Archive for the ‘ tomatoes ’ Category

Preparation — Tomato Seedlings Available For Gifting

The beginning of the new year brings many to do items to get ready for the summer garden. First, the seedlings must be started, placed on heat mats, given adequate wind and air. Once they are large enough, the little plants need to be separated from one another and potted up into bigger containers for [ READ MORE ]

2012 Garden Year In Review

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Summer Bounty

After all the work and the waiting (we had a much more mild summer than normal, which delayed the tomatoes by almost a month), finally, the garden is in full production mode: For the last several weeks, I’ve been harvesting a basket like this: And this week, I expect there will be 2 or more. [ READ MORE ]

Garden Prep

It’s almost that time of year again! Back in January, I started seeds for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and okra. The okra died. I restarted them a few weeks ago and they seem much happier. Today, the garden is a sad dried out, over-grown and gone-to-seed collection. The peppers had seed leaves by the end of [ READ MORE ]

A Northern Californian Summer Garden

The beauty of the first big harvest (even if it comes at least a month late due to weird 2011 weather!): Even in a bad year, home-grown heirloom tomatoes are overwhelming in September: Tomatoes are my favorite food, so many of my Summer meals look like this: And when the harvests start to decline, it [ READ MORE ]

The Latest Summer Garden

This year has been a doozy for Northern Californian gardeners. Winter was long. Spring was uncharacteristically wet. And summer seemed to lag by at least a month. The result? I didn’t have ripe tomatoes until after August 1st this year. Typically, ripe tomatoes are a July 4th treat and by the time August rolls around, [ READ MORE ]

Growth

As you may recall, I started late on the garden this year, and decided to minimize the plantings. I am glad. I started with this: A few weeks later, had this: And, now, after 3 weeks away with the garden on the automatic watering, I have more than enough work cut out for me: Due [ READ MORE ]

The Next Cycle

Due to living part-time in the Seattle area and part-time at home for 3 months, I haven’t had the time to garden as much as I would have liked. Law? Lots of time for that. Tech? So much I don’t quite know how to process it. But Garden? Well, the Garden took a bit of [ READ MORE ]

Summer Harvests and Storage

Finally, we’re getting into the time of year when the tomato plants are so productive that we can’t eat everything they give us. The rest of the garden is no slouch either. Tonight’s gorgeous harvest was limited to slicing tomatoes and paste tomatoes (no cherry tomatoes, no squash, no cucumbers), and even so, I’ve got [ READ MORE ]

Summer Harvests

Summer’s first harvest is always some type of squash. This year, we didn’t grow the Zucchini Romanesco, which is sad, because it’s such an amazing producer (see last year’s huge fruit that kept growing and growing in our weeks of neglect): But, we did grow some yellow summer squash that are producing like mad: And, [ READ MORE ]