When we moved into our house last Christmas, we were excited about all of the space that we'd have, both inside and out. Where we live, everyone has at least an acre and we wanted to put our acre to good use. Flashlight planted 10 fruit trees and we're hoping to do more next year, along with blackberry and raspberry bushes. But the fruit we were really looking forward to was the tomato. Supermarket tomatoes in this country are crap. I've even splurged on expensive ones, only to be disappointed by weak flavor and odd textures. Earlier this year, we got very excited about tomatoes. We bought seeds for nine or ten varieties and started about 72 plants in a tray. We babied that tray, taking it outside during warm days and bringing it in every night. But then we put them in the ground way too late. While we had a number of plants develop, we didn't get any fruit. Then, just as other people's tomato plants stopped producing, we started getting tomatoes and I think that they're about hit their peak. I imagine that we'll be getting them until frost kills off our tomato patch. Here's a picture of Headbanger holding our first tomato, which was very oddly shaped. But even the weirdest-looking tomatoes taste fantastic and I've been freezing tasty tomato pulp for the winter. I get tremendous satisfaction from eating food that I've helped produce.
Did you plant or harvest anything this year?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Contemplating the Tomato
Posted by Nancy Ross at 8:47 AM
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We left our home and garden at the beginning of August for France but we still planted a few things. Before we left we harvested mostly early things-herbs, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, arugula and squash. We are renting our house to a guy we call Ferdi the Albanian Nietzsche scholar. Really. We asked him if he'd like us to plant anything for him and he said "basil and tomatoes for my Mediterranean diet." So we planted loads and he's been enjoying them since he moved in. I'm sad I won't be able to freeze pesto this year.
I think it's so satisfying to grow your own food-and to have chickens! I'm imagining some kind of fresh homegrown omelet. In my dreams...
This was the first year we actually grew a lot of stuff: zucchini, butternut squash, watermelon, peppers, pumpkins, three kinds of tomatoes, garlic, basil, cilantro, strawberries, and raspberries. I bought one rhubarb plant for next year. I have kind of a black thumb, but managed to grow a lot of stuff this summer, it must be the climate. I really loved my garden. I was hoping next year to expand, but we will be in Spain probably for most of the summer. I would like to grow carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, more kinds of tomatoes, acorn squash, some kind of green beans or snow peas. I wish we had enough room for some fruit trees, but we have too many other kinds of trees. I would love a peach tree and an apple tree and a pear tree. I actually am a little tired of watering my garden and pretty much quit doing it regularly. I picked all my squash. Oh I forgot that I grew a bunch of lettuce and one ear of corn, both didn't taste that great. I only had enough basil for one small batch of pesto. I think enough has grown back that I can make one more batch. I have very fond memories of a pesto making party at Willow's house last year. I made enough pesto to last me a year. BTW if you blanch the basil leaves in boiling water for one minute, the pesto never darkens when it gets warm from hot pasta. It is really a beautiful bright green. It makes me a little sad that I won't have a garden next year since I enjoyed it so much this year. My orange cherry tomatoes were the best! What variety of tomatoes did you plant this year, chicken little?
As we planted 9 different varieties of tomato, I don't remember them all. The only variety I do remember is Brandywine. They're colorful, funny-looking tomatoes that taste great. Next year, I want to plant Sungolds, which are orange cherry tomatoes that are meant to be fantastic.
We planted cherry tomatoes, immediately eaten from the tree when ripe by little Softhand (number 4 now aged 2) that keeps calling them "patate", even if I keep telling her, "yes, tomate", we had beautiful feuille de chêne lettuce (10 out of 24 plant survived the slugs), the bell pepper were eaten by slugs, the strawberries by the girls, and we planted 2 cherry trees and one plum tree, too young to make fruits yet. The pumpkin seeds I put them too late in the soil so we have nice flowers. The herbs are doing great (chives, thyme, oregano, sage, parsley, lemon-thyme), except for the basil and the tarragon eaten by the slugs. We did not do much, because I did not want to be too upset by the girls when they would destroy the produce of my labour.
I had some desperate laugh with n°3 who told me one day "oh, there is a snail eating your bell pepper plant"-"Oh take it out then", in fact what she meant was that "some snail had eaten a little bit of a leaf", and then she pulled the whole plant very proud of herself and brings it to me. "Ahh! Put it back! Plant it back!" and then I could not help laughing. I knew I should not plant too much and be upset afterwards! So that was fine. Softhand stepped on every aromatic herbs helping me weeding, but they survived the bad treatment.
hmaimai - I'm sorry about your bell pepper plant! I'm sure that Headbanger and Hairbaby will be doing the same thing soon!
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