June 24, 2010: The First Tomato

Last year I picked my first tomato on July 10. It was a cherry tomato, from what was supposed to be a Tumbling Tom. I say "supposed", because I grew two of them from seed, and neither looked a bit like a Tumbling Tom. The vines grew huge, and the tomatoes they bore were just plain old cherry tomatoes, with no sweetness, nor anything making the flavor special. Of course, they fruited non-stop. Anyway, the first of the season was a disappointment, as most "first" tomatoes seem to be, rather tasteless and mealy in texture. I've always assumed that was because it took them so long to reach maturity in the cooler weather, as the flavor and texture never fail to improve as the weather warms.

This year I've picked my first tomato a full 16 days earlier. It is also a cherry tomato, from a Minigold plant.

Isn't it pretty? I've only tasted one yellow tomato I really liked, and that was a big Kellogg's Breakfast, which had such a special flavor I've planted it again this year.

It's not very big. About average for a cherry tomato.

Should I share with Mr. Granny, or should I just pop this entire morsel into my mouth and not tell him?

I ate half of the tomato. It wasn't very good, quite sour and the texture was rather mealy. It was about as disappointing as most of my first tomatoes have been. I can only hope the flavor improves as the weather warms.

Mr. Granny gets the other half.

June 24, 2010: Another Productive Day

*Note: It's actually June 23, in the early evening, as I write this. However, I've already blogged today, so I'll save this one and publish it tomorrow.


Whoa, doggies, it got hot today! I'm not complaining, I'm rejoicing. I spent almost the entire day in the garden, harvesting lettuce, onions, peas, carrots, snap peas, potatoes and raspberries. I pruned bottom leaves from several tomatoes, and tied them up where necessary. I pulled all the snap pea vines after a final harvest, and put them in the composter. I pulled all of the smaller onions from bed #4, and in their place I planted the parsley that wasn't doing well in its pot, two small plants of basil and five marigold seedlings. That bed is still half empty, and ready for planting something else, but I've not quite decided what. Maybe some beets.

I happened to be checking on my zucchini, when I spotted this. Twin male blossoms! I've never seen two blossoms on one stem before.

You have to look closely, but there are at least three female blossoms almost ready to open. There are also a lot of male blossoms, so pollination will hopefully take place naturally.

I cut two heads of Austrian Red lettuce, and one huge head of Red Sails. That's not my laundry basket holding the Red Sails, but it is a pretty good sized basket, and that one head of lettuce fills it completely. The last of the sugar snap peas were picked, blanched and frozen. I found several more after this photo was taken, while pulling the pea vines, so I'll be using them fresh. These are the last of the Chantenay carrots. Oh, how I wish I'd planted more! The tops broke off of the two Walla Walla onions as I pulled them, so they were cleaned and trimmed and stored in the refrigerator. The large scallion was flopping over into an adjoining bed, so it also got pulled.

A second trip to the garden gave me new red potatoes, a container of raspberries, and 2/3 cup of peas.

Quite a bit of today's harvest went into tonight's dinner. The Hamburger Cabbage Casserole contained cabbage, carrots and onion from the garden. The peas and carrots and the baby new potatoes were as fresh as they could possibly be. Of course, I had to have my favorite salad of freshly picked lettuce, cranberries and walnuts, with an oil/vinegar/sugar dressing. No, I never get tired of it! The meal was served with a crusty baguette and ice cold lemonade.

It will probably be a few days before I publish another garden dinner. Sometimes we just have to eat the leftovers!

June 23, 2010: It's All About the Food

Finally! It was warm, warm, warm yesterday. Eighty-five beautiful degrees warm. Warm enough that I fired up the barbecue for our garden dinner, and I ate mine on the patio while Mr. Granny was glued to some ballgame or movie or whatever, and ate his in front of the TV. I couldn't get too upset with him though, because he took me out to brunch in the morning, to a real restaurant! You know, the kind where you go inside and sit at a table, not out in the car!

I've been a very well fed Granny this week. Amy had us over for a lovely Father's Day brunch, and John treated us to dinner at a local restaurant, where I enjoyed a half rack of barbecued pork ribs with all the trimmings.

I didn't harvest much from the garden yesterday, as the refrigerator was still filled with Monday's pickings. I did get a first for 2010, though. A handful (2 oz) of bush green beans!

Only beans and raspberries were picked Tuesday. My beans weren't quite as green as they look here. I forgot to photograph the harvest until after they were cooked!

Dinner was grilled wild salmon, baked potato (not from my garden), the broccoli I picked on Monday, and mixed lettuce salad with cranberries and walnuts, topped with an oil/vinegar/sugar dressing. Mr. Granny got the fresh green beans, as he doesn't care much for broccoli. I did what I do every year, I overcooked my first broccoli of the season. I think the tender florets cook so much faster than the tough ones from the produce department of the grocery store. Overcooked or not, they were still delicious. I baked some oatmeal cookies, so we munched on those and were too full to eat the raspberries for dessert. They'll be really good for breakfast this morning, with some whole grain buttered toast.

June 22, 2010: A Full Table

I'm getting a lot of food from the garden now, so there aren't any trips to the grocery store for produce. Yesterday's harvest provided much of the food for last nights dinner, with plenty to spare. There were Yugoslavian Red and Buttercrunch lettuces, Golden Acre cabbage, Calabrese and De Cicco broccili, Sugar Lace snap peas, Walla Walla sweet onions with one red onion that was going to seed, Little Marvel peas, new Kennebec potatoes, Chantenay carrots and Canby raspberries. Not shown were about a half cup of strawberries.

All of the produce is cleaned and trimmed before weighing, then stored in the refrigerator in recycled Ziploc bags or plastic shoe boxes. I always wash and reuse my Ziploc bags if they were only used for storing fruit, vegetables or breads.

Our "garden dinner" consisted of fried chicken breasts, Austrailian Red butterhead lettuce with cranberries, walnuts and oil/vinegar/honey dressing, creamed new potatoes with baby peas, and glazed carrots. Dessert was fresh raspberries. Too bad my parsley failed to germinate early this spring, so I had to buy fresh seed and start over. The plate looks so bare without it!

June 21, 2010: Harvest Monday

For the week of June 14-20

Harvested:

8 oz. broccoli
14 oz. cabbage
39 oz. carrots
80 oz. lettuce
141 oz. onions
5 oz. peas
40 oz. potatoes
29 oz. raspberries
11 oz. strawberries
24 oz. sugar snap peas

Total for week: 391 oz. = 24.43 lb.

Total for year to date: 73.65 lb.


Planted:

6/15 - 10 bachelor button seedlings. I planted seeds earlier in the spring, and they came up right away. Bugs ate them to the ground. I presprouted seeds in a coffee filter, planted them, and nothing came up. So I started seeds in the house and planted out the seedlings. This is my last chance.

6/15 - several (8?) seedlings of Red Sails lettuce.

Consumed:

raspberries
onions
snap peas
broccoli
carrots
lettuce
potatoes
peas
strawberries
peppers (2009)
peach jam (2009)
cabbage
strawberry jam (2009)
ketchup (2009)

Observations:

Found a large volunteer tomato growing in the snap peas. It's over 2' tall, and I'm certain it's a Juliet, so I think I'll just let it grow. There's another small volunteer near the kennel. It's very possibly from the Green Grape plant that was in that vicinity last year, or it might be from the cherry tomato that grew up the corner of the kennel. I hope it's the Green Grape.

Anuenue lettuce harvested and eaten, gets a real thumbs up. It was crisp and sweet, and Mr. Granny's favorite so far.

Reaching for potatoes, under the plants, the Kennebec seem to be producing more and quicker than the Red Norland, even though the Norlands are supposed to be earlier. None of the Norlands have blossoms, some of the Kennebecs do.

General Gardening:

Worked on the west side tomatoes, pruning off bottom leaves, topping off some buckets with potting soil, fertilizing with fish emulsion and/or 10-10-10. Three of the tomatoes in pots look a bit anemic, but all of the dwarf tomatoes look great.

Tied jute twine for the beans in the west garden to climb, as they weren't heading toward the fence trellis like they were supposed to.

Pruned lower leaves from indeterminate tomatoes, tied up those that needed it.

Other:

Gave Pat 10 oz. sugar snap peas.

Gave Scott 12 oz. sugar snap peas, two 1-gallon bags of lettuce and 48 oz. onions (weighed without tops).

Gave John two 1-gallon bags of lettuce and 36 oz. onions (weighed without tops).

Daphne's Dandelions hosts Harvest Monday

June 20, 2010: In a Stew

The carrots and potatoes are really putting on some size.

Onions, carrots, potatoes and peas, fresh from the garden. It looks as though there might be a pot of stew in my future.

By golly, there was!

I think I need a drying rack! I'm almost out of hooks for hanging onions, and it's too wet to leave them in the garden to cure.


HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!!

June 19, 2010: Is That My Dinner?

Whoa, Nellie! When I said the lettuce needed to be cut, I didn't think it would amount to this much! When it's growing under the shade structure, its size isn't so evident.

Otto wasn't impressed with that huge basket of green stuff I set down next to him. It was his dinner time, and he was expecting a dish of chicken and green beans, not a basket heaped high with lettuce! Later, as I was at the sink washing it, Annie kept poking my leg with her nose. Poke, poke, poke. She and Otto both do that when they want attention, and Annie does it when she wants food. I told her she wouldn't like lettuce, but she kept right on poking until I gave her a leaf. She likes lettuce. She adores radishes and carrots and green beans, but I wouldn't expect a dog to like lettuce!

When the lettuce leaves are 16" long, like this Cracoviensis, it doesn't take a lot of them to fill a laundry basket. After it was all washed, I put it into a big clean pillowcase, and Mr. Granny and granddaughter Alicia took turns twirling it around in the air to dry....outside, of course. When they were finished, I weighed it. Four pounds, four ounces of crispy, crunchy goodness. What on earth am I going to do with over four pounds of lettuce? So far, none of it has ended up in the compost, but that day may be near.

So, did we have a big lettuce salad for our dinner? No. We had this.....................


A small, but delicious cabbage, half of which ended up in coleslaw, along with garden onion and carrots. Served with fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, it was mmmmmmmmm-good!

Rant time. The neighbor behind us began watering his weeds garden before I was even out of bed yesterday morning. I try to get the berries picked early, but water from his impulse sprinkler was coming over the fence, all the way to my back lawn, so I couldn't pick the berries without getting soaked. By dusk, with his sprinkler still running, I braved it and got drenched getting the raspberries picked. I didn't even bother with the strawberries, as their foliage was so wet. Around ten last night, I took some things out to the shed, and that sprinkler was still running! I believe in deep watering, but that is just ridiculous. He had that water running for at least 15 hours, and then it rained in the night.

June 18, 2010: The Mid-June Garden (part 2)

I just realized I forgot to title yesterday's post. I had a lot of photos of the mid-June garden, so I'm breaking it down into two posts, yesterday was part one.

Isn't this a pitiful way to begin today's blog? This old tool tote was supposed to be overflowing with blue bachelor buttons. I planted the seeds quite some time ago, and they germinated quickly. Then they began disappearing, so I covered them with bird netting. Within two days, every tiny seedling had disappeared, so it had to be slugs, earwigs or pill bugs. Wanting to get a head start on another batch of buttons, I pre-germinated some seeds in a wet coffee filter, placed in a plastic bag. It took just one day for them to sprout, so I carefully placed them in the tool tote, as well as elsewhere in the garden. Not a single green leaf broke the surface. Not even one! Undaunted, I planted the remainder of the packet, ten seeds, in soil blocks. There was quick germination and growth, so eight seedlings were planted in the tote, the other two in the flower bed at the back of the garden. This is their final chance before I give up on them.

If I don't get blue bachelor buttons, I'll still get blue in the garden with the volunteer borage. It came up everywhere in and around the kennel garden this spring, so I let several of them grow. They get really large, so I have to be careful where they are planted. The bees love them, as do the unknown insects that have chosen to make lace of many of the flower leaves this spring. I don't expect the bugs to eat this sturdy plant to the ground.

This broccoli, in the raised bed, is so pretty it should be in the flower garden. It's developing a nice head, too. This is my one and only De Cicco broccoli, the last from seed sent to my by EG (Our Engineered Garden) a couple of years ago.

This tiny Waltham broccoli was featured in last month's Garden Blogger's Death Day. It was looking terminal, but since I used Sluggo on the garden, it has no longer been under attack and may survive. I'll give it a second chance. You may be wondering why there is a jar ring around the stem. That was my experiment this year, to see if my old jar rings could work as cutworm collars. Evidently they did, as I didn't lose any plants.


While the broccoli and cabbages in the previous photo were heavily damaged by slugs, the other half of the very same bed was relatively untouched.


There were a few bites from the broccoli leaves, but the cabbages are gorgeous.


My "two sisters" are growing well, they just need a bit of warm weather to get them going strong. The four corn stalks interplanted with this Waltham butternut squash were some I had thinned out of the corn barrels, and couldn't bear to toss into the compost. The third sister won't be planted with them.


The lettuce is doing well under its shade structure. I added several new seedlings of Red Sails to this bed this week, and there are a couple of new Jericho plants on the other side.


This bed of Drunken Woman, Australian Yellow, Bronze Arrow (which isn't very bronze), Cracoviensis and possibly other lettuces, is in dire need of harvesting. I think I'll treat this as a cut and come again bed, while harvesting entire plants from the other two beds.


I was hoping the onions would get larger before they needed to be harvested, but I'm going to have to start pulling and curing them because they are falling over. I think a lot is from our recent strong winds, but I'll pull the floppy ones anyway. This bed has the smaller onions, that were planted quite closely.


Some of these larger onions are getting pulled, too. They are a nice size, if not quite as big as I'd wished they'd be.


The north bed flower garden isn't flowering much. The lilies are finished, but the two pansies I uprooted and brought back from Arizona are finally beginning to grow again. The morning glories (not visible) are so slow! The ones I direct seeded under the ladder are only about 4" tall right now, and not yet beginning to vine. The ones I started in soil blocks in the house, weeks later than the direct seeded ones, have already climbed a foot up their twine trellis. Nearly everything in this bed has been chewed half to death by insects (I suspect earwigs). Only two zinnias, from an entire packet, survived the bugs. All of the snapdragons and bachelor buttons were consumed.


I've been reaching for potatoes under the plants, and the Kennebec seem to be producing more quickly than the Red Norland, even though the Norlands are supposed to be earlier. None of the Norlands have blossoms, some of the Kennebecs do.


I need recipes for using sugar snap peas! They're coming on faster than we can eat them now. The next picking will have to be frozen.


Grandson Kevin came for dinner on Wednesday. He actually came for his good grade pay, and stayed for dinner. I give the grandchildren $10 for every "A" they bring home on their report cards, and Kevin has broken the bank this year. He's managed to get five "A"s each quarter, and earned $200 for the year! Kevin loves vegetables, especially fresh vegetables from Granny's garden. We went out and pulled enough potatoes for our dinner from under the plants, and a bunch of fresh carrots. After taking this photo, Kevin and I decided we needed more carrots for dinner, so I pulled another bunch of them. We had sirloin tips in gravy (using garden onions), steamed new potatoes, broccoli that was picked the day before, buttered carrots and a large salad of fresh garden lettuce for dinner.


Yesterday I pulled five pounds of the flopped over onions. I'll be reweighing them after the tops have dried and been removed. The snap peas will be frozen, but we've already eaten the rest of the food shown plus the entire head of Anuenue lettuce shown in yesterday's garden photos.


The first picking of Little Marvel peas gave us 1/2 cupful once they were shelled.


The new potatoes were sliced and fried, the peas and carrots made a lovely pair, and the onions were delicious in the barbecue sauced hamburger patties. Anuenue lettuce gets a real thumbs up. It was crisp and sweet, and Mr. Granny's favorite so far. I had my salad with craisins and walnuts, with a vinegar/oil/sugar dressing, Mr. Granny had his plain with ranch dressing. We ate the fresh raspberries for dessert.


I'll end today's blog with a couple of pretty pictures.


My favorite rose bush.


My very pretty blue flower, Alicyn.