Tomato overload

I can’t believe it’s been almost three weeks since my last blog!  This August has been quite cool for Los Angeles.  David makes fun of me because I put on a sweatshirt in the evenings, complaining of the chill in the air, and I’m the one who’s lived in Minnesota and Maine before. Don’t tell anyone, but I think living in LA has made me a wimp about the weather.

The past three weeks have also been spent at a conference and professional development for school.  My teacher brain has been taking in copious amounts of information during the day, and my evenings have been spent either in the garden or kitchen.  Blogging has fallen by the wayside.

This coming Monday I have parent conferences with some of my students, and the kiddos arrive on Tuesday!  So, this weekend we plan to take care of the over abundance of produce that has been accumulating on our counters.  We have been eating a lot from the garden.  We’ve had zucchini roulades, roasted eggplant, zucchini soup, red kuri coconut curry soup, caprese salad and more.  Last weekend we had friends over and set up a table in the middle of the garden.  We’ll do that again, and I’ll make sure to take pictures next time!

Since I’ve been at school during the past few weeks, I’ve been harvesting food from our fruit trees and school gardens.  David stopped by campus to help out, and we picked figs from three different trees.

We’re so excited about having fig jam!  We halved 3.5lbs of figs and cooked them down with balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, sugar and water (we followed the recipe from Put ‘Em Up).

Canning things as delicious as fig jam present an interesting dilemma- we want to crack the jars open and eat it now, but we’ve spent time canning it so we can eat it later.  We did have a small amount that wouldn’t fit in the jars that we were able to eat right away (with goat cheese and walnuts).  I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to resist this jam.  I’m not sure we’ll need to resist for that long, because I just found out about a fig tree in my community garden that is in need of harvesting!

I found this pumpkin ready to take home at school.  The vine was dead and it was laying in the aisle.  There’s a second one, which I plan to bring into my classroom.  This one will become pumpkin puree. Pamela, from Brooklyn Farm Girl, got me thinking about how great pumpkin puree would be to have in our freezer.  Our baby Casper pumpkin plant is just starting to branch out, so hopefully we’ll have more coming!

Last night I went through our tomatoes, picked out recipes and started prepping them for the recipes.  I devised this new strategy this past week: one day find recipes and clean, core, cut, weigh tomatoes and put in bags for the next day where we cook and can.  It’s been working well so far.

In addition to harvesting from our yard and school, our neighbor has been out of town for two weeks and we’ve been watching his cat and caring for his garden.

His early crop of tomatoes is finishing up, but his yellow and oxheart tomatoes are just starting.  He also has syrah grapes, which we nibbled on and planned to pickle but ended up composting. The bowls above are from the first week’s harvest.  We’ve filled another couple of bowls since then.

David made ketchup and orange tomato jam with smoked paprika this week.  I asked him to take pictures, but that’s not his style.  But you can see how there are lots of jars!

Today I am using more yellow/orange tomatoes to make yellow tomato basil jam.  They are currently macerating in the kitchen and it’s just about time to head outside to pick basil.

The food looks so beautiful while it’s being prepared.  Add a little bit of water, and everything looks better!

The San Marzanos here are getting prepped for coring then fire-roasting.  I’ve been wanting to make a fire roasted salsa all summer, but these will become fire-roasted canned tomatoes instead.  We already have plenty of salsa in jars, but very few whole tomatoes. Fire-roasted whole tomatoes should come in handy.  I’ll have to inventory our cans, as this is our first year of doing this so it’s a guessing game as to how much we’ll really use during the year.

 

These Isis Candy cherry tomatoes will soon be a balsamic cherry tomato caramelized onion conserve. The recipe looks like a winner! We’re always looking for more ways to preserve cherry tomatoes.

After prepping for canning this weekend, we determined that we had 12.5lbs of tomatoes that will be going to our produce exchange this weekend!  This is first experience with a produce exchange and it’s coming at a perfect time.

We’ve already canned whole tomatoes, two batches of tomato sauce, three different salsas, tomato jam and ketchup.  We also have dehydrated and roasted tomatoes in the freezer and will be canning roasted tomatoes, tomato jam and tomato conserve this weekend.

Rosie is great at keeping us company, but she seems to prefer when we’re in the garden as opposed to the kitchen.  Every so often we’ll toss her ball out the kitchen door to keep her retriever genes happy.

As a final picture, we recently spotted one of our praying mantis friends!  I’m pretty certain that the brown coloration means this is a male.  We’ve yet to spot a female, but he should be able to find one.  And hopefully mate.  Then hopefully avoid getting decapitated.

 

 

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The Canned Finale

Ah, summer vacation.  For me, it’s wrapping up and next week I switch back into prepping for the school year.  I’ve spent the past two days in the kitchen making sure that I get as much done as possible before time is up.

David and I just returned from a two week road trip (which explains my blogging absence).  I’m going to try to keep this post short, with mostly pictures of food, but there’s a lot that grew while we were gone.

Before we left we majorly trimmed the winter squashes and melons.  After being sprayed for powdery mildew, many of the leaves died.  I got a bit excited with my pruning shears and took down most of the buttercup and red kuri squash plants. The plants were not looking that healthy to begin with, and did not have any new fruit.  We picked what fruit was there, hoping they would set more fruit while we were gone.

We picked our Kazakh melons!  (We had one earlier in the season, bringing our grand total from the sprawling vine to three melons.) They were sweet with a honeydew-like consistency.

We also harvested three pinnacle spaghetti squash, two buttercup squash and four red kuri squash (we ate one before heading out of town).

As we don’t have a root cellar, we’ve put them in the hall closet to store for a while.  I’m a bit embarrassed about the state of the closet, but I’m sure you all recognize the important tools like a salad spinner, food dehydrator, crock pot and lots of towels! The box under the towels holds the canned goods that don’t fit in our pantry.

Before vacation we decided to try canning whole tomatoes in water (Ball Book recipe).  After we make enough sauce and salsa to last the year, we’ll do this again at the end of the season.

I’ve been getting a system down for canning.  Whole tomatoes requires skinning them first.  I prefer to do this with David’s help, but I think he was outside working in the yard when I did it this time.  Yard work is just as important.

We canned three quart jars of mixed tomatoes.  I love the mixed colors and hope the mixed flavors work just as well!  We used San Marzanos, Indigo Rose, Jaune Flamme and our neighbor’s mystery slicing tomatoes.

Our neighbor helped keep an eye on our cats and garden when we were gone.  We returned a couple of days earlier than we originally planned, and he told us that he had planned on mowing our lawn for us before we got back.  It’s great to have good neighbors!

The first thing we saw when we got back is two Sugar Baby Watermelons hanging from our A-frame squash/melon trellis!  They’re not mature yet, but they look like they’re getting there quickly.  I’ve read up on how to tell if a watermelon is ready to pick, but I’d love some advice if anyone has some.

The morning after we returned, I woke up early and went outside to harvest our veggies.

Our Little Leaf pickling cucumbers were the size of normal slicing cucumbers.  I wonder if I should have been picking them at this size the entire season.  One of the two plants on the ladder held six large cucumbers clustered tightly together.  Notice at the top of the plant, there are still more coming.  These are an impressive hybrid!

Between the two vines in the front and the three in the back, I picked quite a few cucumbers.  We set aside two for salads, and I began slicing and dicing the remaining cucumbers.  After weighing it out, I decided to make a three jars of bread and butter pickles, a half batch of Indian relish and a full batch of pickle relish.

Of course, each recipe had a different prep and lots of chopping.  I did all of the prep one day, and then the canning the second day.  I also sliced up the smaller parts of the zucchini for zucchini pickles.

The bread and butter pickles needed to be salted and iced.  Last batch we made was from the Ball Blue Book, this batch was from Put ’em Up!  We’re quite excited about this new (to us) cookbook and also used the Indian and Pickle relishes from it.

The bread and butter pickles look so pretty while they’re cooking.  This recipe didn’t seem too sweet and seemed to have just the right amount of liquid.

And our three jars!

I’m just getting started now.

The zucchini pickles have a similar process.

They had to salt and ice for two hours.

Then instead of cooking the zucchini in the brine, they were supposed to soak in it for two hours THEN come to a boil.

I decided that these would have to wait until the next day, as I had a lot going on already.  So, they went into the fridge while in their brine.  Hopefully they won’t be too soggy.  To attempt to compensate, we’re going to throw a grape leaf (thanks to our neighbor) in each jar.

The relishes took the most time.  We also have the most jars of them!

The Indian Relish (top) contains cucumber, onion, carrot and cauliflower.  It is seasoned with cider vinegar, curry powder, turmeric, mustard powder (which I ground myself), and fresh ginger.

We canned six 4 ounce jars and four 8 ounce jars of this fragrant pickle that will be a great addition to our dinners.

I’m having a hard time accepting the pickle relish because of how it looks.  Earlier this summer I made a sweet relish that looks bright and colorful in the jar. The pickle relish is brown and dingy with flecks of celery seed.

Our pickle relish is also with cider vinegar.  The brown is from ground allspice, peppercorns and celery seed.  Typically we grind our own allspice, but I dug around the cabinets and found some pre-ground that I brought back from Belize a few years ago.

I hope that was a smart decision.

And now the tomatoes.

The Indigo Rose are beautiful, a little meaty and not that strong of a flavor.  They are consistent in size.  All of this makes them perfect for roasting, which will concentrate their flavor.

The amount that we had fit perfectly on two trays.  I sliced them, brushed them with olive oil, and then sprinkled them salt, pepper and fresh thyme. They were roasted in the oven at 275 for about 4 hours.  After they cooled, I put them in a ziploc and tossed them in the freezer to be used.

I also have one tray of cherry tomatoes to roast.  Roasting is perfect for cherry tomatoes that split, and our Isis Candy have been splitting like crazy these days.

The San Marzanos are ready!!  They are perfect: large, meaty and very few holes.

These will make a great salsa (later) and make a great tomato sauce (now).

The San Marzanos were added to a sauce pot with a chopped onion and a handful of garlic cloves.  We kept the sauce simple so that we can add more to it when we use it.  After it cooked for a bit, we used an immersion blender to chop up the chunks.  When it was thick enough, we canned the sauce (with a little bit of lemon juice to assure the right acidity) and processed it for 35 minutes.

We figured out that a full bowl makes 8 pints of beautiful sauce. The small jars for when we make pizza.  We decided that we need to make one more batch of sauce this summer, and we’ll be good for the year.  From looking at the plants, we think that we’ll easily have enough for that and for canning salsa.

While we didn’t make tomato salsa (this time), we did make a salsa verde.

I picked all the large tomatillos that I found out back.  There are many more coming from the two plants in the back yard.  And our two purple tomatillos in the front yard are finally starting to set fruit.

As we planned on canning the salsa verde, I decided to follow the Ball Book recipe.  I also included some green tomatoes that came off the plants while I was tidying them up.

I added onion, garlic, the one jalepeno we had growing, crushed red pepper, vinegar,and lime juice.

After it cooked down a bit, we used the immersion blender to chop it up. When we tasted it, we decided to put in a little sugar also.

We made three pints and two half pints.  The sauce is a little thin for a dipping salsa, but will be perfect for enchiladas!

Our dining room table is full of jars.  My next step is trying to make space in that closet for more jars.  I’m also working on arranging a food swap in my town.  We tried to register for the Los Angeles one, and it “sold out” in 4 minutes!!  We figure that means it’s time to start another one.  With all of our food that we just made, it’s hard to think about parting with any of it, but it’s exciting to think about exchanging it for things we haven’t made.

As I look at the window, I see a cucumber that needs to be picked.  Looks like it’s time to think about the next round of canning.  Oh wait, I mean it’s time to think about heading back to teaching.

Kumquats, relish, rose petals and more

The past few days have been spent with large chunks of time in the kitchen.  We picked more tomatoes from our neighbor, many of which are still sitting on our counter.  I’d love to make a fire roasted salsa, if anyone has a favorite recipe.  We’ve also been enjoying them with olive oil, balsamic and fresh mozzarella.  (David and I have amassed a fun selection of oils and vinegars during our travels.)

Looking at our harvest, I figured it was time to get a little creative.

The banana peppers became pickled banana peppers.  The jalepenos may become peach jalepeno jam later today, or tomorrow.  And the cayennes are getting tossed into all sorts of things.

Since making roasted tomatoes and swapping them, I’ve been wanting to have some for us.

Our Jaune Flamme has the perfect size roasting tomatoes, so we were in luck!  I roasted the orange tomatoes, along with a handful of San Marzanos, packed them in olive oil and then froze them.  The frozen jar is now in our freezer, where it should keep for a year (but why would we keep them around that long?)

Thanks to the food swap, we had a pound of kumquats kicking around.  We also had oranges, which I juiced.  David and I marinated the sliced kumquats in some of the orange juice overnight.  We then drank the extra fresh squeezed orange juice.

The sliced kumquats were then cooked into a Spicy-Sticky Kumquat chutney.  We can’t wait to use it on pork or chicken! I cut the recipe in half, and this is one that I’ll be making again.

As the kumquats had to marinate overnight, I figured it was the perfect time to make Rose Petal Jam, which also had to macerate in sugar overnight.

Our roses are mostly yellowish orange, and not that fragrant.  I tried to find freshly opened ones, and was able to pick  a bowl full of petals.  The recipe confused me a little- I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to pack the petals down, and when to measure.  I could have emailed her to ask, but I figured I’d go with it.  If you use the recipe, I cut the pectin to 5 tbl and had about 2-4 cups petals, and it gelled perfectly and tastes devine!

The petals and kumquats both had to cook for about the same time, which made for convenient canning.

While they were cooking, I seeded and chopped a large cucumber that we had laying around.  I grabbed a red pepper, a couple small green peppers and an onion and chopped those to make a sweet relish (used sweet pickle relish from Blue Book).

I followed the recipe pretty closely, and was surprised to find it was quite liquidy.  I had about 2 cups of liquid left, and made 5 half pints instead of the 8 it said.  We’re excited to find a reason to use the relish.  I was reminded that my grandma used to make and love piccalilli, and that may happen later this summer. I’ve found a lot of good relish recipes so far, including one that uses summer squash.

Our cucumber plants were picked clean, and it’ll be at least a week before we get more.

I decided to make whole dill pickles with this lot.  A friend gave me a recipe (which we have yet to use), and suggested soaking them overnight in pickling lime.  We’ve yet to pick that up from the store, but it would be nice to have crisp pickles.

This is our third batch of dill pickles and each has been different.  This batch made two large jars and one small.

Today I also harvested enough long beans to make pickled long beans.

The long beans are just taking off, and the bunch I picked fit perfectly into a pint jar.  This will be a fun treat, especially since the brine had star anise in it!

All in all, here’s the pickling and canning that we’ve been doing since last Thursday.  David’s been a great sport and helped out during the canning itself, when I call him into the kitchen to pour and stuff jars.

Did I mention that we did all of the canning without a funnel?  I was so excited to get canning tools earlier this year, that I took out the funnel to use it for something, and then it disappeared!  We’ll get one soon, but finding canning supplies in our part of Los Angeles has been a little bit of an effort.  We now know which stores carry quart jars, widemouth jars, half pint jars and lids.  We have yet to find the 4oz jelly jars, but I know they’re out there!

One last picture of one of our cat’s helping with laundry.  Roxy won’t make any of the outside garden pictures because she’s too scared to go outside.

Busy in the kitchen

We’ve had a few tomatoes from our garden, but not nearly enough to start cooking with or preserving.  David and I decided that we’d roast or dehydrate a few at a time when we have time.  We figured with the way the tomatos are ripening, we wouldn’t start our saucing operations until the end of July or beginning of August.

There are a few red San Marzanos, but most of them are still quite green.

The Indigo Rose are ripening, and thanks to a suggestion from a reader, we’re leaving them on the vine until they feel soft.  These will be for salads and roasting.

The Jaune Flamme are going to be great for drying and roasting.  There are bunches of ripe ones, but there are not many at the same time.  I did get out the dehydrator though, and figured this was enough to do our first batch.

Our last tomato that is producing fruit right now is the Isis Candy.  These are great to eat in salads.  As you can see though, we’re far from peak tomato season.

Then David chatted with our neighbor across the street.

He told us that he was headed out of town and we should pick all of his tomatoes.

David and I went across the street, dug around for a little while, and proudly came home with two overflowing bowls of fruit.  There should be more later in the week, but we cleared out everything we could find.

And decided that we’d make our first batch of salsa!

I set aside the largest for slicing (every dinner comes with a caprese salads or tomatoes drizzled with vinegar and olive oil), the smallest for dehydrating and chopped up 7lbs for salsa.  We were going to stick to the Blue Book, but I found a salsa recipe that we’re trying instead.  When our neighbor gets back in town, he’ll get a couple jars of salsa and pickles.

Yes, he gave us cucumbers too.

He has some gorgeous salad cucumbers, which David made into an Israeli cucumber and tomato salad.  The ones that weren’t too seedy, were quartered and turned into dill pickles. We picked up some pickling spice at Penzy’s earlier this spring, and have been itching to try it.

Our vines had cucumbers growing on them also.  We’ve been pleased with the shape, size and yield of our little leaf cucumber plants.  I’ve been trying to move away from hybrids, but this one is making me think about that decision.

We have two vines on the ladder.  The vines are full of flowers and have over a dozen cucumbers in the midst of growing right now.

I picked these off our two ladder vines and the one in the backyard.  I snagged a few cayenne peppers and a handful of dill and it was time to make dill pickles.

At that point, I put my camera down and focused on cooking.

Our end tally was:

2 pint and half jars (1 chips, 1 spears)

5 pint jars (2 spears, 1 spicy spears, 1 spicy chips, 1 zucchini chips)

And then there were the apricots.

David bought apricots at Costco for canning, as our new tree isn’t producing this year. We had enough for a half batch of jam.  We decided on something savory, and chose Apricot-Ginger-Rosemary jam.  The amount we had filled two half pint jars and gave us a little bit left over.  The leftover jam was later cooked with caramelized onions and used to top pork chops.

We will savor this jam, and I highly recommend the recipe.  There’s just enough crystalized ginger and rosemary to make it interesting but not overpower it.

We just may be picking up more apricots to make more.

 

Putting up our harvest

There’s a heat wave in Los Angeles, and honestly it’s nothing compared to the heat we just experienced in Florida.  David and I didn’t even run the air conditioning, and had the oven on all day, so you know it wasn’t that bad where we live.  We usually get a breeze blowing through the house, until the wind shifts in late summer and the Santa Ana’s arrive.  August is usually when we run the air conditioning, and many houses in LA don’t even have it!

Dave and I spent the better part of Friday and Saturday preparing food to bring to a food swap!  I’ll write a separate post about that, as we just returned and we’re very excited about how it went!  But first, here’s what we prepped to bring with us.

Roasted tomatoes (recipe linked in last post, but here it is again.)

We slow roasted our small harvest of three types of tomatoes, and I’m looking forward to doing it again later this week (after it cools off).

We’ve never grown the Jaune Flamme tomatoes before and they’re already a favorite!  They are fairly uniform in size, a rich color and just the right combination of seed and meat.  Our plant has giant clusters of them weighing it down.  Actually, I’m going to run outside and pick a few right now, as I’m getting hungry for some!

The Indigo Rose are so purple!  These all seemed a bit mealy or underripe.  Roasting them should make their flavor more intense, which they’ll probably benefit from.  We’re hoping these are tasty enough to be salad tomatos, and maybe part of the trick is learning what color they’re supposed to be when it’s harvest time.

The San Marzanos are weird to slice.  The ratio of meat to seed was weird and I had a hard time making it even while slicing.  This heirloom isn’t designed for slicing- it’s a beauty of a sauce tomato.  The fruit also had lots of caterpillar holes, and I remember cutting out a lot of spots last year.  In the past, we have made sauce, dehydrated, and roasted them.  We just finished the roasted tomatos from our freezer; we have a few of the dehydrated ones left.

We had a full tray of jaune flamme, and half a tray each of indigo rose and San Marzano. Before the trays went in the oven, I brushed them with lots of olive oil and sprinkled them with salt, thyme sprigs and whole garlic cloves. They looked so beautiful when they went in. I thought I took a picture, but I can’t find it.

The tomatoes were roasted at 250 for 5 hours.  We then let them cool a little, packed the different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, in thick layers, adding garlic, thyme, and fresh basil in between the layers.

I then added a teaspoon of lemon juice and filled the jar with olive oil.  We processed it in our canner for the time in the recipe (I never seem to remember numbers).

I was actually kind of sad to bring these to the food swap, because I really wanted to keep them.  But then I was excited that other people get to eat these, and we get to make more for ourselves!  The idea of the food swap is to bring stuff we made or grew, and then trade it for things that other people made.  Since we have such a variety of produce to use, our strategy was to bring a small amount of a wide variety of items.

While David was at the store picking up ingredients for the baking of our giant zucchini and leftover bag of carrots, I prepped all of the pickling things.  I measured out how many spears or disks would fit in each jar, and decided on the amount and type of jar.  We decided on one jar dilly beans, four jars dill pickle spears, 4 jars bread and butter disks.

This was a great first use of our new canner and canning tools.

Last summer, after the frustrating experience of canning tomato sauce without any tools, we decided that we needed to buy a canning kit.  David and I picked one up a few weeks ago, as well as two boxes of jars.  The first day of canning was something that we were excited to do and knew we would have time for during summer vacation.  David and I took turns using each type of jar grip, and the magnetic lid grabber.

Each pickle was made a different way.  The bread and butter pickles were boiled together in the brine for 10 minutes.  We followed the Ball Blue Book recipe.

The bread and butter pickles are on the left.  I was never a huge bread and butter fan until I had fresh bread and butter zucchini pickles in Vermont.  Lisa, the owner of the farm that I worked on, made the best zucchini pickles and I 15 years later I still salivate at the thought of them.

On the right are the dill pickle spears.  We used the Ball Blue Book, and added the seasoning for Kosher style pickles.  I must say, I didn’t realize that Kosher style involved simply adding garlic, mustard seed and a bay leaf.  I was surprised because I’ve always thought all dill pickles include these things.  Also, the Ball Book didn’t mention a blessing or cleanliness or any of the other Kosher rules.

We also made one mini jar of dilly beans.  I used powdered cayenne, forgetting that we have a cayenne pepper plant (and that there were probably more ripe after I did my initial harvest).  The dilly beans were out of the Blue Book also and contained a mix of about six different varieties of beans.

After we finished processing all of the jars, we put away the canner and called it a day.

Day two, Saturday, was for baking.

David got out the food processor and shredded carrots for about 10 minutes.  Then he switched to zucchini.  He shredded the entire 4 lb one.  Each of the piles filled a large bowl.

We made double recipe carrot cake and triple recipe double chocolate zucchini bread.

I’m fast forwarding the description of baking.  David and I worked together to measure, mix, clean, scoop, bake and test the cakes.  At the end of the day, we had 4 large carrot cakes, 2 small carrot cakes, 4 large chocolate zucchini and 6 small chocolate zucchini breads.  These would be our main “money” at the food swap.

A long vacation and a rich harvest.

I didn’t plan on missing blogging as much as I did. It’s been almost two weeks since my last post because we went out of town on vacation.  We asked our neighbors to water the backyard every two or three days and crossed our fingers for the best results.

By now our plants are well established and the lasagna garden has broken down quite a bit.  We knew the weather would be hot and sunny, and that it never rains in Los Angeles in the summer.  We also know that our neighbors don’t garden and get home late at night from work (sometimes after dark) and we hoped they water.

David and I arrived home from the airport at 11pm last night, and grabbed a flashlight to inspect the plants.  Except for the zucchini that fell over because the fruit was too large, things looked really good!  The plants need tidying up, but overall it was a great time to leave the garden and the supports that exist are still holding up.  The tomato cages will soon need staking (like tomorrow), the cucumbers and melons need more ties and we’re starting more zucchini and beans in the nursery.  We were happy to see that the plants definitely had water while we were gone (one indicator was that the squash leaves have powdery mildew beginning). By flashlight we picked the giant zucchinis and righted the plant.  We resisted a midnight harvest, and I did it most of it before David even got out of bed this morning.

Our harvest after the vacation.  I’ll go through each item, and how we plan to use it.  The only reason I snagged the bunch of mint, was that it was crowding the cucumber plants.  We don’t plan to use it right away.  We have fresh mint year round and have plenty of dried mint on hand already.

The largest Safari zucchini weighed four pounds and the smaller fruit was two pounds.  These are both destined to be double chocolate zucchini bread.  We’re taking the bread with us to the LA food swap on Sunday.  The food swap is our first one and we’re planning on bringing a variety of items made from this harvest with us.

Our mixed green beans.  This is enough for a small jar of dilly beans.  I didn’t take pictures of our dill but we have three plants which will provide all the dill we need for the canning session.

The Indigo Rose (front) and Jaune Flamme (back) are beautiful and ripe for roasting.  These are our first fruits from the plants and there are many more coming soon.  The plan is to roast the tomatoes and pack three jars of them with olive oil.  

The Jaune Flamme are a rich golden orange when ripe.  They have a great flavor (I snuck one more that I found on the vine) and will be fun to roast and can this summer.

The Indigo Rose are ripe when there’s red on the bottom of them.  We’ve been anxious to pick them, and I think we’re having trouble determining if they’re ripe.  Roasting these should help intensify their flavor.

Our Isis Candy cherry tomatoes are ready!  Last year we grew these in a pot, and they were our favorite cherry.  This year we gave them prime real estate in the raised bed, and the plant is our largest so far.  These will be enjoyed in our salads, and next week we should begin to have a small supply daily.

San Marzanos!  Two years ago, David discovered how wonderful these sauce tomatoes are and we’ve been growing two plants ever since.  This is the first of our harvest.  Many had caterpillar holes in them, which doesn’t really matter when it comes to roasting the good parts.

These are our Tounge of Fire shell beans harvested from plants that we pulled.  David and I enjoy the color and having a shell bean around, but these hybrids were taking up valuable space.  We decided to harvest what was there and we’ll use the space for something else.

These will be served with dinner. These shell beans have a fun pattern.  I’d like to get heirloom shell beans when it’s time to order more summer seeds.  Any suggestions of your favorite varieties?

These easter egg radishes grew in the new lasagna garden and have twisted up tips to show for it.  We didn’t have enough to do much with, and David’s happy to have them in his salads.

Our little bell pepper plant was sagging under the weight of four bell peppers.  I picked the two biggest and figured we leave the others on the plant to turn red, or until we need them, whichever is first.  These will be fun to use in salads or cooked.

The hot peppers are doing well.  That’s not entirely true… the cayenne, jalepeno and banana pepper are doing well.  The rest of our hot peppers have been stunted and we’re hoping a shot of fertilizer will help them snap out of their growing funk. The cayenne will get tossed in the pickles, and I’m not sure about the jalepenos yet.  We have about 6 more that are the same size, and I’m thinking about making a jalepeno jelly.

The nasturtiums had more seed pods on them, so I figured it’s time to pickle up another jar.  These were mostly from the two new plants that are now taking over the mystery garden.  These are currently soaking in a brine on the kitchen window, and will be pickled tomorrow.

Another “soon project” will be picking the green coriander seeds.  I’ve been reading about the treat of green coriander and dreaming of ways to use them.  I’d probably be more excited if I actually liked coriander, but David loves it so I’m channeling his enthusiasm.  I read about pickling the green pods, and would love suggestions if anyone has them.

Pickling cucumbers is the way to go!  Most of these are from the little leaf cucumber vines, and one of them is a Straight 8.  They will all become either dill pickle spears or bread and butter chips.  There are a few more on the vines that should be ready when it’s time to prep them.

We picked our first winter squash!  The delicata is one of my favorite.  This one looked a little small, and I am hoping it’s ready.  The skin is hard so I guessed it was time to harvest. A lot of what I read said to harvest winter squash before the first frost… which just didn’t help.  As with most of this harvest, I decided to pick it and then pay attention and learn as we cut into our veggies.

Our first buttercup squash.  What a beauty! This one is from the plant that we thought was an acorn squash and was one of our first squashes to begin growing.  It may be a little soon, but not much.  There’s four more that are close behind this one.

This little pattypan squash is our first one. The poor plant has been hiding under Red Kuri and zucchini leaves for the past couple of weeks.  I figured it was time to pick the lone fruit, and see if the plant can start growing more.

David and I are keeping busy, and I hope to update the blog soon on what the plants look like and how the preserving goes.  Isn’t summertime grand?

Not ripe yet, but growing quickly

We’ve been busy this week. I’ve been documenting our garden’s growth, but haven’t had a chance to post pictures, so I have a lot to share!

We pulled out the last of the side yard chard to make space for a Black Krim tomato that’s been lingering in the nursery. Many of the chard leaves were full of powdery mildew, and I added to the compost as I harvested. The chard that survived my cut is in a vase in the kitchen. We’ve never preserved chard before, but I recently learned about blanching and freezing it, and that’s our plan for this bunch.

The chard was larger than our neighboring tomato plants! Upon pulling it out, I added composted manure.  I wish that we had some of our compost to add to it, but we have been pretty lazy about turning our compost bins.  It’s about time that we get back to turning the compost regularly.  We plan to make compost tea for the first time this summer, and will need it to be further broken down.

See our tiny Black Krim.  Hopefully it won’t be tiny for long!  I can’t help but notice the peeling paint, or is it stucco, on the house.  If you didn’t know, we live in a rental property and have minimal contact with the property owners. There are definitely parts of the outside of the house and fence that need repair, but they don’t put money into anything. We’ve opted not to put our own money into anything that will remain on the property after we one day move out.  We’ve been doing pretty great with that so far and made major improvements to the grounds (as well as removed a lot of the grass).

The Jaune Flamme tomato plant has large clusters forming quickly. Last night I was reading the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, and came across a handful of yellow tomato recipes.  This plant should be perfect for some of those!

The Indigo Rose are getting prettier and prettier each day.  I haven’t heard rave reviews about their taste, so I have low expectations. I’m hoping that they look pretty, and taste good, in our salads.

Our embarrassingly sad Reisentraub tomato is finally starting to grow! There’s new growth in a couple of places and we’re cheering this little one on each day.

This picture shows the mystery garden, pots of eggplant, peppers and a tomato and the succulent area that I have yet to clean up. We just figured out what the main plant in the mystery garden is, but more on that once it’s flowering. The pots have been planted for a couple of weeks now and the plants are still tiny. Perhaps I’ll give them a dose of fish emulsion later this week.

The left cluster has a pot with a serrano pepper, another small pot with an anaheim and a large pot with two purple tomatillos and a dwarf Hansel eggplant. The right cluster has a Purple Prudens tomato in the center pot, an Abe Lincoln tomato in the closest pot and two poblano peppers in the last one. We have one other large pot planted, and it has three dwarf eggplants: Hansel, Gretel and Fairytale. I’m excited about these hybrids, although we’re growing mostly heirloom plants. I’m not excited that I keep seeing the cats walking in the pots.

The peppers that were planted a while back in the front yard are growing quickly. We’re going to be eating peppers soon, and soon after we’ll be trying to figure out what to do with the rest. While we’re watching our food mature, we decided it was time to stock up on canning supplies. We canned tomato sauce and jam within the past year, and decided that if we’re going to go all out this summer, it was time to invest in a canning kit and tools. We’re still contemplating a food mill, and think we have a gift card from our wedding that will help us get one!

I haven’t mentioned the avocados in a while, as one tree is finishing up and the other is just getting started.  Here’s a check on our Bacon avocado tree.  They’re almost to the stage where we start finding them all over our cars and the driveway.

Our okra is getting bigger and bigger, although it still has a long way to go before it produces fruit.  Hopefully it will be hot enough, and stay alive long enough to give us lots of pickles!  We started with two plants, and then then planted three more seeds.  As one didn’t do well, I just replanted it, with 4 more plants!  We have bulbs planted in this back area and they still haven’t flowered, so I’m taking over their space with okra!  I hope my plan works.

Hiding under the chard in the back yard is arugula.  We’ve always had an overabundance of arugula, so I figured just a few plants this time would be enough.  We’ve also been trying to be better about keeping our lettuce and radishes planted every few weeks, so we always have them.  We haven’t quite figured out the intervals to plant yet, because we often have too much or not enough.

When I saw this scarlet runner bean climbing up the fence, I gained hope that we won’t always see through the chain link. We haven’t had very good germination with the runner beans (they were free seeds and the friend who saved them said they were a little old).  I’m going to try planting more soon, although the first couple plants that germinated took almost a month to come up.  I wonder if I should have soaked them first.

We’re still finding babies!  This one was sitting on the Malali watermelon in the nursery.

Aside from this watermelon, all of the squashes and melons have been planted! The nursery is smaller, and now contains mostly perennials that will probably get transplanted to larger pots later this summer.

And I wish I had remembered to take a picture after I planted the squash, melons and Thai basil.

We have enough leaves now to surround the remaining plants.  We’re hoping the leaves will break down and act as a nice mulch. It was either compost the leaves in the bin, or add them to the garden directly, and we opted for the garden.  We always choose the garden.