Another Small But Satisfyling Harvest!

 Here is another photo of the back deck harvest 2025.

They are called Sun (Something), though not Sun Gold. I have not been able to find those here.  The harvested tomatoes have all been consumed.  I hope there will be a few more.

When I purchased the plant it said the variety was very productive.  I guess that meant when it was planted in the ground.  It is in a pretty good-sized pot on the deck.  Maybe not enough dirt.  

If someone has suggestions for container planting for maximum harvest, I would love your suggestions.  Still, I am pretty happy.  I really cannot eat as many fresh tomatoes as I would like to. Back in the old days many years ago I ate tons of them every day...four, five, six full-sized tomatoes. Yummy!  Developed skin allergies and then intestinal allergy SO...I don't need more of that kind of thing. The medicine does enough unpleasantness without my help.  It is sad, though...

Final 2020 Garden Harvest!

 Last week was pretty busy.  I decided it was time to pick the basil from all the plants and put them into the dehydrator.  I waited one day too long!  The next day when I was ready to do the picking  this is what I saw:

As you see, not only was the delicate basil deader than a doornail, so were all the tomato plants.  (The only plant that did not die was the deadly nightshade which you can see over the left shoulder of the deck chair.  You could have knocked me down with a feather the day I saw, and recognized, the deadly nightshade growing up beside the tomato plant.  I guess it is true that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family, though why a deadly nightshade plant came up in a potted tomato I purchased at Simpson's Hardware from the Bonnie Plants people, I do not know!) A week before I had found a bird pecking at the nicely ripening tomatoes so I flapped my own wings at him and sent him on his way, brought in all the tomatoes with any color (four of them!) and thought no more about it.

The day the killing frost came was the day when I harvested the last of the green tomatoes.  There were more hidden in the lush foliage than I had realized.

Here they are sitting on the kitchen counter, hopefully to ripen comfortably.  If those beauties begin to look a little iffy, I will turn them into fried green tomatoes, and eat them all myself!  Dear One would not eat a fried green tomato on a bet. 

 UNLESS I did not turn them into fried green tomatoes but into Green Tomato Mincement!!!  That stuff is so good.  Well, not good FOR you, but rich and luscious and makes a great pie or bread of some kind.  We shall see.  Things are a bit hectic currently so...

Garden 2020: Tomato Blossoms

In January I planted tomato seeds.  In March I happened to find Cherokee Purple tomato plants already started at Lowes.  Also Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.  In the South Carolina growing zone where we live the last frost is expected on Good Friday.  Since I was afraid of killing these good-looking tomato plants in the house, I decided to just go ahead and plant them a month early.

So, I put them in the ground.  When the bug man came for the quarterly bug eradication outside (not coming inside this time because we might be sick inside...which only works for a bit because I have now seen ants inside three days in a row!!!  We pay not to have ants in the house surprisingly so I will be calling the bugs and request inside service) I was sort of complaining about the hard orange clay soil that I could not put the tomato cages or posts into.  The guy said, "Get a four pound hammer and a piece of rebar.  Pound the rebar into the ground where you want the cages to go." What a great idea!  It never occurred to me to do that.  The bug guy also said it was a great time to do this because of all the rain we had just had so the ground would be somewhat soft.

So, off I went, homemade face mask installed, to the Ace Hardware where I found both the hammer and the rebar.  Also a couple more stakes.  The next morning I went down to the place I had planted the tomatoes and went to town on the project.  About the fourth strike on the rebar the hammer slipped. I still have a very impressive black and blue and yellow and purple mark on my lower leg.  BUT I was able to complete the job.  Yes, I could have asked Dear One to help and he would have been happy to do so...however, I prefer to do my own projects since I still can.  If I was physically (or maybe mentally!!) unable to do anything, I would ask.  Otherwise, I will do my own projects.

The cages were successfully installed.  The tomatoes have blossoms but are hard to see in this picture.  I am pretty happy with these tomatoes.

The very next day after this tomato project was the day we saw the water moccasin in the pond for the first time.  The tomatoes are right down pretty near the pond.  R-r-r!  I guess I will have to get over phobias.

The Great 2019 Garden!

The other morning the temperature dropped to 27 degrees F.  That took care of the basil.  And the tomato plant.

As you can see, the basil is pretty much done for this year.  Tomorrow I will clip off the dead stuff.  I am hoping the roots are still happy in the tub.  Basil was our most productive plant this year. I was so happy with them.  We used a LOT of basil, at least, compared to any other year of our gardening life.

The tomato harvest came in, too.  Or at least, I harvested our tomato crop to save it from further difficulties.  Sadly, one of the tomatoes had fallen on the deck.  I did not see it. I stepped on it.  That was the end of that one...

So...this is the entire tomato harvest.  I do not know if this gem will ripen in the house, but I hope so.

There is a big gardening summit online somewhere for the next few days.  I am hoping to watch some of the presentations to see if they can help us for next year. I just have to remember that here in South Carolina February is a great time to start gardening for the year.

Gardening on a Mission!

We always had a garden at home.  When we found out where we were going to be living on our mission I was thrilled to see there was a balcony off our living room. Immediately I thought we would be able to raise lettuce and maybe a few herbs.  When we arrived we discovered that our balcony faces east so there would only be sun for a couple of hours in the morning.  That would not work for a garden.  Disappointing.

What to do, what to do?  Well,  a month or so ago I put us on a list of farms and gardens which sell to the public and/or have pick your own.  We get lots of notices, most of which are further away than we want to drive.  This week we received word that there were pick your own tomatoes!  Yay!!!  And I really mean YAY!!!  I love real tomatoes.  The tomatoes we buy in the store are totally tasteless and not at all juicy.  So I talked Dear One into a gardening trip.  The J's went with us, too.  So nice.

This is what we picked:

Dear One picked the berries.  Some of the tomatoes are Brandywine, which are very very flavorful.  The others (in the foreground) also taste wonderful.  I may be on tomato overload for a few days but since it only happens a few weeks a year, I don't mind the skin rash and tummy issues..  At least, not much...

Elder and Sister J gave us the Gravenstein apples, a new variety to me.  The corn is yellow and white, which is what we prefer.  My father always raised Butter and Sugar corn back in the old days when I was in my youth.  I personally picked hundreds of bushels of that wonderful corn to sell at the roadside stand, to sell at Tunbridge World's Fair (which is a September tradition), and for my father to peddle to the stores in our local area. 

Seeing that corn always brings back happy memories.  One of those memories being that our corn piece is where I met Dear One for the first time, when he came over to help my father with the corn picking.  True story.  May I say that he must have seen something there because as far as physical appearance, well at 5 o'clock in the morning, after walking through the wet cornfield, with pollen from the tassels, and "rain" from the cornstalks making all of us soaking wet, we were a sight to behold.  It was much more fun to pick corn at mid-day, but that was not the time we did it.  By 7 o'clock my father would have finished the milking chores and came down to pick us corn pickers up  to bring us back up on the hill for breakfast.  Often Mother would have made us hot chocolate.  Hot chocolate is a comfort food for me.  Thus renewed, we would go back for another few hours of picking.  Lots of bushels every day.

Garden Harvest: Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

We had about a quart of cherry tomatoes that I did not want to eat in salads or just plain.  What to do?  What to do?  Why not try roasting them?  Lots of vegetables taste wonderful roasted, even if they are not so hot raw or cooked other ways.  I repeat:  why not try roasting them?

This is what I did:

Washed the cherry tomatoes after removing a few stems.

Cut the tomatoes in half an put in a large bowl.

Poured a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil over them and swished the bowl around to connect the tomatoes to the oil.

Sprinkled on 1 teaspoon granulated onions and garlic (50/50 mixture I had made to take on vacation and which needed to be used up), 1 teaspoon Italian herb seasoning--oregano, basil, etc.  (NOT Italian salad dressing mix), and 1/2 teaspoon of coarse Kosher salt.  Mixed well by sloshing the bowl around a bit to get the seasonings on all the tomato parts.

Roasted Tomatoes showing the caramelizing.

Put tomatoes on a rimmed baking sheet that has been covered by parchment paper.  There will probably be a little some delicious "juice" in the bowl.  That can be used to flavor some other vegetable dish.

Place the pan in a preheated 350 degree F. oven for 45 minutes or so.

They will be nicely caramelized and taste really delicious.