harvesting and eating

Today's harvest started in the back yard. I got tomatoes (big and li'l), many ground cherries, a couple of carrots, a scallion, the lettuce I'd let go to seed so I can replant the seeds this autumn....

and after I ate a carrot with lunch (a lunch that also included salsa), I went out front and found my first Ping Tung eggplant was big enough to harvest, so now I had this plus tomatoes for supper:

It took me a minute of staring at this, casting about in my memory for recipes, to remember that I had mozzarella cheese in the fridge, so I'll be making eggplant parmesan with home-made sauce (I'll grate half of the carrot into the sauce, which will make it sweeter, and I'll roast the sauce rather than cooking it on the stovetop, for more sweetneess). I have Italian sausage that's going in around the fried eggplant when I bake it. It's going to be so darned good!  My mouth is already watering.

The Dwarf Purple Heart tomatoes from the Dwarf Tomato project continue to be winners of my tomato variety trials. One double-bloomed tomato was 1.4 pounds, and if you think about that occurring on a dwarf plant, that's even more impressive!

Like 75% of my big tomatoes now, these are going straight into the freezer when picked ripe, that is, after I core them and pop them into zipper bags. When I have 10 pounds or more in the freezer, I'll do some canning. About half my cherry tomatoes are being dehydrated for eating this winter as snacks or in soups.


The spaghetti squash plant is setting squash like wild right now. Every day I walk out there and see another one. All other squashes--and the cucumbers--are still at flowering stage, but there are butterflies, bees, pollinating flies out there all day long. Soon I'm going to be eating cucumber salads, cucumbers dipped in whipped cream cheese, and pickling some as well. (Garlic dills and bread and butter pickles, both.)

I can see how August and September will be quite busy with "putting up" food. I know it's a lot of work, but it's fun, and there's something special about pulling down a jar of something you grew yourself from seed, nurtured, harvested, preserved, and having a taste of summer's bounty on a cold weeknight in January. Nature is good, isn't She?

this morning's photos

A cold front is coming, which means I will be very busy for the next three or four days, catching up on garden tasks and mowing the lawn. So I had best post some photos today!

I went out to harvest my daily 2/3 cup of cherry tomatoes and check for beans (none) and cukes (none yet, but flowers), two plants that you should check five times a week, minimum, so they don't get away from you (zucchini too, but I don't grow that.)

I had thought maybe a rabbit had eaten every leaf of a pepper plant, but now I think it was these little guys:

Funny how I'll cut a hornworm on my tomatoes in half without a thought (beyond "ick!"), but these guys are privileged pests. Munch away, dudes, and turn into lovely monarchs.

I have the fall garden started (beets, chard, kale) as little plant starts. I'm going to rip out the whole "big bed" on August 1, harvesting what's there, except for one kale plant and the leeks, and put in these starts. In front of them is the coriander seed I just cut down. It's now shoved in a paper bag, drying further, but there will still be a mess of little round seeds on my kitchen counter, I imagine. You can either plant coriander seeds which will grow cilantro for your salsa, or you can use them as a spice (and I will be, in some of my pickles).

And though I grew the sunflowers for the birds, I had no idea they'd sit on the flowers and go after the green seeds. Fine by me, but they'll want it more in January, I'd think. Their choice.

It also  remind me that all those articles/theories on how you can grow all the food you'd need for a year in 1500 square feet are nonsense. If you tried to grow sunflower seeds, you'd get about 10% of your crop here. If you tried to grow peanuts, you'd have a yard full of fat squirrels.  (So guns and squirrel stew would be part of the plan.)

some photos - flowers and veg

Sunflower first. The stalk is over 10 ft tall. Sorry about the power lines as background.

 Borage is to attracts bees

Crape myrtle--looks like I did prune it correctly this winter

Winter squash plant is doing well. (They all are--they love the heat)

Recent harvests

First, a photo of my pingtung eggplant plants, which I so seldom take a picture of. I re-did the chicken wire fencing around them because rabbits were eating the tiny eggplants. Now I hope I get eggplants.

A couple of days ago, I got my first big tomato, a Dwarf Tomato Project tomato called Purple Heart. As you can see, the tomatoes aren't dwarves, just the plants, which top out at about 4.5 feet. (so they aren't very dwarf either!) It was delicious, and I had most of it on my first BLT of the season, which was indescribably good.

A typical every-two-day harvest right now, cherry tomatoes, green peppers, and ground cherries. About two or three weeks delayed because of strange spring weather.

I harvested my bagged potatoes. I started with three large potatoes, two red (chieftains, I think), one white (mystery variety, all from Walmart grocery store organic potatoes), let them chit, cut them into three pieces each, let them sit another day or two, and then put them in grow bags in compost plus peat plus tomato fertilizer. The harvest from 3 seed potatoes was over six pounds! There are big potatoes on the bottom of this pile, and the little ones on top, the size of extra-large hen's eggs,  I'll save and use for seed potatoes next year, if they make it through the winter in storage.

Just finished mowing, which means I get ten days of not mowing! (yay!)

Update on the garden

I got enough cherry tomatoes I actually walked inside with a harvest. None of these are nearly as good as Sun Gold or Sun Sugar, so next year, I think I'll switch. The things in the front, in husks, are ground cherries. They taste odd to me--a bit like pineapple and nothing at all like tomatoes.

Also, it rained tonight. Glad the mowing was finished this morning!