noted
The Flamingo cultivar of the Box Elder is an interesting form of a rather uninteresting Maple. Leaves are complex and a beautiful spring green edged in creamy white. New shoots are a brilliant pink aging to green. Color is best in cooler weather. Cut back in late winter to encourage extension growth which is often more pink and cream.
This is an interesting plant for the landscape. It is not as common as some of the other Maples, but has it’s place in the landscape. Neighbors often ask us what that tree is and are stunned to hear it is a type of Maple. Be careful because often times branches will revert to the non-cultivar variety and are not as attractive. Prune out reverted sprouts.
We have had this tree in our garden since we moved into our house. It has doubled in height in 5 years, standing 15′ high now. As it matures it will grow slower and fill out somewhat. The Variegated Box Elder is a lovely little tree that deserves more attention.
I read a recent post from a woman who had no clue how a tomato was formed on the vine. I mentioned it to my husband and he thought that was rather odd. We both did. It never occurred to us that people didn’t know how a tomato formed. Sometimes we have to stop and remember that not everyone grows their own food.
This got me thinking. How many other people don’t know how a tomato grows? I set out to document how the process works.
First, you plant a beautiful little plant that has a very distinct odor when you touch it. Did you know that? The stems of the plant also feel rather moist when you touch them. They are also toxic. Every part of a tomato is toxic except the fruit. Odd huh?
Anyway, when the conditions are right (meaning it’s warm enough) the plant will flower.
The flower could be a single one (as shown in the above photo) or double, or triple. I’ve had very sparse flowers and large frilly flowers. It just depends on the plant. In any case they are all the same shade of bright yellow. The flower needs to be open during the day time to be pollinated. They close up when the air temperature is cool so if you live somewhere that the days are colder you’ll have later or never setting fruit. We were lucky to have a massive heat wave in July that caused my plants to put on massive amounts of fruit.
That is one cluster of hundreds of cherry tomatoes I have.
Once the flower is pollinated the fruit will form behind the flower (actually inside). The flower wilts and a little tomato is formed.
This was the smallest one I could find. It’s about the size of a petite pea.
As the warm weather goes on the fruit gets larger and larger and once it reaches its mature size it will begin to color. Typically the fruit colors from the bottom to the top. Every so often you’ll get a strange variety that colors from the top down or the side over. I have fruit doing all of those. The Azoychka (yellow) colors from either the side over or the whole thing at once. All of my red varieties color from the bottom up and the orange Juan Flame colors from the top down. The white Snow White Cherries color from the bottom up too.
I tend to pick my tomatoes a little on the green side. Heirloom varieties ripen fast once they are brought inside and can quickly become over ripe (sometimes overnight). I keep all of mine on a paper towel on the kitchen counter. I lay them stem side down and never on top of each other. However, right now I have about 10 pounds and not enough counter space. The ripe ones are in a basket on the kitchen table and will soon become salsa. The greenish ones are holding their place of honor on the counter.
At the end of the season, when the weather man threatens frost I run outside and pick all of the green tomatoes that are close to mature size. I put them on sheet pans and put the pans all over the house. They will ripen up. It just might take a week or more.
So now you know how you go from a little flower to this.
Wait a minute! It’s not time. It’s still August.
In the Northwest we have the luxury of year round gardening. Or year round vegetables if you prefer. You just have to revise your definition of vegetables for Fall and Winter. If you are committed to growing your own food things like fresh tomatoes and snap peas are a thing of the past. You canned those and did some freezing right? You didn’t? There’s always next year.
I will admit to being a less than attentive gardener when it came to my planting schedule this year. I did have a plan. I just didn’t refer back to it often enough. I got a little distracted. The goal is to pay attention next year or at least have a better plan.
However, this time of year is good for a few things.
The first is preserving. It may not seem like an actual garden activity I assure you it is. There is nothing worse than spending all of that time toiling over your crops only to have them go to waste at the end of the season. I have about 4 pounds of tomatoes sitting on my counter that need to be preserved. There isn’t enough to make into sauce, but there is enough to make into salsa. I also pickled about 2 1/2 pounds of green beans earlier this month. I made them a little spicy. Perfect for a bloody mary or a christmas gift. I also made a few jars of pickles. I admit to buying the pickling cucumbers at the farmer’s market, but it did inspire me to purchase my own cuke seeds for next year. In addition to canning I blanched and froze another 2 pounds of green beans, 1 pound of shelling peas, 2 pounds of blueberries and 1 pound of currants. My winter reserves are starting to look good. Later in September I will have plenty of tomatoes to make into sauce and paste.
The other activity in the autumn garden is planting fall crops. I missed out on cauliflower and over wintering onions (they are difficult to come by around here). I did manage a fall crop of beets, carrots, lettuce and spinach. I do still have time to sow garlic and shallots. I just have to shop for those.
So while the summer may be winding down putting your hands in the soil is not finished.
The organic gardeners out there are going, “downfalls? what downfalls?” The good far out weighs the bad when it comes to gardening organically. However, there are times when you find that all of your hard work and diligence is a big pain in the butt.
Earlier this Spring I went into my potting shed to retrieve a tool, toy or other item throw in there over the Winter. There was this odd aroma emanating from the shed, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t think anything of it and went about my business. A few weeks later I was doing some cleaning up and looking for sprinkler system parts to work on the vegetable garden system. That smell was still there. I did a little investigating and found droppings. The smell was rat urine. Lovely.
Evidently the rats that were vacated from under our house when the cats moved in decided to snack on our bags of corn gluten all winter long and had made a nice little home for themselves in my potting shed. I did the best I could do to clean up the mess and I threw away any remaining corn gluten (so sad, it’s such a great pre-emergent). From there on we went about our merry business.
For most of the summer I haven’t paid attention to the smell or the recurrence of other rat droppings. Anything I smelled I just chalked up to formerly peed upon wood or droppings that I didn’t get with previous sweepings. Mostly, I wanted to ignore the fact that there was or still is a rat living in my potting shed. This afternoon I’d had enough. The smell finally got to me. I’d also had enough of sitting at my desk and staring at the computer while the sun was shining.
I spent most of the morning emptying the contents of the shed out into the back garden and disposing of anything that had come in contact with any rat poo. This included nursery pots and leftovers from a previous garage sale. While cleaning I came to realize that I hadn’t just done a poor job of cleaning earlier this Spring. My little vermin never moved out. He just substituted my expensive corn gluten for only slightly less expensive organic lawn fertilizer. I thought I had foiled the beasts when I put all potting soil and fertilizers into a Rubbermaid container. Nope. They climbed right in and helped themselves.
The rest of the afternoon I spent vacuuming up rat poo and power washing the inside of the shed. I had dirty rat poo water raining down on my head. I think it was the single most disgusting thing I have ever done in my entire life. All in the name of organic gardening.
This weekend we will be making a trip to IKEA to purchase a metal bin to put any future lawn fertilizer in. Hey, it worked for the bird food.
For the past few days the Northwest has been enjoying some refreshing rain. Although I have issues when the skies turn grey it’s quite welcomed around here. We turned off our irrigation system the other night and in my many waking hours of the night I lay there and listen to the rain.
You would think that since I’m such a tomato nut I would be in a panic. Blight and all. It doesn’t seem to be phasing me. I do have a nasty case of blossom end rot on my Brandywines, but for the most part the majority of my plants are doing quite well. I checked on the Juan Flame and it looks a little sad, but the fruit is fine.
All of my tomatoes have all fallen over, but no broken branches. The best part is the masses of fruit. What makes it even more crazy is now that the weather has cooled down the tomatoes are actually starting to color. Last night we pulled a 1 pound Cherokee Purple, a 6 ounce Black Russian and a 6 ounce Azoychka. For the season we are over 5 pounds of tomatoes. If all of the fruit currently on the vines ripens I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with almost 100 pounds.
Here in the Sprouting Off Garden we grow more than just fruits and vegetables. To me a garden is the entire landscape not just the bits that are edible. One thing I’ve grown almost longer than vegetables is Lavender. I love lavender. I love the smell of it the texture the simple beauty. I suppose that’s why I love going to the Sequim Lavender Festival every year. I only wish my plants were as perfectly shaped as the farm’s.
When we first landscaped our garden the first plant I purchased for the reworked space was a collection of 5 Twickle Lavender bushes. They were small little one gallon beauties that performed like pros. Unfortunately, I didn’t take into consideration that the Thundercloud Plums over their heads would eventually create a deep dark shade (on the south side of my house I might add). Slowly the three middle plants died and the two on each end (they are planted up my front walk) are leggy and don’t produce flowers anymore. However, I did get a great flower harvest off of them right before they kicked the bucket.
In the years since I’ve learned quite a bit about Lavender and what it likes and doesn’t. I likes to be left alone. A yearly hair cut and some fish emulsion if you are feeling generous are it’s basic requirements. It would prefer mostly to full sun and nice well drained soil (slightly sandy if you have it).
My collection of Lavender bushes has grown from those original 5 (now 2) to include 11 more. Six were planted earlier this spring. I love the look of Lavender, but I also use it. Each year I harvest every last bloom off of each plant, bundle them together and hang them in the garden shed to dry. I then use a pillow case to catch all of the dried blooms (pick out the earwigs) and store the dried flowers in an air tight container.
Today was my annual Lavender harvest. It is always bitter sweet because I won’t have the pretty little flowers dancing about in my garden. The bumble bees also get a little grumpy that I’m taking away their money maker, but a gardeners got to do what a gardeners got to do.
What do I do with all the bounty? It goes into various crafts that I sell to support my gardening habit. The main product is eye pillows. Little bits of fun fabric filled with organic flax seed and organic Lavender make for great gifts. In addition to the eye pillows I am entertaining the idea of putting together dryer bags and maybe a few fun sleepy time pals for kids. We’ll see how much the harvest yields.
A major heat wave has struck the West coast and most of us are sweltering away. Many of my friends poo-poo our heat, but those are the same friends that live in the Southwest, South, Midwest or Southeast. Basically anywhere outside of the Northwest. Listening us complain about the heat is much like listening to you complain about the rain. Only trouble is those outside of the Northwest forget that we don’t have air conditioning here. Or at least most homes don’t. This girl, who doesn’t sweat, doesn’t think the heat is good for much of anything besides making me cranky and growing tomatoes.
Last year the tomato crop was dismal. The cold spring and summer kept the plants from setting fruit and once they did not a single fruit would color. At the end of the season I harvested about 5 pounds of green tomatoes. It took 2-3 weeks for them to fully ripen.
This year I was optimistic. I planted my hoards and hoped for the best. So far I’m not disappointed. My plants are so overloaded with fruit they are falling all over.
(These are the plants grown in 100% Tagro, an experiment this year)
I knew I had to be patient when it came to my little fruits. Some plants were slower than others to set fruit. Some set right away. It wasn’t until yesterday that I actually picked my first tomato (and a wee little pepper too). I planted Snow White cherries and 3 were showing signs of being ripe. I was tempted to snatch it off of the vine and gobble it up on the spot. However, being the good gardening blogger that I am I took a photo first. I don’t think I set down the camera before eating one.
This afternoon I picked an Azoychka and sliced it for my salad. By Thursday I should have about 50 pounds of ripe tomatoes.
We are approaching the beginning of August (how did that happen?) and my garden is in a bit of a transition period. Last week I pulled out a few pea vines and by week’s end I’ll pull out the rest. I also harvested the last of the beets and carrots, yanked the spinach that bolted too quickly and sacrificed my large stand of dill to the yard waste bin (attacked by aphids). Luckily, our food supply isn’t too low. I picked over a pound of green beans last night (many more to go), I have quite a few heads of broccoli left and lettuce, tomatoes and peppers are plentiful (if the latter two would ever ripen).
This time of year the garden is much more work than in months past. This afternoon I will be weeding the bare spots, digging in a little more Tagro and replanting. I’m not exactly sure what I intend to plant. I have to survey my seed stash and make a few selections. I am trying not to spend any money so going out to buy seeds is off the list. Next year we have a grand plan to expand the garden to accommodate many more plants and give everything a little more breathing room.
When I started the season this year I thought I had enough space to grow enough food for the three of us and still give some away. I was very wrong. I could have grown so much more and had a much bigger variety. Granted, I didn’t have to plant 10 varieties of indeterminate tomatoes or 6 pepper plants, but I did and I don’t regret it.
For the time being I will be happy with the amount that I have and continue to eat more peas and broccoli than I normally would.
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