Mas Porno Del Jardin

So… I can’t help but wonder what the title above is going to do to my web analytics… (yes, I’m a data nerd.)

Anyways, here are the baked dinner and slow-roasted tomatoes we made in the gas BBQ (’cause the oven is still broken) from last week’s harvest (in case you were wondering — pepperoni, bacon, okra, tomatoes, onions, hot peppers and garlic are a fabulous combination!):

This weekend’s harvest was nothing to sneeze at:

So, we decided to make tomato sauce to freeze:

You know, all the tomatoes that will fit, plus garlic, some basil, some olive oil. Boiled down for a while:

And eventually put into containers for the freezer:

Delicious (if a wee bit too acidic, if we are honest — we will have to bear that in mind and use with carmelized onions, or some other form of sugar to cut it).

In other news, the world’s slowest growing plants, the hot peppers, have finally begun to put out a decent harvest (just in time for the cold fall… we shall start earlier next year):

The top one? That’s a squash pepper — it looks like a habanero for a reason. Amazing flavor, but *very* hot. Supposedly we’re supposed to leave it ’til it turns red, but even green they have great flavor and almost too much heat, so it’s hard to be patient.

The long slightly wrinkled peppers? Yeah, Pimiento D’espelette — we haven’t had the patience to let a single one turn red. They are flavorful, but not very hot at all. More smokey. Complex. I like ’em. E thinks they are useful for fiber.

The jalapenos? Well, if you grow ’em in your garden, they will be hotter than the ones you buy in the store. But effort to reward ratio? It’s likely that next year we’ll add some other wacky peppers like the squash peppers instead of the jalapenos.

And, I think that’s a wrap.

Summer = Tomatoes

For me, Summer is tomatoes. Tomatoes are summer. And that’s pretty much it.

So last week’s harvest made me very happy, and confirmed that it was Summer, my favorite season:

And E making his mother’s slow-roasted tomatoes made me even more jubilant, and reminded me that it was still Summer, still my favorite season (mmm… if only you could slow roast without the oven in the Summer…):

Gazpacho? Yet more proof of the awesomeness of Summer, and why it’s my favorite season:

And Caprese? Is there anything more indicative of Summer? Seriously? Italian anything and tomatoes? That’s just the essence of Summer:

And camping, this weekend? Yeah, that’s Summer. But even moreso is returning to this harvest:

And, from the harvest, I was inspired to make a Summer soup. The only ingredients not from our garden? Salt, olive oil, and a red bell pepper.

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Soup

First, slice tomatoes into 1 cm steaks, and layer in a baking pan. Then, top with sliced peppers from the garden (Pimiento D’espellette and jalapenos) and garlic from the dried harvest. If you are lucky, some random genetic mutation may have happened in your garlic harvest, and you can just use *one* clove (i.e. not a head of cloves, just one). The largest clove you’ve ever seen:

After the garlic, add strips of a red bell pepper and sprinkle with salt and olive oil, and bake for 20 minutes at 350:

Turn and mix the tomatoes, and allow to bake for another 20-30 minutes. Puree in a blender. Serve into bowls and top with minced basil. Enjoy!

More Garden Porn

Today, a mere three (3!) days after my last garden post, we’re thrilled to brag about our harvest. In fact, we’re even proud of everything that is not tomato-related, which is impressive, since we’re like 70% tomato-focused. Regardless, this is what I harvested from the non-tomato plants today, and I couldn’t help but think…yummm!

Altogether, however, our tomato-based harvest outweighs the rest:

Let’s celebrate the squash (the striped green and the yellow), the misshapen red onion (ahhh… the adorable foibles of the un-knowledgeable gardner) and its perfect small red onion companion (planted by a more knowledeable gardner 1-2 seasons later…), the garlic, the okra (seriously, you are missing out if you don’t have okra in your life), the eggplant (hell yeah!), the cucumber, and of course, after all of this, we’ll get to the tomatoes.

First: Our cherry and small size tomato harvest has begun to reach epic proportions. I dare you to declare otherwise:

Second: Our larger slicing tomato selection has started to become educational:

In order, starting at the top left, we have:

– 2 stiletz tomatoes (why? why did I grow these? I have plenty of sun and heat?); followed by
– 1 brandywine red lantis (so sweet. Smaller than expected, but we may save seeds and grow again, nonetheless).
– 1 thessoloniki waiting for full ripeness. If I can, I’ll post photos of the slices.
– Next row: 1 super marzano (paste); 1 marvel stripe (gorgeous when sliced, can’t wait), 2 orange russian 117 (oxheart/pear-shaped!!! woo-hoo!); 1 white oxheart.
– Last row: 2 black krim (purple black); 2 black from tula (lighter brown-black); 2 Paul Robeson (full chocolate black)

Finally, I am disturbed by the beauty of red current — it produces much teensy tiny, impossible to harvest, frustrating fruit. Delicious, but annoying fruit that refuses to ripen on the same schedule and each one is entirely too small to deal with. And yet, how gorgeous is she?

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.