Maybe it’s middle age settling in on me, but oh, how I love to watch the vegetables form! From blossom to mini-me to the awkward teen phase to fully mature fruit — I just love it! Today I picked some…
Bring your tomato to lunch day
After my doctor appointment (take vitamins for the nerve issues, begin physical therapy), we left to head out the Korean Spa. I spent a few minutes in the garden checking on everything just before we left. I brace myself every…
RIP Better Boy
That Better Boy shriveled up and was looking even worse today, so I picked off the 5 green tomatoes it sported and pulled it up. The roots were in good shape, so the foliar disease seems to be what killed…
Roasted Tomato Sauce – when you have too many tomatoes
My dad’s tomato production is out of control: It’s his best year ever for tomatoes, and he doesn’t know what to do with the harvest. I mentioned that I made some roasted tomato sauce in an earlier post. Yesterday I…
Blackberry mystery
I keep reading that blackberries don’t produce fruit on their floricanes (second season growth) and so you should cut all that off every year because they won’t produce fruit on those canes again. But how do you explain this? I…
Houston, we have a problem
Well, today is the first day I know I can’t possibly use up all the ripe tomatoes I have. Almost all of the tomatoes I picked yesterday or this weekend ripened overnight: It’s raining lightly but steadily today, so I…
Days to Maturity
One of the most interesting things about gardening is how freakishly accurate “days to maturity” is for plants. I have beans and squash that are about to come in this week just about to the day on the seed package.…
My Brandywines bring all the boys to the yard
What is with the Brandywines??? For real, little critters! What is the deal? You creep into my garden, ignore the riper cherry tomatoes Romas and Early Girls, and go straight for the Brandywine. I mean I’m glad you’re leaving the…
Cooking the harvest
Many of the tomatoes that I pulled to keep away from the groundhog have ripened, and so I decided I better cook or preserve some. Today I roasted the ripe tomatoes to make my first roasted tomato sauce — so…
How much pruning is too much?
I did some more watching of Craig LeHoullier, and I kept reading that he gets rid of all damaged leaves from his plants. I looked at some of his pictures from his blog, and his plants are looking just a…