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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Critters

These days we have had many wildlife spottings in our urban oasis.  As a child, our garden was home to snakes, deer, rabbits, turtles, chipmunks and even the occasional gopher or mole. We have a different ball game in our Los Angeles garden.  We’ve spotted raccoons and opossum, but most of our visitors are insects and birds, with an occasional lizard.

Remember that moment in spring when everyone and everything is searching for a mate?  I am reminded often these days, because I’m spotting parents teaching their newborn babies how to behave.

For the past few days, we’ve been watching a pair of black phoebe’s hanging out in our garden.   

When I’ve gone outside to photograph them, they’ve moved away a little bit.  They are always together, or one is calling to the other.

I wish you could see the little tuxedos that black phoebes where- they’re one of my favorite birds!  I’m sure the little fledgling will move on soon.  Until then, it’s fun to spot them perched on our tomato cages; David and I hope they eat the bad bugs not the good.

Last week I attended a training on an urban ecology curriculum at the Center for Urban Resilience where I had the pleasure to meet an animal behavior professor who specializes in crow behavior.  We learned about how crows can live for over 30 years in the same area, and are the second most intelligent animal on the planet.

This is the palm in front of our house.  If you look closely, you’ll see there are two crows here.  These two have been noisy recently. The day I came home from learning about crows, I noticed they were squawking at each other.  So, I asked about it the next day and was told that the parents are reprimanding the baby crows this time of year. I’m not sure, but my guess is the baby is the one on the right.

I pulled some long grasses and weeds from the front bed.  I plan to re-pot the succulents soon so I prepared the area around them.

I found one of our baby praying mantises after pulling weeds!  It was camera shy, starting to run when I pointed the camera at it.

So I grabbed it.  The mantid lept from my fingers, I scooped it up again and pointed the camera at my hand.

It’s alien-like face cracks me up.  This little guy seemed curious why I was holding it. After snapping my photo, I dropped it again and then grabbed it to place it on the nasturtiums.  Slippery little one.

We have more critters, and evidence of them, in the back yard.

There are squirrels that visit the avocado trees.  Sometimes we we spot them; Rosie usually sees them first.  Usually we find signs that they have come around because they leave their leftovers on the ground for us to compost.

The avocados are growing and our October harvest looks promising.

The Bacon avocado tree will have it’s larger crop this fall, while the Zutano will have its smaller one.

Both trees are going to have a much smaller harvest, because they were pruned… probably for the first time ever.  

Pruned is a gentle word for what was done.

There used to be a large branch practically resting on David’s red SUV. Now we will need our neighbor’s roofing ladder to pick any of the avocadoes that mature.  Sometimes the squirrels help us out by nibbling on a corner, and then knocking them down.  It’s probably not the best practice, but I just cut off their corner and eat my side of the fruit.

While our avocado harvest will be smaller, our mint harvest is not in jeopardy.

The mint is flowering and the flies love it!  It’s kinda gross to see so many flies swarming around the flowers.  I just try to remember that it’s important to have all sorts of critters and pollinators in the garden.  We’ll be pruning the mint that is growing over the sidewalk, so I just brought a huge bunch into the house as a bouquet.

In the backyard garden, we also have flies on the borage.

The borage with the ants and aphids will get pulled out this week. This is the other borage flower, near the eggplants and squash. I love the colors on this fly!

I try to snap insect pictures when I can. (Sometimes I catch the insect in the process.)  The last picture to share today is from over a week ago.  I just finished posting a blog, and went outside to pick tomatoes.  And I found this guy:

As it was so large, we considered keeping it to watch it pupate.  Then I read that the cocoons are buried in the soil.  We haven’t had a hornworm problem (this is the only one I’ve ever seen in three years) so we let it be.  Hopefully this isn’t a sign of what’s to come.

 

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.

They hatched!

Today when I came home from work, as with every day for the past month, I check my praying mantis ootheca to see if it hatched.

And it did!

(This picture is actually of the one on the rose bushes that David checked after we found the first one.)

My ritual of checking each morning and night was rewarded by the joy of feeling little critters all over my hands.  And we got to gently place them in their new homes and bid them happy hunting.

A couple of weeks ago, I cracked the lid open on their cage. Whoops.

About 5 of them were crawling on the screen.

They hatched some time between 7 pm and 4:30 pm today.  When I saw them, I ran inside to beckon David to join me, and grabbed the camera. He ran. We then tried to determine where we wanted to spread them, as our aphid infestation is at a low point right now, and our ant infestation is at a high point.

There’s been bark at the bottom of the enclosure since I got it.  I only today realized it probably wasn’t the best idea, as it was tough to scoop these critters out.

How many can you spot in this picture?  I see two, but there could be more. As they were spread on the outside, the walls and over the inner mulch, my scientific brain had to be quieted, and we didn’t try to count the babies.

This shy newbie turned away from the camera.

As I picked them each up (or handfuls of mulch with one on it), each one made it’s way to the plant in a different way.  Some would bounce onto a leaf, others the ground. Some would be placed on a leaf and then crawl around for a bit.  Others would stay very still, until I blew on them or poked them.

Here’s a little one that we put on the side yard tomatoes.

They were spread in both the backyard and side yard. The one in the roses spread all over the side yard roses.

David and I are optimistic that the praying mantises will survive; last year we released lady bugs and we see quite a few of those around. We’ll keep our eyes open for them and fingers crossed.