Bean Therapy in the 2019 Summer Garden

This has been a year of exploration of peppers, which I never bothered to grow since back in the day when my mother and I would plant tomatoes and peppers to make our own salsa casera. After I moved to California in 1988, I had no need to plant peppers and make the cooking sauce; out here EVERY supermarket has it, unlike rural Pennsylvania.

Last summer I began using peppers in my minestrone recipe, and found that they had become indispensable in my cooking. Box 7 became my pepper nursery, with Anaheim chilis and Italian White Wax peppers. And what the heck, why not plant a pepperoncini and a bell pepper as well?

Having no room set aside for the last two, I just jammed them in with my first planting of wax beans, which I'd started too early and looked like lame weeds. To my surprise, two weeks later, the wax beans had begun to leaf out like crazy, and the bell pepper and the pepperoncini were enormous and covered with blooms, while the Anaheims and Italian White Waxes were less than half the size.

Whaaat? Beans and peppers like each other?

Now back to tomatoes -- which I love like a crazy old cat lady loves kittens. This has been a crummy tomato year in the Pilarski Farmland. Seemed like every time the plants had a wave of flowers, the temperature went over a hundred, which shriveled the buds. And the first nine Shady Lady plants I put in ... they were not thriving. Since peppers and tomatoes are both from the same family, I began planting bean seeds in with the sad tomatoes.

And seeing how pathetic this year's tomatoes were, Bernie told me to go buy more plants, three more Shady Ladies, which I planted into the new bed with beans, not waiting around to see if they needed beanie buddies. This is Box 10, tomatoes planted with beans:

With Beans

You can't even see the beans in there, except on the edges. But boy oh boy, those tomatoes know the nitrogen-fixing beans are partying right along with them.

And then, this poor trio, which were the first plants this spring:

No beans

Admittedly, they're all husky plants, that's why Shady Lady is my go-to producer. But wow, what a difference. Same light, same watering system, same potting soil, same number of plants, same size box. Beans made a huge difference.

Next year, with bean buddies from the beginning, we'll be planting Anaheims again, as they are delicious in a number of dishes, and of course, jalapenos and a bell or two, but the Italian White Wax -- turned out to be so hot that when Bernie nibbled one, I thought he was going to pick up a frying pan and smite himself with it to put himself out of his misery.

They are now compost.

Morning in the 2017 Fall Garden

I haven't been very successful at growing cabbage in the garden -- up until now.

Last year I tried purple cabbage, and some of them looked gorgeous, (but not all) and the flavor was a little astringent for my tastes. This year is green, and they are simply breath-taking.

The cabbage you buy in the store is round and light green, but I can attest from experience that those big blue leaves make a wonderful golumpki. I used to buy whole cabbages untrimmed when we lived back East, and freeze some of those big leaves for winter cabbage rolls. I look at these plants and see not only golumpki, but blue leaves for stir-fry, and for fried cabbage with onion as well.

Years roll by more quickly all the time, so this morning, I decided to take portraits of my current garden so I remember what worked, and how beautiful vegetables can be. The full set of portraits can be seen in my Flickr account, Palmprint Gallery.

This morning was also our first foggy morning, dressing the garden in wispy whiteness. My pictures were taken just after the fog lifted.

Lisianthus

Why I decided to buy a six-pack of lisianthus this past spring is a mystery to me. I paired them with some yellow and red striped zinnias in a half wine barrel in the front yard.

Never did like the way the planting looked. Although the two varieties were supposed to be the same height, the zinnias on the outside row got much taller than the lisianthus, and what should have been a pretty arrangement looked like a car wreck.

The zinnias got yanked out. I allowed the lisianthus to remain only because of how many buds were forming. I thought maybe they'd grow on me, so to speak.

They did not, but even though I loathe them, I have to admit that they are magnificent. All the visitors to my garden comment on how lush and lovely they are. Maybe I dislike them because they are too perfect -- to me, they look like the fake flowers people put on graves in cemeteries.

Summer Bliss

Each year that I've grown corn in containers, by the time they are about four feet tall, I wonder if it's worth it. Corn wants a lot of water and fertilizer to develop well, and the last few years, California has been in a prolonged drought. Even though last Spring saw our reservoirs filled by rain, we still have restrictions on watering; that means that most of the water we collect from the sink or shower waiting for the hot stuff to come out of the faucet has to be carried out to the corn.

Is it worth it?

Then, by the time the corn is seven feet tall and corn silk begins to be visible, I wonder again if the investment in water is going to allow good formation of ears.

The tassel at the top of each stalk begins to shed pollen, and ears begin to show. I touch the silk, gently squeeze the ears. Is there any bulk in there? Is the silk drying out a little?

Time for a test: I peel back a little bit of the husk ... and there are white and yellow kernels, pretty as jewels in a treasure chest. The corn is ready.

And with the first bite of tender, sweet, fragrant front yard corn, I know that all the water was worth it, and that I'll plant more next Spring.

Record Tomato Harvest

This morning I enlisted Bernie's help, and we picked tomatoes.

On the tray in front, the variety is "Gladiator" a new variety this year, raised from seed.  On the left, in the low basket, is "Early Girl." The rest are "Shady Lady."

51 pounds, 10 ounces.

In one picking.

That's the most ever. Last year I think the heaviest day brought in 28 pounds. On the other hand, last year I had a number of unproductive loafer vines that just didn't produce worth a damn. This year I went with the big guns (plus Gladiator) because we have a use for some tomato sauce in the future.

Aren't they a bit pale to be picked, you may ask. Not at all, really. They will finish coloring up just fine sitting on my counter.  The ones below started out picked just as blushy as the ones on the table.

They are just as flavorful, too. But the reasons I pick them just as they start to blush are three-fold: one, the sun can cook them on the vine in the afternoon heat; two, if they color up, the bugs bite them and birds peck them; and three, if they get too ripe on the vine, they soften up and the weight of the other tomatoes on the vine crushes them. Tomatoes are not only delicious, but fierce.
 

Here's what I mean about bug bites:

These are Gladiator tomatoes, a paste-type variety with a thin skin. All they have to do is start blushing, and bugs nibble or sting them. They can still be used for sauce, but they look ugly and can rot quickly once the skin is breached.

Incidentally, the description of "Gladiator" from Burpee's Seeds says it's a patio or small garden tomato. That would be only if you don't want to see your patio or small garden until next fall -- all of the plants are wide and taller than I am.


I do have another variety in the yard, a San Marzano that was on the verge of being thrown out at the nursery; I'm a sucker for orphan tomatoes and just brought it home and tucked it in with the sunflowers and overgrown onions. If it produces a fruit, I'll be glad to taste it.

From left to right, Gladiator (8 oz.), Shady Lady (8 oz.), and Early Girl (6 oz.)

 High time for a BLT, I say.

Cucumbers Ahoy!

The other cucumber is not missing, it was transformed. John and I made it into a tzatziki sauce to go with the previously mentioned leg of lamb.

The past two years, I haven't planted cucumbers; I'm pretty much the only one who eats them, and the pot I used to plant them in has been taken over by a dwarf plum tree, and the vines always got buggy anyway. But this year, I had a hankering for fresh cucumber, and the stuff I get in the store tastes like it's crossed with zucchini.

These taste fabulous, and I'm so glad I planted them this year.

So let's talk about the leg of lamb again. I roasted it at 350 degrees in an open pan until the interior temp was 115 (about an hour and a half), then brought it out, wrapped it in foil to let it rest for 15 minutes. The exterior was seasoned with salt, garlic powder and cumin; inside the hole left by the removed bone I had stuffed several split cloves of garlic. It tasted great, and what's more, it was the most tender lamb I have ever cooked.

I was going to use the leftover lamb to make a batch of black bean chili, but with cucumbers like these, forget it. More tzatziki for me!

Happy New Year! And Food! And Dog!

Bernie's grand experiment this past fall was to attempt to grow Brussels sprouts in pots in our front yard farm. I'd given it a half-hearted try the previous year, but planted them too late -- I got to eat some of the foliage, but they never made those cute little mini-cabbage shapes. Bernie has had much more success.

Today he decided that some of them were big enough to eat. So we cooked them in bacon fryings with diced onion. Melt the bacon fat, add the onions, let them sweat down a little, then put in the halved Brussels sprouts, stirring gently now and then. When the color is bright green, cover them and let them steam themselves for a few minutes. Then flavor with salt and garlic powder, stir and steam again. They're done when a fork can penetrate them tenderly.

Holy smoley, they were delicious! Of course, as with just about all food, the sweet intensity of the flavor was so much better coming out of the garden minutes before. Yes, fresh is better than produce that sits in bins for days or weeks.

I love how they look like little knobby palm trees, and based on our culinary experience today, Bernie says he wants to plant a lot more of them next fall. I agree. More Brussels sprouts, more red-leaf lettuce, less spinach and chard and collards.

Yes, of course I have a picture of Kermit on his office chair near the table where I work. When I picked up the camera, he looked at me as though he expected to be photographed. He was very proud of himself today: he helped me unload the throw rugs from the dryer, every one of them. He's a working dog.

2017 is coming in with a deluge. I even heard a rumor that some of the reservoirs are going to fill to pre-drought levels. I certainly hope so, but I'll believe it when I see it. In the mean time, we have tentative plans to visit a somewhat flooded soccer field on Monday -- we're supposed to get a whopper of a rain over the weekend. Kermit is going to love it...

The Bountiful Summer

For me, this is one of the most beautiful sights of summer: sweet corn -- from my own front yard.

Apparently the raised planter right next to the sidewalk has just the perfect climate for corn, because the plants got eight feet tall and produced full-sized ears. The pretty containers of corn out on the back patio don't do quite so well, not as tall, and with smaller (but not less tasty) ears. Maybe it's because so many people walk by on the sidewalk and admire the urban farming project -- maybe it gives the corn there more self-esteem.

We had plenty of corn from that 6' x 2 1/2' box, enough for several meals (and I mean corn as the main ingredient) and some to put away in the freezer. The variety is Burpee's On Deck corn, developed specifically for container gardening.

The other wonder this year was a successful experiment -- growing canteloupe in a raised bed. I'd never grown canteloupe before, and wasn't sure the plants would set fruit. Well, they sure did! We've been eating canteloupe like crazy, something we just couldn't really afford before. Delicious!

The melon variety, incidentally, is again a Burpee's product: Olympic Express. We plan on planting them again next spring.

But even while we feast on melons and corn and tomatoes, we're looking ahead a month and planning where to place the brussels sprouts, the beets, the turnips -- winter gardening will be much more varied.

Ah, but back to corn. I'd still like to lay in another five or six pounds of sweet corn for winter ... I wonder if the fruit stand up the road has some for a good price.

28 Pounds

Yes, I did. I picked 28 pounds of tomatoes from my front yard garden.

Bernie snagged probably another pound for his salsa before I got to the scales.

This has been a great year for my tomatoes, with Shady Ladies and Early Girls vying for the prettiest production. However, the tomatoes in the silver bowl are on reserve -- no one who is ambivalent about the taste of tomatoes should eat them, because they are Bush Big Boy, and definitely the best-tasting tomato I've had since I was a kid, and Mom raised Big Boys.

I'm going to go eat one of them now.

P.S. Bernie and I froze five pounds of zucchini this morning, and seven pounds of sweet corn yesterday afternoon. That'll take the bite out of winter!

Corn Week

The corn in the front yard Box #6 is ready.

Today I braved the heat wave and battled the damn ants for my lovely, tender, delicious corn. Now the ants aren't in with the kernels; they appear to be trying to colonize the stalks where the stalks meet the ears. Maybe they see the corn as a grand arcology of high rise apartments. No matter -- not in my corn, they don't. I harvested about a dozen ears and vowed I would fix their shit tomorrow morning. My ally Hose and I will teach them to get off my crops.

We dined on barbecued spare ribs and corn. The ribs were cooked yesterday, and were just as good reheated, but the fresh corn from the stalk was exquisite.

With the temps in the 100's this week, I have to harvest the ripe corn and get it into refrigeration tomorrow, or it will turn to yuck dull starch in the heat. Too bad, I guess I'll have to eat some more of it for lunch.

Fun with Corn

When our big tree fell down this past spring, I promised myself that I'd plant corn instead of grass in the ruined lawn. But when I went to plant the corn, I found that the soil was a mass of roots from the now-deceased tree. It took a lot of work to find a section of earth that I could work at all, so my idea of a whole corn field went by the wayside.

We also added three planter boxes off to the right of this picture, so my corn space was limited in that direction as well. But I couldn't let the seeds go to waste, so I planted a couple rows of Sun and Stars from Burpee Seeds, not really expecting much. After so many years of the giant eucalyptus draining the nutrients out of the soil, I was really surprised when the tiny plants sprouted.

They're not as tall as the catalog suggested, but they're taller than me, and some of the stalks are trying to make three ears of corn! We sampled an early ear, and it was long enough to cut into four pieces, and so sweetly delicious that after a bite, Joan ate all hers and mooched the second half of mine. We'll be picking some more this week.

There's a perverse streak in me that enjoys the challenge of this drought. We had a pretty little front lawn, but we didn't play by the same rules that other homeowners on the street did. No, we had to have a couple big wa-honkin eucalyptus trees blocking the view of our house. With the trees gone, how could I fly in the face of convention and conserve water? Why, put in a veggie garden, of course, with corn as a hedge!

And here are my special pets, more On Deck hybrid corn by Burpee's. By the time these pampered darlings are ready to tassel, the Sun and Stars will be all done. That should be the second week of September at the latest. I've been watering this planter by hand; I haven't got around to putting in the last line of drip system yet. Maybe in a couple weeks, when the temps drop a little.

I love my tomato plants, but I must admit that corn makes me giddy.

My Friends, the Corn

I'm not at all fond of having my picture taken, but my delight this morning is fairly evident -- Bernie insisted on commemorating a milestone in our California garden: our first successful container-grown corn!

This is the third try for me; in 2013, I put corn in the raised boxes out in front of the house. Scrub jays watched me lovingly plant the seeds, and dug them up and ate them. What few I replanted and raised were feeble ... I used what I thought was good potting soil, but it wasn't, and there wasn't enough sustenance in it for any of my plants to thrive.

Last year, I got the good soil (Miracle Gro Potting Soil) but got bum advice (from a website that turned out to be for Back East gardeners) about ripeness, so all my poor corn cooked and shriveled in the ear in the scorching California sun.

This year, I watched those ears like the hawk that perches in my neighbor's sycamore tree waiting for her Yorkshire terrier to venture out alone, and pounced upon the swelling corn on this cool July morning. Bernie scurried off with the first two ears and cooked them up.

They were beautiful!

And a delicious breakfast, as well. The variety is "On Deck" by Burpee Seeds, and it's bred to grow in containers. The taste is sweet and delicate, and there is nothing like the bursting flavor when only a few minutes before, the corn was still on the stalk.

I grow the corn on the patio mostly because I get a kick out of sitting in between pots of lush corn plants in the evening, but I'll definitely plant this variety again next year.

Happy Corn Day!

Gardening in the Time of Drought

There they are, fifteen pounds of tomatoes.

Half of them I picked yesterday, but quit when my back began aching. (I'd been out on the horse for over an hour.) The rest I got today.

We gave away about eight pounds a couple days ago, and Bernie used another eight or so making an incredibly delicious canned salsa. The salsa was so good that he could use this whole batch as far as I'm concerned. There are plenty more to come, too, depending on how bad this coming heat wave is. Sometimes it gets too hot and the fruit more or less cooks on the vine.

Only one cluster of grapes from our vine has ripened -- the rest look to be about a month away from edibility. No idea why one ripened so soon, but it was a delicious preview of coming attractions.

That many tomatoes during California's drought? you may well ask. And I will tell you in answer that the key is water management. Aside from a little square of grass in the front yard, which has two automatic lawn sprinklers on it, the entire rest of the property is on a drip system, which puts a small but adequate amount of water on individual plants.

What had been perfectly useless lawn was removed, and Bernie built planter boxes, which will eventually also be on a drip system. See the black tubing? That carries water to three small fern pines (podocarpus -- neither fern nor pine, really) and some tomatoes. Each plant has its own emitter; weeds get no water, empty dirt gets no water, sidewalk and gutter get no water.

Is it enough in high summer? Just about ... but we make up the difference from inside the house. Any time we run water, waiting for it to heat up for washing dishes or taking a shower, we collect that runoff into buckets. Some of those buckets go directly into container plants, but what is not urgently needed goes into my "well" -- a 33 gallon plastic garbage can, to bank against dry and excessively hot days.

Looks a little bit like Mars there, with no plants, but by next Spring, there will be drought-tolerant lavender, maybe a few blueberry bushes, and bark mulch to hold moisture and soften the view.

Ahh, the view. That's the back patio in the morning, more container plants, everything on drip or hand-watering, no lawn ...

... And all gorgeous. Fortunately my neighbor to the north used to live in the mountains near Santa Cruz. She's heavily invested in her urban forest, too; ground shaded by trees doesn't need as much water.

So far, so good.

Oh, the Color!

There they are, the first two tomatoes.

Yes, the one on the right is a little pale, but I was not about to let my first crop fall prey to slugs or birds or whatever. Once they start to turn color, tomatoes are ripe, but it is nice to let them hang out on the counter until the color is deep and they soften to provide the richest taste.

I love tomatoes. But maybe I love tomato plants more. I think the tiny yellow blossoms are cute, and the foliage is pretty. The smell of the vines is intoxicating to me, rooted deeply in the memory of my mother's greenhouse, where she started tomatoes from seed to sell, reserving a few for her garden and mine. When I wade in and tie my tomatoes to their stakes or cages, pruning a sucker branch here or there, tickling the blossoms to make them set fruit, the green stain on my hands and arms amuses me; watching the soap and water turn greenish as I clean up afterwards makes me smile. My tomatoes and I have had a close contact.

All but a few of my plants are in the ground. Most of them are in containers. I started with three Early Girl, known for flavor and -- earliness -- added two Shady Lady, that would be the ones in the picture to the right. Of course I made sure I had two Roma plants, for Bernie's salsa endeavors.

Then I bought two Rutgers, because the literature described their flavor as "incomparable." And because they were available, and I had some space, I found a home for a Better Boy and a Super Fantastic.

A spot was reserved for a wild tomato that came up last fall and over-wintered, much to my surprise. It formed the illustration for Anna Sykora's Piker Press article, "Crazy Tomato," and I was shocked that it made it to Spring. (It's a monster, with a scary amount of fruit and tendrils spanning four feet across, btw.)

One tomato plant made it home with me after I had a fervid conversation with a man I met at the hardware store -- he gifted me with a plant called "Delicious," a plant that has ended up on the endangered list in my garden after it failed to thrive. From its isolation ward spot near the avocado tree, it looks over at yet another plant, Container's Choice, that has a knack for vigorous growth and hiding ripe tomatoes under it's foliage.

And I was done with buying tomatoes at that point, especially since I found another wild tomato growing up near the Better Boy and Super Fantastic, the only non-container plants in the bunch.

Until the supermarket marked down its veggies, and I found a pony-pack of Beefsteak tomatoes whimpering at me. I bought a couple giant terracotta pots and another cage...

Day before yesterday, Bernie and I held a four-way taste test of ripe tomatoes from Early Girl, Shady Lady, Container's Choice, and Better Boy. Those are the cut ones in the middle, minus the Container's Choice, which was my favorite, and I ate it all before I thought to take a picture. Bernie's favorite was Early Girl. Then he made salsa from all the others.

Next day I picked another 16 tomatoes.

Today, Bernie is researching tomato paste and pizza sauce recipes.

I myself am waiting to find out what Beefsteak, Rutgers, and Super-Fantastic taste like.

And the wild ones. I love summer tomato season.

New Light

Glowing like they were lit from within, the corn stalks are nearly as beautiful now as they were when they were growing and green.

That's what I see when I get up in the morning; the light is already so different from high summer and slants in a different direction. Hitting the dried corn stalks, the sun highlights them against the dark shade of the other patio outside the kitchen door.

All too soon, I'll be removing my corn from the containers and planting a winter crop. What shall it be? Snow peas? Spinach? Some beet greens mixed in with some winter-blooming stock or Icelandic poppies? I'd love to grow some nice big purple cabbages, but I'd no sooner get them in than the damned ants will have planted aphids on them.

Got to do something about the ants, I remind myself.

I'm getting itchy for creative work again, which is very good. After the debilitating fall I took earlier this summer, and the sapping effort we had to make for the excellent new brick patio, I'm feeling an urge to make, to do, to try new things, to tap some of the ideas bouncing off the inside of my skull like autumn flies against screens and windowpanes.

Oh, wait. Chard. "Bright Lights" variety. Tastes great in stir-fries and soups, looks beautiful. With white pansies around the outside -- the pansies' petals are edible, too, albeit a bit peppery -- it will look gorgeous, and waking up on winter mornings will be a delight, too.

And just as an aside, I think that blogging once a month is reprehensible. I'll be back soon. Er.

The Winter Garden

I got a bit of a late start last autumn with my winter garden; I really should get stuff started in the beginning of October, but at that time I was still harvesting tomatoes and zucchinis. Nevertheless, the beginning of November still gave me enough time to get some greens in, and snow peas.

In the most successful planter (the one that got regular water and had no roaming cats taking a crap in it) I had snow peas, then a row of delicious red-leaf lettuce, and a double row of spinach.

We've had plenty of peas for sides of stir-fried veggies, and enough spinach for salads; I'm the only one who eats the dark lettuce, but I don't mind. A recent storm knocked my peas off their trellis, so the extra string was necessary to prop them up.

The chard and the seed onions didn't work out so well -- those were the ones that needed to go into the garden earlier. That was the planter that the cats got into, until I took twine and strung a criss-cross pattern across the top.

Soon it will be time to switch over to the summer planting, which will be tomatoes without rhyme or reason, and zukes again, and corn. And some cucumbers.

(And more tomatoes.)

One Big Container Tomato

I have two Bush Goliath plants in a half-barrel in the back yard. They set a bunch of tomatoes in short order; last year the one Bush Goliath was the only plant to really produce many tomatoes at all, which is why I planted them again this year.

This monster, as you can see from the scales, weighs 11 ounces. Not all the tomatoes from that planter are that big, but a number of them have been. Big Red here is from a July 1st picking.

Yesterday morning, to add to excess, I picked tomatoes and finished up with a basket weighing over 14 pounds.

14 pounds of tomatoes can just about give you the hives just by looking at them. Can you say, "Get out the canner, quick!"

Garden!

There's the corn field! The tall ones on the left are corn specially bred for container gardening, from Burpee Seeds, called "On Deck." I was going to plant the right side with the same variety two weeks after the initial planting, but then I lost the packet of seeds somewhere in the house, so I just filled in with some random sweet corn variety. Even if I don't get corn from the plants, they are so pretty.

The onions are doing great. On the left are some planted shallowly, for slicing onions; on the right are onion sets planted more deeply, for scallions. We've eaten a few of them, and they are sweet and delicious.

And then there are the tomatoes.

These are Early Girl, another Burpee variety. I planted three of them in containers in the front yard, and they are breaking their green ties with the weight of their fruit. And they are early, to be sure. Within a week of their planting, they had all set fruit; I ate the first ripe one the last week of May.

I think that if I could be heartless and calculating, I'd thin the little green tomatoes so that the remaining ones would get bigger, but a 2 1/2 inch tangy-sweet tomato is just the right size for a snack, so I don't. I just tie more green tape around them to keep them from falling to the ground.

So far my ploy has worked and ants have plundered none of them.

And then there are Bernie's Romas, which are perfect for salsas and sauces, being meaty little beasties.

The Roma tomatoes just have a cage around them; they are fairly polite as tomatoes go, and don't require a lot of leash training, although as you can see, some green tape has been employed to keep those heavily-laden vines up out of the ants.

Bernie should have enough salsa to keep him in nachos until Thanksgiving.

Now these maniacs are my Marglobes. They tend to be a late-season crop, but they've gone a bit mad this year. That fence is six feet high, and the Marglobes seem determined to climb over it. Tomorrow I'm going to go in with nails and green tape and corral them so that they don't fall over and strangle the orange tree that is out of sight on the right.

Marglobes are an "heirloom" variety, thin-skinned and not too prolific. I like their taste, and their habit. They're almost secretive about their fruit, keeping it covered by leaves. Then you see a twinkle of red, and tunneling through the foliage, come upon big, beautiful orbs of juicy goodness.

I noted the first Marglobe tomato blushing pink this morning. With the temps in the 90s during the day, and no lower than 60 at night, it should be ripe by Saturday.

Alex's eggplant garden has never looked better.

Except for one point, the fluffy bloom-laden plant has not set any eggplants yet. Last year, the plants looked ratty and bug-eaten, but produced loads of black shiny yuckiness.

I'm not fond of eggplant like Alex is ... but Bernie learned how to make a killer eggplant parmesan, and so we're all waiting ... I'm ready to take a paintbrush to those blossoms and see if I can speed pollination along.

And finally, for this tour, we have the harvest of thumblike carrots. They're supposed to be short and fat like that. Their flavor is scrumptious, and they kept well in the soil until this week.

While we snack on these (should take us right up to NFL pre-season),  I'll try to get Alex to remember the variety and plant some more in September. I was dubious about container carrots until I tasted one.

Tomorrow's morning task: pick a basketful of tomatoes, and get some onions ready for a salad for lunch.

Do stop by if you can take some tomatoes off our hands -- I haven't even begun to talk about the Goliath tomatoes out back.

Tomato Time!

INTRODUCING

Bush Goliath tomato plants!

I had to search for these little bruisers. Last year I found them at Walmart, but this year, I went to Ace Hardware, Lowe's, Walmart, Savemart, and finally found some at Home Depot. Bush Goliath is a compact tomato plant, not above three feet tall, and last year, my one plant produced more tomatoes than all the other plants combined. Indeed, we ate the last tomato from it in October. In the 2012 growing season, I made the Bush Goliath share the planter with Early Girl, but this year, I planted its twin in with it. I gave them both plenty of pelleted fertilizer to start them off, and 1/3 cup epsom salts mixed in the soil around them.

Bernie planted his peppers -- Italian sweet peppers in the round pot, and in back, in a nuclear-proof chimney flue, the notorious jalapeno. Last year, in this same spot, he grew more peppers than he knew what to do with. That's rosemary in front of the pot, by the way.

Still awaiting their permanent home, we have three Early Girls and one buffed Brandywine tomato. I've never grown Brandywine before, so it will be something of an experiment. I understand that the vines grow HUGE, which is something I like in a tomato. I see these tomatoes making a kind of hedge in the front yard, and perhaps a philosophical statement as well.

And there are the little darlings, Sweet Success cucumbers. I'll put a large tomato cage in with them for them to climb on. Last year my cucumber plants didn't do well at all; this year I'm hoping for a better result.

Along with the Early Girls and the Brandywine, I have three Marglobes (my go-to variety for the past couple years) and two Romas that need to go into the ground. And corn. And potatoes. And onions. I think Alex and John will plant their eggplants and artichokes this weekend. And amazingly enough, it's not even Orphan Tomato Rescue Season yet! I have so much to look forward to ...