Tomato Time is Coming!

We aren’t at full production, but we’re definitely seeing ripe fruit on at least half of the varieties. Today’s harvest was impressive:

It inspired me to make an all-tomato lunch. E and I each had the pleasure of tasting and comparing large slices from several beauties:

In clockwise order, that’s White Oxheart, Thessoloniki, Ananas Noir, Kentucky Beefsteak, Brandywine Red Lantis, Green Zebra, and Black Krim. All delicious. E’s favorite for taste was Thessoloniki, then Brandywine Red Lantis, then White Oxheart. I couldn’t decide between White Oxheart, Ananas Noir, or Black Krim for overall taste, but truly, they are all excellent, it just depends on what you want (more/less acidity, more/less gel sacs, seeds, or meat, more/less sugar).

This year, Cynthia introduced me to the awesomeness that is oxheart tomatoes — pointed on the end and shaped more like a bell pepper, often with whispy droopy foliage. Thanks to her glowing reviews, we’re growing several: White Oxheart, Orange Russian 117, Sweet Horizon, and Japanese Black Trifele.

So far, White Oxheart is the only plant that has ripe fruit:

What a pleasure — the fruit production is prolific, and they are slightly sweet with medium acid. The best part, though, is that while they are the size of a beefsteak, they have the consistency of a paste tomato (lots of meat, little seeds). In other words, we look forward to roasting these, slicing them for sandwiches (won’t make the bread soggy!), and eating ’em easily with a knife and fork all summer — if there are too many at the end, they’ll make great fried green tomatoes and sauces.

How Do It Know?

Remember the great garlic planting back in October?

After following the Gourmet Garlic Gardens instructions, every single clove sprouted in November (bonus — check out the sprouts in the far part of the box — those were the baby artichoke plants, back when we thought perhaps we could fit more than one in our raised bed):

From there, each sprout grew to be a stalk of grass-like leaves about 4-5 feet tall, eventually, some sent up scapes and finally, it was harvest time:

Towards the end of their growing season, I commented to E that garlic was somewhat anti-climactic and quite a bit of effort for a fairly easy to obtain return. Last weekend, at the Farmer’s Market they had California Early Garlic Bulbs–one of the varieties we grew–for 50 cents each.

However, the satisfaction I got from pulling each large head out of the ground and the wonder at its reproduction changed my mind.

Just put a clove in the ground. With water, winter, spring, and summer, it’ll clone itself into multiple cloves, each associated with a huge blade of energy producing monocot leaf.

DNA, and the miraculous replication of life is so amazing!

LOOK!

Tomatoes! (even on plants that have gotten a wee bit sick — see the purple tint to the stem and leaves? Bummer.)

The garden has grown quite a bit (and ideally, will grow much faster now that I fertilized with fish/kelp emulsion ’cause my plants were just not as green as most of my friends’ plants…).

As you may recall, it started out like this:

A month later, it looked like this:

And now, 2 weeks later, we’ve got this:

The biggest tomato so far is a little 1 inch diameter fruit, hanging off of Brandywine Red Lantis (I have no idea what the Lantis stands for, that’s just what Cynthia called it):

And much to my surprise, the most prolific fruit producer, in terms of total mass so far has been White Oxheart. Weird. I would have thought some of the earlier maturing varieties would be kicking its butt at this stage.

In the meantime, while we salivate over the future tomatoes, we get to enjoy good stuff while we wait:

The fruits of the ridiculously prolific artichoke plant, the mint (which we transplanted out of the raised beds because it was taking over and threatening Gold Nugget), baby basil leaves, the end of the parseley, and the first garlic to fall over, which has now been hung to dry.

Other than that, the garden is coming along as gardens do. We’ve got aphids. We’ve got some fungus. We’ve got ladybugs, bees, earwigs, and worms. I spent several hours on Sunday fertilizing, pruning, tying tomato plants to stakes, and harvesting. The plants appeared to very much appreciate it in less than 24 hours, which is very gratifying.

G & C gave us a cucumber seedling that is infinitely superior to the one remaining living cuke I’m nursing along (I planted 2, one died). I think, if there’s one thing I learned this year, it’s that seedlings don’t like direct sun until they are a little bigger than the first true leaves. Oh, and that I probably should have watered the seedlings more while they were small. So I’ll be planting that cucumber and taking out a couple of squash plants to give to them in return.

Finally, I made a Worm Castings Tea and plan to spray tomorrow in the hopes that it will help ward of pests and encourage additional growth.

Oh, and E (with the help of C) built me a new compost box in the back yard. Our plastic bin is completely full of black gold. I turned it and watered it on Sunday and found that the only identifiable matter were some egg shell pieces. The rest was just dark, almost tar-colored, soft dirt-like soil. I can’t wait to use it for the winter garden! Finally, after 3 years of composting…

Because the bin is full, we’ve been donating our kitchen scraps to the city compost, but I wanted to save them and use them in the soil. Thankfully, E & C were in a handy mood after the afternoon at the Maker Faire. So now we have a new two-cell compost bin made of pressure-treated wood. Yay!

In short, the gardening hobby grows. Literally. And we’re having much fun.

The Garden Grows

Literally. Exponentially. I think we may have planted a wee bit too much for this Summer, but there’s no way to know ’til it’s too late:

That would be:

32 tomato plants
2 husk tomato plants
4 pepper plants (2 squash peppers, 1 jalapeno, 1 spanish pepper of medium heat)
1 japanese eggplant
1 japanese cucumber
1 american space-saver cucumber
1 bok choy plant
1 mustard plant
2 butter lettuce plants
1 green/red lettuce plant
1 red lettuce plant
42 garlic stalks
1 artichoke plant
20-30 onions/leeks (or so) from the winter planting
100 onions/leeks from the spring planting (still waiting to be thinned)
1 mint plant
3 cilantro seedlings
1 rosemary plant
1 lemon thyme plant
1 greek oregano plant
1 marjoram plant
3 parsley plants
1 italian parsley plant
AND
1 strawberry planter full of delicious strawberries (seriously, they were even better than the CSA strawberries, which were wonderful!)

Plus seeds we are hoping will sprout of:
-okra
-nasturtium
-marigolds
-borage
-cress
-English thyme
-chives
-dill
-acorn squash
-butternut squash
-summer squash
-green summer italian squash (not zucchini, smaller and lighter green, more tender)

Not to mention the basil I haven’t transplanted yet…and a few unaccounted for spaces where I’m likely to plant even more seeds.

I think I may have a problem. Thank goodness that E and friends will be setting up the drip irrigation system this weekend. This is really starting to be too much to manage by hand.

Finally, before we say our complete goodbye to the winter garden, we should be thankful for the broccoli, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, arugula (!!), chard, cabbage, beets, radishes, and carrots. The last 2 categories were the last to be picked to clear the way for the Summer garden. We were impressed that the carrots dug below the top soil and deep into the clay:

Simple Carrot Dill Bisque

Tonight, we used the roots in the picture above to make a carrot dill soup.

1. Sautee the tops of leeks and any sliced radishes, with garlic and chopped baby carrots from the CSA (along with chopped pieces of our mature carrots) in olive oil;

2. Add salt, pepper, water and simmer until carrots break easily with a spoon. Add milk to taste and puree with a hand blender;

3. When you have the consistency you like, add chopped dill, stir until fragrant and serve immediately.

Wish us luck for a summer full of good harvests and creative recipes!

Planning the Tomato Madness

Today, we had several big garden milestones.

First, day 13 after potting, we finally got one sprout of Aunt Molly’s Husk, the last of the 35 varieties to sprout. Somehow, we managed to germinate at least one seedling of every variety we tried to grow (keeping the seedlings alive, of course, is another matter, but still).

Technically, Aunt Molly’s Husk is a husk tomato or ground cherry (like a tomatillo, which we are also growing), so it’s not a true tomato, but once we were growing 33 varieties of tomatoes, given that the cheery tomato seeds I ordered over the internet came with tomatillo seeds and Aunt Molly’s Husk seeds, well… who are we to resist? Salsa verde, here we come!

Second, the tomato seedlings were allowed outside for their first exposure to the real world today. It was only 2 hours, but they seemed to like it and rewarded us with 8 new sprouts between last night and tonight.

Third, at tonight’s 13-day post seed-potting count, we are at 199/257 seedlings sprouted, for a germination rate of 77.43%.

Fourth, and finally, we got the busted concrete debris removed, cleaned up a bit of the winter garden, purchased some redwood bark for the walkways between the garden, and started the final transition to this year’s garden madness, aka The First Summer of Tomato Madness.

And yes, in case you were wondering, that is a very dead Christmas wreath hanging to the right of our front door. Perhaps we’ll take it down tomorrow…