Friday, September 20, 2013

Friday Photos

Well, it is that time of year that I find so bittersweet. The last days of summer.

Part of my garden is put to bed and soon it will be time to tuck everything else in for the winter.

On that note, I decided to go for a little walkabout again to catch the last of the summer colors.

 Grape vines at the garden entrance

  Poppies and yellow flowers

 Red Hot Pokers

Fall mixture

  Garden Arbour

 Sedum Autumn Joy

  Beautiful Dahlia, I wish I had some of these beauties

Cabbage with a few nibbles

 Love it in black and white

Monday, September 9, 2013

When life hands you lemons... make tomato sauce!


Well, better safe than sorry. I thought long and hard about my tomatoes and decided to head to the garden after work on Friday and pick them all. It was hard to do but necessary.

From what I have heard and know about tomatoes it would only be a brief moment and I could lose them all. This way at least most of them have a fighting chance to ripen. They are mostly all in good shape with only a few of them going bad. It was the best decision that I think could have made.

There were a lot of tomatoes packed in there. I had trouble carrying them all back to my car.


I overheard someone say that it was the fog that spreads the blight but I guess I will never really know. Luck of the draw why some tomatoes get it and some don't. Perhaps it is because mine were heritage tomatoes, although you would think that would make them hardier. The strange part is that I babied them, made sure they were covered from the rain and always made sure that I came out to water them if it was hot. At home I put five extra plants in my side yard. They aren't covered and have been braving the elements and so far so good. They don't have as many tomatoes as I wasn't quite as diligent about trimming the plants back but they are starting to ripen now. I will watch them carefully but I think maybe because there are no other tomatoes around might be part of it. Of course maybe they like the fish water from the pond?

Of course now I have 5 bags of ripening tomatoes. Since everything will be ripening at once it looks like I will be roasting a lot of them for tomato sauce.

P.S. I think the mouse ate all my beets.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Bittersweet

At this time of year I find it harder to garden. The rewards are great when you harvest (in my opinion) the best crop of all, Tomatoes! The bittersweet part is knowing that soon it will all be over. I have already finished with some of my beds and have begun some clean up. The tomatoes are as always the thing that I wait for all year!

 Heavenly first tomato sandwich of the year!


Quite frankly my tomatoes have me a bit worried. I have been harvesting them for the past couple of weeks but they are mostly tiny guys. They tasted great and that is the main thing.

The thing that worries me is that when I went to water them tonight the plants themselves didn't look great. Kind of shriveled looking. Odd because they were fine on the weekend. The tomatoes look fine with no signs of blight yet but the plants themselves are starting to look really bad and quickly. I am going to take a wait and see attitude until this weekend. If things start to look really bad I guess I will have to pick them all green and ripen them in paper bags.

The seeds were an heirloom type of tomato so maybe that is why. Maybe I have too many plants in a small area with not enough air space? I think next year I will only do four plants so that I can have easy access to each and I think it will be something with a larger tomato. Sad to say I'm not loving the heirloom varieties that I have had.

It will be more clean up this weekend. I notice that there are a few weeds getting out of control that need to be tended to and perhaps another wheelbarrow of manure. I will probably try to harvest my beets, if there are any and do a preliminary clean up. Kind of sad :(

Fingers crossed for my tomatoes.

Summer's Bounty

Potatoes, zucchini and a couple of cukes from a few weeks ago

I started writing this over a month ago but as any gardener knows when things are growing there is little time to write about it. I wish I could have picked blackberries (like I had planned) and to make pickles (like I planned). Oh well.... maybe next year. Working kind of gets in the way of all these things.

That being said my little garden did pretty good this year. Things didn't turn out quite how I expected but because of this I have already made some decisions for next year. My potatoes are all dug up and drying in the basement. The ones I actually planted didn't do the greatest but the ones that were volunteers in my other box did really well. Not sure why because I know you aren't supposed to plant in the same spots. I didn't have the heart to pull them out but I did add so much in the way of new soil and amendments I guess it was okay. Decision number one. I don't think I will grow potatoes next year. Too much space, and quite honestly mine just didn't taste as good as the lovely little new ones you can buy at the market.

The acorn squash did really well and it looks like I will harvest quite a few of these little guys. They were pretty fun to grow and easy but I think next year I would like to try butternut squash like I had originally intended.  The cucumbers that I grew alongside the squash did okay but not great. I have never had great success with them but they were tasty and I will attempt again next year. Maybe in their own dedicated beds with supports. I kind of wanted to pickle a few but didn't have enough cucumbers and like I mentioned above, not enough time either.

The peas are long gone but they were good. Again, will do more of them next year. Carrots were great. I tried Nantes seed tape and they were the most perfect carrots ever. I did another row of the same seeds that I used last year and somebody ate the tops off. Every single one of them, eaten. I did see a mouse a couple of weeks ago so I think he was probably the culprit.


The beans were a yellow wax bean but they seemed to be green and purple as well. Not sure what happened there. They weren't the greatest so I think I will try a different variety next year and stick with the bush beans. I seem to have more success with them. These guys were a bit tough and stringy. Can't wait to eat all of the ones I have in the freezer!

The kale is great and I haven't picked my beets yet but am looking forward to them. I hope the mouse doesn't like beets (like my husband). I have made a couple of batches of kale pesto with roasted red peppers that are in the freezer for winter. I put some in some pizza sauce this weekend and it was very very good.

I found my two eggplants hidden amongst the peas a while ago and had to rescue them and move them to a less crowded spot.They are too late to produce anything for this year but I might take the big one home and put it in a pot if it starts to get too cold outside. Maybe I can coax an eggplant under grow lights in my basement? I will try eggplant again next year but start them much, much earlier.

The one thing that didn't disappoint this year was zucchini. I had a bumper crop. I wasn't able to make it to the garden last week because of the rain and I was treated to 6 zucchini when I went this Saturday. Two big ones and four smaller ones. With one of the large ones I made two zucchini loafs and one zucchini chocolate brownie cake. I have been on the hunt for good zucchini loaf recipes. I made one a couple of weeks ago and it was kind of dry which is strange because it shouldn't be that way. I found these two recipes on Pintrest from a blog called The Sweet {Tooth} Life and they are very good. The chocolate brownies were to die for, just cook it a lot longer than she says and it should be fine. Mine was a bit soggy in the middle but it was still really really good, but next time I make it, and there will be a next time. I will cook it a lot longer.


Another great recipe I made were the most amazing zucchini fritters. They were absolutely fabulous. It is from a wonderful blog, A Garden for the House and here is the link for the recipe.  It is actually an appetizer but it was lovely for a side dish. Try it. Even Zucchini haters I think would like it.

The tomatoes are just beginning to come into their own and deserve their own special write up. Until then, Happy Harvesting!