Tomatoes and other crops

I was so pleasantly surprised to go out to pick a couple tomatoes for supper and came back in with an armload from the 4th of July tomato.  These are cluster type tomatoes, so when I poked into the plant I found two fully ripe clusters of tomatoes.  The rest of my plants are still all green so this was a terrific find.  I had enough to share with co-workers so we could all enjoy the first tomatoes of the year.  The Sungold cherry tomatoes are also putting out a few fruits.

I ran across some soluable 15-30-15 fertilizer which I mixed in my 50 gallon water barrel.  I hand watered all the flower and vegetable gardens with sprinkling cans to spread the fertilizer out.  I am not a very disciplined fertilizer user, so this was one more time fertilizing than I normally do.  I tend to use granular fertilizer if I do anything beyond compost application before planting.

Zucchini are coming in now.  I have the 8 ball variety and missed picking a couple so they were more the size of melons when I got to them.  Still nothing growing on the real melon plant.  Not even a blossom.  Fertilizer was put on this as well. 

I only have one type of cucumbers left.  My lower garden which has not been good for cucumbers is still not good for cucumbers.  The window box also petered out.  My vines that I trellis against the wall behind my tomato plants are still the best crop I have ever produced in my yard.  

Time to start pulling out and drying my onions.  The tops are all over and drying out.  I prefer to sun cure the bulbs during the day and put them in at night to keep them from getting dew on them.  They really store best if you cure them right.

I pulled my garlic out and have that hanging to dry.  The bulbs look nice and full.  I was afraid they weren't going to be very good when the tops were looking a little weak, but they pulled through well.  They will probably be good for planting a couple bulbs in fall.

New veggies coming in

Bringing in the first picks of the season is always exciting to me.  The first radishes and lettuce are like manna from heaven.  I enjoy the sweet, little Alpine strawberries each day as they produce just enough to satisfy the taste buds.  The peas are producing and are even starting to show the signs of decline with the warmer weather.  These are my "quick" crops which I can have two or even three rounds of crops before the summer produce starts rolling in.

My 4th of July tomato has only green fruit on it.  The cabbage is not quite full headed.  The green beans have been blooming and are now bearing tiny little beans on my first crop of bush beans (I planted three bush bean varieties two weeks apart from each other to space the crops out for fresh eating).  The 8 ball zucchini are the size of large marbles.  I plucked several pickling cucumbers off the vine for the first real picking this year.  A few warm, sunny days will push many of these to full ripeness.  Of course, I will probably miss them while on a camping trip.  Like a working mother missing her babies first steps, I will enjoy my first beans as the first beans that I get to eat.  I will probably have more than enough zucchini to eat and then some.  The cucumbers will be there, too.  I will miss that first vine ripe tomato, though, as that is like tapping the keg on the new beer of the season.  I shall survive.

My daughter will be my caretaker while I enjoy some much needed time off work.  She has been working in a garden center at a big box hardware store this season.  After years of scooping custard, she was ready for a change.  She has been trained to water and care for plants from a stern teacher, someone other than myself.  It is fun to think that I don't have to rely on the careful eye of experienced gardeners in the neighborhood with my daughter on the job.   

I held off on publishing this post until after vacation for various reasons.  The garden came through great, very few fatalities considering an 18 year old was facing her first time alone and managing mom's garden.  This was compounded by the fact that we had no rain and the temps hit 103 degrees one day.  She has a full-time job working in a garden center (she's a newbie at this), but she came home and took care of business here as well.

I picked the first 4th of July tomato on July 21st.  The rest of the tomatoes were just buds when I left, but the heat and sun have set so much fruit that they didn't look like the same plants.  The onions were mostly fallen over so the tops have all been pushed over as well (see onion harvesting and other).  The beans that I thought would be ready got picked, but there was a whole bunch more ready for picking on my pole beans which became part of a post-camping supper.  

Since there is dill coming in, I may have to do some dilly beans which I posted the recipe for in the same link as onions (above).  I saved some dill before vacation in a jar with white vinegar in the frig.  This technique worked very well last year to preserve the dill until the vegetables were also ready.  My vines of everything else are going everywhere!  I am spending some time to separate and nip the tips to control where some of them are going.  Lots of flowers but no fruit yet. The pickling cukes are also doing well, the window box cukes hated the heat, the ones I nestle against the wall by the tomatoes are also starting to form very nice fruits.  I had to pick and slide the first one out between the wire trellis and the wall.  Any bigger and it wouldn't have made it out.  

This is truly the time of the garden race.  Enjoy the fruits of yours.

It's Memorial Day, what NOT to plant today

We all have heard (at least in Wisconsin) that Memorial Day is the signal of the garden season.  I have posted plenty of things that I have planted and seeded.  Contrary to popular belief, Memorial Day is not the signal for everything to go in the ground.  These are the plants that I have found cold sensitive.  They may not be hit by a frost, but a cold night can set back their growth and delay flowering and/or fruiting.

• Basil (and other tender herbs)
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Salvia
• Impatiens (if they haven't been hardened off, you will see them suffer)

There are also other precautions you should take with plants.  I purchased a couple plants from a local green house and should have realized that it was a bit too warm in there for a cloudy day this late in the season.  I set the plants out yesterday while working outside all day.  When I went to tuck them back in the garage for the night, one plant was especially damaged by the cool winds.  They hadn't hardened off their plants by lowering the thermostats and opening up the vents.  The leaves will recover as the plant puts on new growth, but this beautiful (and not very inexpensive) plant, now has brown spots from being outside one day.  I will live with what I have and know that the plant will recover.  I shudder to think of what kind of complaints this greenhouse will suffer when other folks come back with brown leaves on their plants.

If you have to harden things off yourself, start in an area with some shade and protected from the wind.  Put your plants out during the warmest part of the day for a few hours.  Gradually increase the time and the sun exposure until the plants can take a full day in the conditions in which you will be planting them.  Another part of hardening off plants is giving them a little less water.  When you do water, have it come through the bottom of the pot (not like a waterfall, just a bit).  Let the plants dry out a bit before watering again.  Lift up the pots.  Weight is a better indicator of dry than just looking at the soil surface.  The tops of the pots can be dry from sun and wind, but just below the surface the soil may be quite wet.  You can put your finger in it, but that is a subjective judgement of what is wet enough.

The next week will be soon enough to get the rest of the garden in.  This will give you the opportunity to not go on a gardening marathon.  Sit back with a drink and enjoy a barbecue instead.

From summer to spring again

The weather has changed again.  Our 80's are gone and we are cool and rainy today.  This is a relief to me as I was going to have to water the raised veggie beds tonight if it didn't rain.  The cool weather crops of lettuce, radicchio, cabbage, chard, spinach, and peas are sprouted from the heat but enjoying a long cool drink that has been falling most of the day.  I took a quick walk after work to find most of these crops pushing the row cover up a bit.  I like to leave the row cover on so the bug problems are minimized and weather damage is greatly reduced.  The leafy crops are so much nicer growing under a sheet of row cloth.  It is a small investment that is easily recouped with better crops and less use of bug control products.

I moved the tomatoes, peppers, impatiens, and the younger seedlings in for the night.  It is best to not chill these plants and have their growth set back.  They really like it warmer, so I won't put them in the ground for another couple weeks.  I wait until at least the first full week of June to set their roots in the soil.

The lilacs are in full bloom this week and smell wonderful.  The crab apples are on the down hill slide and had a shower of petals falling on the ground this morning.  That is always a pretty sight to watch.  

The forsythia put on a good show this year.  The park has a large hedge row of them that had grown over with weeds and brush.  A former homeowner concerned about security in his yard had the park cut everything to the ground over three years ago.  The forsythia responded to the renewal cut with a very profuse bloom this year.

My husband is getting ready to set the posts for the kiwi trellis.  We are going to use a T-bar and wire support system.  I also want to espalier and apple tree, so he will set a third post and tie into one of the kiwi post for both applications.  I am looking forward to the new challenge.

The asparagus which I just covered is now 8" over the new soil that I just added to the trench.  I should be able to completely level the bed this weekend.  The purple passion stalks are different from the usual green.

The last of the seedlings are up.  I should be able to move more of the basement plants out to the outdoors this weekend.  Lights will be going out on multiple levels.  I will probably dismantle the light and shelf system over the kitchen sink and just go outdoors with most everything at this time.  I may still start one more crop of summer lettuce to put seedlings in between pepper plants and under beans.  It is nice to have them all space out when they go into the garden.

Big planting weekend coming up with Memorial Day giving us a long weekend.  Get out to the garden center these last couple days before the mob hits the garden centers.

Seeding, cutting back and general yard work

The pile of wood chips on the driveway is getting smaller each day.  I no longer do marathon hauling sessions, but rather like to chip away at jobs in smaller pieces.  The hardest areas have been done where I had to carry the chips in large buckets to fill the pathways of my garden (the wheel barrow does not fit through the gate).

Seedlings have been popping up like crazy, so I am spending a couple hours at a time pricking out little vegetables and flowers into larger cell packs.  As a result, more and more established plants have been added to the outdoor shelves and only moved into the garage to get them out of the cold.

Nature played a cruel trick on Wisconsin this year.  Last year we were two weeks ahead of spring's normal start.  Our friends in the northwest part of the state were dealing with up to 18" of new snow with the front that brought us cold rain.  Opening fishing season called for ice augers on some lakes as there was still 24" of ice on some of them.  Like they say, if you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes!

I divided up my hanging basket of Mandevilla vine today.  I was just going to move it up a pot size when I noticed it had four individual stems from one pot.  It will be interesting to see how it handles the stress of dividing.  My jasmine has flowers on it already.  It amazes me that it can sit in the basement all winter and still put out a nice flush of early blooms.  Artificial light does not hinder this one.  I had done a drastic cut back on it last fall to make it easy to keep for the winter.  This also did not seems to set it back much either.

I think the tomatoes are ready for cell packs now.  I may have tried too many this year, but the seed catalogs were too tempting with the descriptions.  Only one tomatillo is going in this year though.  Four was too many.

There was some good bargains at the hardware store this morning for potting soil.  This is what made all the transplanting possible.  Mother's Day is next weekend so the stores are really gearing up for spring even if it doesn't always feel like it is here.  I also got 10-10-10 fertilizer for the asparagus bed.  Everything I read said to put 10-10-10 in the trench.  It was a pretty good day all-in-all. 

Tomato countdown, seeding day

My journal entries have been less than regular of late.  I have a dental procedure and bad weather to thank for my hiatus from gardening.  Milwaukee has seen nothing but rain day after day.  Rivers are over-flowing their banks and gardens are reduced to mud.  We have been soaking up a slow seepage of water in one corner of our home due to the saturated soil around us.  And, it has been cold.  40's are no temperature to garden in.

Today is T-day.  The day that tomatoes need to be seeded in hopes that the weekend following our Memorial Day the soil will be ready to have them take root.  I have some flowers to seed also.  I am doing a second round of hollyhocks this year in the hope that these biennials will provide me with blooms every year from alternate year crops.Asters, Statice, and Thithonia are also on my seeding calendar to be done 6 weeks before last frost.  Some seeds could be direct sown, but I want to have some plants to have a head start this year.

The onion crop is still in a seed tray.  I started hardening them off and then the cold came with the ceaseless rain.  I gave up and will trim them back, again, in hopes that next week will be warm enough to set them out during the day.  Maybe next weekend I will get them in the ground.

That is the thing about gardeners.  We always have hope for the future to be just a little bit better.  We look forward while learning from the past.  Sometimes plants die and plans go awry, but there is always tomorrow to start again.

Canning Season Part 2

 Yesterday was a BIG canning day.  I had nine trays of tomatoes lined up on my dining room table in the peak of ripeness.  This was not going to be easy to finish in one night, but I was determined to make the most of those red beauties.  There were even a several more that were ready to pick when I got home from work.  The job was getting bigger, not smaller.

The first thing I had to do was make a phone call to my oldest daughter.  Michelle willing volunteered to come right over from work.  I get home well ahead of her, so this gave me time to set everything up to work.  I cored and halved all the Celebrity (round) tomatoes and started cooking those for juice.  I got a large kettle of water going for blanching, while I washed all the Roma tomatoes for canning whole.  Rather than using the sink for cooling, I brought in my enamel tub and set it up with cold water on the kitchen island.  This was Michelle's work zone.  She was in charge of coring and peeling all the Romas.  All she needed was a paring knife, compost pail, and a Summer Shandy.

I was able to quickly cook and juice the Celebrity tomatoes.  I have wonderful kettles that do waterless cooking.  A few minutes of blending with an immersion blender and the juice was easily strained and in the roaster to stay hot.  I used my electric fry pan to heat my lids to be sterilized.  I pulled out both my pressure canner and water bath canner.  I used the water bath to sterilize the jars first and get them hot.  I lost a couple bottoms from jars this year, which I think was due to not being hot enough going into the canner.  It could also have been the age of the jars.  The water bath canner was also going to be used for juice once I got far enough into the process.  As Michelle got the tomatoes peeled I added them to the juice in the roaster to heat up for hot pack canning.  It takes 15 minutes of processing time versus 45 minutes for cold pack.  I like the results I get with hot pack as the sealing goes much more smoothly with very little liquid being forced from the jar during processing.  Using tomato juice rather than water for packing the whole tomatoes was a stroke of genius I had while driving on my job.

The tomatoes heated very well in the juice, and the process was hot from start to finish.  I would scoop the whole tomatoes out with a slotted spoon to pack the jars.  Then, I would add the juice to finish them off to within an inch of the top.  A quick wipe of the jar rim, a hot lid, screw band, and into the canner.  The pressure canner took 15 minutes at 5 pounds of pressure, the water bath 15 minutes from coming to a boil. Same timing for the juice only jars at the end.

Four hours later, I had over 14 quarts of tomatoes and over 8 quarts of juice.  EVERY JAR SEALED!!!  This is canning perfection not always attained.  I always let the jars sit overnight before removing the bands, wiping the jars, and adding labeling with contents and date.  I opted to not add any salt or seasoning.  This will allow me the flexibility to use them in a variety of ways.

The shelves are getting steadily fuller and the jar supply is dwindling.  I might actually have to buy jars to finish out the season.  
Michelle went home after sitting and listening to the canner hiss for awhile.  I sent her off with a few jars that we are using up from last year's canning (not too much left).  It has been a very gratifying season to have so much ready for winter.  The added benefit of canning is that I don't have to worry if some chemical is going to leach into our food from the can liner.  Glass is BPA free naturally.

My tomato garden is 4'x17', there are 8 Celebrity plants (back), 9 Romas (front), and 1 Sungold (the tall one by the mailbox). I also have cukes growing up the wall in the back.  The Celebrity plants are in tradtional cages.  The Romas are in a weave support system that was described in Organic Gardening Magazine this spring.  I water only from the bottom with soaker hoses, compost is the only fertilizer I use, brown paper and cocoa bean hulls are the mulch.

Mediterranean Salsa

If your harvest of tomatoes and cucumbers is coming in now it the time to enjoy some really terrific salads.  One of the other favorite recipes I like to make is for a salsa recipe that was published by Pampered Chef.  It is so simple to make, takes ingredients so easy to buy (or grow), and is a great dish to take to parties.  Best of all there are no utensils required to eat it!  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Mediterranean Salsa                                 Pampered Chef recipe

½ medium cucumber, seeded and chopped

½ c chopped (red) onion

1 plum tomato seeded and diced

3.25 oz of ripe olives sliced or chopped

2 T olive oil

1 clove garlic pressed or finely diced

1 t Italian seasoning

4 oz crumbled feta cheese

Stir the ingredients together and chill.  Serve with pita chips or other flat crackers

First basket of tomatoes

I happily went to the tomato bed and FINALLY picked a full basket of tomatoes.  Yes, they aren't all rosy red ripe, but they also do not have chipmunk or squirrel teeth marks in them.  I was able to get some fresh cilantro from the West Allis Farm Market, so fresh salsa will become a reality.  The jalapenos are also starting to produce peppers of harvest size.  The long wait has come to an end.
I got the tomato plants in late this year to allow for room in the driveway with our graduation party taking place during normal planting time.  With all the heat we had, I was sure the tomatoes would be earlier any way. Not so.  The nights have cooled off quite a bit and have slowed progress.  I still have to get my first celebrity tomato this year.  My farmer friend from college was in town for Irish Fest this weekend.  She told me her sister-in-law lost their garden to a storm when one of the nearby trees landed on the garden in June.  It is still there among  the weeds.  I guess I should count my blessings that it is just a wait and not a total loss.
Even the cherry tomatoes have been slow to start.  Today was the first picking that I didn't put directly into my mouth. There are more to come.

I am planning on putting more into canning jars than the freezer this fall to save on freezer space.  We have half of a steer coming in October which will take up all we have.  Another freezer is in the near future, hopefully and upright to save on the digging and lost items in the bottom of the chest.  I have done dilly beans and cut beans which put several jars on the shelf.  I also have sweet corn canned this year (a first for me) which put nine pint jars in store.  There would have been 10, but one went "ping" and spilled into the pressure cooker water.  I was not happy to start everything over to get the corn out of the water.  More beans are ready for picking, so I think french beans are next.  Fall is an exciting time of year for a gardener.

Summer Lull

The garden is filling in and the pots are starting to look like show pieces.  With all the heat and dry weather, it has taken quite a bit of sprinkling to get to this point.  I am thankful for a husband who likes to take the time to move the hose around the yard during the day while I'm at work.  The plants are getting their moisture but have time to dry their leaves before bed time.  All gardeners should have a night shift worker for their watering.
I have hit the bottom of the barrel.  I have been reserving my rain barrel water for dipping my water cans in for my potted plants.  There is a bit more in there, but I have to move the can around to scoop it out now.  They say we have a "chance" of rain Saturday night.  We are not holding our breath.  Dark clouds moved over last Saturday with not a drop for our plants.  90's are predicted temps for the weekend once again.  It is almost 4 weeks since we had rain.
Some of my annuals are coming to the end of their bloom.  I will talk more about my reseeding annuals as the seed pods set and I can get some pictures for those interested in what to look for in their own gardens.  The larkspur in the picture above has green pods at this time.
I was thrilled to catch a gold finch perched on top of my "wild" sunflowers tonight.  They don't frequent my feeder but are stunning with the yellow of the sunflower and their arched bodies reaching for the seeds below their feet.  The thistles are also starting to bloom and seed now.  It is a good source for finch food, but they sure are not welcome in the lawn or garden.  Soon the finches will be gathering the down of the thistle to line their nests.  I still remember the early morning bird walks during my college summer school.  Dr. Hardin pointed out the finches up and down flight patterns as they dip and rise with the beat and glide of their wings.  I identify the finches in flight from this characteristic today.
No tomatoes yet, the fruit is setting.  I have enjoyed a couple of small zucchinis.  The chipmunks started eating the ends so they had to get picked earlier than planned.  Moving the strawberry planters into my new vertical tower has meant more strawberries for me the last couple days.  The chipmunks had too easy of access in the last locations.  They are also close to the hose, so the plants look less droopy than they have.
Time to move the hose...again.

Salsa Time!

Making salsa was a family experience this year.  My oldest daughter, Michelle, and boyfriend, Dan, became my very capable assistants.  Our family loves to laugh together and made it a much easier tasks than when I stand alone.  My other daughter, Bessy (you can call her Lizzy), didn't get her hands into the mix but hung out with us while working on a clothing class project.  This is a perfectly acceptable substitute to helping in my book.

We started the night with supper made with fresh ancho peppers from the garden for my first batch ever of Chili Rellonos.  I am not a fan of frying and decided that the very versatile crescent rolls would be thinly stretched around the stuffed peppers to hold the filling in as well as add a bit of coating like you would have with batter dipped and deep-fried recipes.  The vote was unanimous that it work out great and the flavor was perfectly complemented by a batch of lemon-cilantro rice Dan cooked up as our side dish.  Our only complaint was that 8 was not enough for 5 grown people.


Canning is a pretty labor intensive process and making salsa to can is probably 3 times the effort.  Besides blanching and dicing tomatoes by hand (food processors are too uneven and go too fine), we also do up onions, garlic, hot peppers, cilantro, lime with additional seasonings to round it off.  I like to use my Celebrity tomatoes and Roma tomatoes half and half.  The first adds the most flavor and the second adds the most "meat".  I also thicken with canned tomato paste.  If it's good enough for Newmann's, it's good enough for me.  I don't like to cook down the tomatoes to thicken as they loose too much of their body and get too saucy.  Tears were shed over onions and gloves were utilized for the peppers but we made it through.

 This was the first time one of my girls stuck through the whole process and both Michelle and Dan were able to learn the finer points of filling jars, cleaning rims, adding sterile lids, and dropping them into the processor.  Even putting on the screw bands is something best learned by being with someone who has done it before. The whole processes took us about 4 hours but we now have 14 pints and 14 half pints on the canning shelves for the next year's use.  We each had a quart of left overs to use fresh, and Dan took another quart to share with his family over the long, holiday weekend.  


Now that the salsa is done, I have the hardest job of my harvesting season put away.  The vines are still heavy with tomatoes which are still ripening.  This will be the first year in recent memory that not only will I have made salsa with all my own home-grown tomatoes, but I will also be able to can whole tomatoes and tomato juice for the first time in many years.

Working through the process of blanching, peeling, chopping and canning always reminds me of those hot summer nights that my mom worked at filling our basement shelves each year.  She would get in lugs of peaches and we would blanch and peel until our hands were like prunes.  When Michelle stepped away for a few minutes for that reason it reminded me of arms itching from peach juice running down them.  


We spent endless hours snapping beans, saucing apples, and scrubbing the pickling cucumbers.  It all seems like so much extra work!  Until you put up a few of your own veggies and fruits, you will never know the satisfaction of going into your pantry or basement and looking at the gleaming jars filled with good things to eat in the middle of a winter storm.  When the sun streams through the glass block on the late afternoons, the jars are like gems sparkling on the shelves.  


Start with something easy like jams and jellies.  The fruit pectin packages have the recipes right in them and it will be a small investment in canning jars and seals.  If you follow the instructions for turning the jars over when they are hot to seal them, you won't even need a canning kettle.  Fruits are the next easiest item as are pickled items as they also just need a water bath canner to sterilize and seal them properly and safely.  Vegetables are lower acid and need to be pressure canned so the temperature gets high enough to kill any microbes.  Water boils at a higher temperature under pressure.  It may sound intimidating but it really isn't.


If picking up jars at rummages and auctions, make sure to run your finger around the stop lip of the jar.  It should be smooth with no nicks or cracks.  Don't try using these jars for long term preservation as they may seal when you can them but the lid might slowly let air in and spoil your food.  Save these jars for putting in dried foods as they don't need to be completely air tight.  Some sites will say water bath canning is out but that has been debunked by experts.  People have been doing it for a long time with no ill effects.  Do follow the above rules for vegetable though.  Always use new lids when canning.  Even if the old ones came off with no bends, do you really want to risk having the rubber seal fail and lose the food?  Use these for sealing your dried foods if you save them instead of recycling them.   


If you feel daunted read up, take a class or find a friend to teach you.  It is such a wonderful skill to have and the rewards are big!

The tomato harvest!

When I snapped this picture of my tomatoes a few weeks ago, I was still eagerly awaiting the first red tomato for the first official BLT of summer.  Say what you want about bacon, summer is the time of year when we eat it most often and it tasted soooo good!
The first tomatoes to ripen were the Sungold cherry tomatoes.  The plant is now over 6' tall and greets the mailman each day.  It continues to put on height and produces clusters of golden-orange tomatoes that are so sweet.  I take a quart bowl of them to work and set them on the corner of my desk.
My coworkers were a bit puzzled by their color at first, but by the end of the day the tomato bowl was empty and they were looking for more.  I have another ready for the ride in tomorrow for a Friday treat.  They are almost as sweet as candy but so much better for you.

Patience may be a virtue, but trying something new is even better.  Inspired by a facebook posting of one of my old high-school friends, I plucked a couple large green tomatoes off the vine and made fried green tomatoes.  I followed her directions, but put them through a process I use for eggplant first.  After slicing the fruit, lay it on a cooling rack and sprinkle with Kosher flake salt, flip and salt the other side.  Let is set for about half an hour over the sink to drip out the excess water.  The removal of the moisture helps produce a crispier end product after frying or oven browning.  I dredged them in a bit of flour, salt and pepper and then browned them on my griddle with a bit of butter and canola oil.  After all these years of watching the movie and wondering what they taste like, I now know that although they were good, I prefer to have my zuchinni as my fried vegetable.

The next variety to ripen was the Roma tomatoes.  Although they are a paste tomato and not as juicy as the Celebrity variety, the bacon had been in the frig for a week and was calling my name.  The Romas also make a great addition to salsa and sauces as they are very meaty and keep the consistency not as watery.  They were not a disappointment to have for a BLT.  As most home gardeners know, a home-grown tomato's flavor far out shines any store bought one.  I am looking forward to tonight's BLT featuring a Celebrity as the crowning glory.  I only wish the heat hadn't caused the whole lettuce crop to bolt and the next crop isn't even close.

Last week the real harvest finally started. Our cooler weather of early summer held things back a bit.  All our rain was followed by so much heat that the plants really stretched out and loaded on the fruit.  The only addition I made to my tomato bed was compost and grass clippings.  It seems to be what they needed.  All three varieties are ripening in fair amounts.  I have processed a full pail and then some for chili and spaghetti sauce.  I had my eye on canning salsa, but decided some immediate gratification was in order.

I was also processing two gallon pails of beans a few nights ago, so blanching the tomatoes to remove the skins was just one more thing to quickly do.  I cut up the whole pail of red tomatoes and put them in the frig until the next morning.  We had a 90 degree day in the forecast, so I put the cut up tomatoes into a slow cooker on low for the day.  A couple minutes with the immersion blender (yes, I do have a lot of kitchen toys) and the addition of some tomato paste and I had my base.  I ladled half of it out for the sauce and added the necessary ingredients to each half to make two meals in one night.  Spaghetti sauce is always better the second day, so that went into the frig for Wednesday night's supper.  Sitting in the frig did what a slow simmer would do on a regular day and that was to blend all the flavors into the sauce. 

One more summer time favorite awaits me and that will require a trip to the store for some fresh mozzarella cheese.  The basil is waiting to be married to some tomatoes, cheese and balsamic vinegar for a fresh salad.  Caprese  salad is a new summer love, but I do believe it is here to stay.  Google a recipe for yourself and give it a try if you have never tasted this before.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I have to wait for my daughter to get home to make supper, so this is a great opportunity to walk up to the store for a few ingredients.  Enjoy your summer time favorites and share them with a friend.


P.S.  KEEP YOUR TOMATOES OUT OF THE FRIG AND ON THE COUNTER.  THE TASTE WILL BE BETTER AND THEY WILL HOLD FOR DAYS LIKE THIS.  THEY KEEP RIPENING SO EVEN GREEN ONES MAY HAVE A CHANCE IF THEY DROP OFF THE VINE TOO EARLY.

Tomato Troubles

I am happy to report that for my own garden tomatoes they are in healthy shape and the best I have ever had.  They just aren't ripe yet.

Others, however, have been asking me "What's wrong with my tomatoes?  They are rotting on the bottom."  This is affecting many varieties of tomatoes and it is because of the crazy weather we have been having.  Milwaukee has felt more like New Orleans with an extend stretch of very hot AND humid weather.  We go through dry spells and then we get buckets of rain followed by more hot and humid weather.  Blossom end rot is affecting many gardens this year.

My tomatoes are fairing better because of their unique location.  Being close to the house on the south side has kept them in a very protected state of moisture control.  The rain typically does not land heavily here so my water with the soaker hose is carefully regulating the moisture balance.  No big swings back and forth.  If they were out in the open garden or my raised beds, I would be singing the blues with you.

Short of controlling the weather you can do some things to help out the tomatoes.  When we hit those dry patches give your tomatoes as slow soaking so it may not swing so drastically if we do get a heavy downpour.  Deeper watering makes deeper roots.  See previous post on watering.  Mulch the soil to hold in the moisture during the dry periods.  Avoid bark mulch as it is a nitrogen robber and your plants may start getting yellow leaves as a result.  Grass clippings (if you don't treat your lawn with herbicides), newspaper, and the new red plastic sheets designed to help tomotoes do their best (anyone try that yet?) are good options.  Calcium may be lacking in the plants but without having a soil test, it is never a good idea to start adding fertilizers.  Romas and other paste tomatoes may be more affected than other varieties and the cherry tomatoes are rarely bothered.

Another problem higher temperatures can bring on is lack of blossom set.  You get the flowers but they just fall off without growing fruit.  Be patient.  Time will be on your side if you just wait.  If the hot weather continues and we get lots of rain with it the ripening fruits may crack.  Mulching can help but the best you can do is eat those as they crack as they will start to show decay at that point.

Pick more disease tolerant varieties if you have more disease problems than you can handle.  Rotate crops so you do not plant tomatoes, peppers, or potatoes in the same spot for 3 years between crops.  If you don't have the space, you do the best you can.  I have had success with peppers in the same gardens that the tomatoes do terribly in so there must be some exceptions to the rules. 

I am still waiting for that BLT with the first tomato off the vine.  Cherry tomatoes are coming in now to hold me in the mean time.  I think we will also give fried green tomatoes a try if I can't wait for the ripe one.

Tomatoes

Neither of my daughters likes tomatoes.  They will only eat them if they are cooked into a sauce, soup, or stew and will consume jars of salsa like no one else.  Give them a fresh tomato from the garden and they will peel it off the sandwich or salad to which it has been added.  I do not understand how they can enjoy a BLT without the T.  Fresh cherry tomatoes warm from the sun are perfect for popping in your mouth straight from the vine.

I give my younger daughter credit for trying.  As she nears 17 she is trying new foods much more frequently.  She actually put some tomato on her BLT the other night (it was store bought) and decided it still wasn't to her liking.  This year is finally the year I have tomato plants worthy of a blue ribbon.  Septoria leaf spot has infected all the soil in my backyard and I can not keep leaves on the plants no matter what tricks I use to try and stop it.  I didn't plant tomatoes or peppers for 3 years in an attempt to eradicate the disease from my soil but it didn't stop it.  This year I have my plants along my south side of my house.  They are gorgeous, green monsters that are loaded with green fruits.   I have also trellised a cucumber plant in the back of them as this is another plant afflicted by the dreaded cucumber beetle.  My neighbor sprays so when the population rebounds it is all over my yard devouring the plants and infecting them with the deadly virus.  I might get a real cuke off my own plant this year.  There is a nice salad size one that I don't think will see sundown tomorrow.  The soaker hoses and grass clipping mulch have also been very helpful to this year's crop.  This picture is just a few weeks old and the plants have put on more than two feet of growth since.
Right next to the tomatoes on the other side of my walk is our Sweet Autumn Clematis.  It is passing the first floor and heading for the second.  It will be to the roof line by fall when it is loaded with white blooms.  This year it has a special function.  The vines grow up our front porch and along the underside of the porch ceiling at the corner on their way up the trellising to the second floor.  A cardinal family has found it a worth spot to make a nest.  I just discovered her last night as I was tucking in the stray ends.  She seems less nervous about us being around today and has stayed on the nest as we go in and out of the house at this door.  We can also see the nest from our living room so I am very excited about watching the new neighbors out the front window.  I hope to get a good picture to share.