I don’t have a photo of last night’s yummy dinner because well, I ate it instead of photographing it, but it was one of those delicious surprises that happen sometimes when you’re just making something out of what you have. I had a bunch of tomatoes that were about to go bad on me — not enough for a real pot of sauce, three or four big-ish red ones, a few Jaunne Flammes and a handful of cherries. I dithered for a while because I didn’t really feel like cooking, I felt more like heating something up but I didn’t…
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Sigh. It’s that time of year again. My house has been wide open since the middle of June and in the last week it’s become clear that it’s time to close the windows and, double sigh, turn the heat on again. It’s time to come inside. It’s cold out there — in the low 40s at night, and we’ve had rain so it’s damp. No more sitting in the backyard under the Coleman lantern reading novels into the night. Even with the firepit going, it’s just too cold, and too damp, and unpleasant. Part of me loves this back-to-school feeling.…
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Over at the gorgeous A Way To Garden, Margaret asks what your tendency is, to savor or store the produce bounty that anyone with a garden confronts this time of year. I’ve written before about what an inspiration Joan Dye Grussow is to my garden project, and so I think there’s nothing more to say than, yeah, I’m a hoarder. So here’s this weekend’s tomato harvest. The weather has gotten cold, and I’ve had to cover the row of plants with plastic, so now we’re in that dodgy part of the year when I have no idea whether there will…
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Here they are, the first tomatoes of the season. Sasha’s Altai, Prairie Fire and a couple of Galinas. The catalog copy is right — the Sasha’s Altai are delicious — I took one bite of my lunch this afternoon and thought, as I do every year, why would anyone eat a tomato out of season? I really mean it — I’d rather wait all year and eat delicious tomatoes for a few months, than eat those hard things from the store (canned tomatoes are a different matter altogether). I didn’t really get my act together as far as basil goes…
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I’d post a photo but since I picked my first yellow cherry Galina yesterday and popped it right into my mouth, well, that would be impossible. I’m thrilled with my tomatoes this year, something I didn’t think would be the case since I couldn’t even get them in the ground until June 17, which is 2-3 weeks late. But the new bed along the fence, combined with the alarming-but-effective pruning of all side suckers, has me looking at a bumper crop of tomatoes. The early bush ones are starting to pink up — the Sasha’s Altai and Prairie Fire —…
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Well, it’s been about six weeks since the garden went in, and things are going great guns out there. I’ve been through the cool weather crops — spinach, arugula, turnips (mostly greens), and broccoli rabe — I spent last weekend pulling up two rows of bolted arugula that was 2 feet high with pinkish flowers, as well as pulling a bushel basket worth of turnip greens. So now we’re on to warm weather crops, which here in Montana include fava beans. I haven’t harvested any of them yet, some of the pods feel like they’ve only got one or two…
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I’ll have some garden pictures soon — it’s been a strange summer in the garden. Summer started so late, and then got hot fairly quickly, so some things, like the peas didn’t really work this summer. I got a few peas, but the vines burned up before they could really produce much.The arugula bolted as well — it was a thick hedge of 2-3 foot tall plants with pretty flowers, but by that point the leaves are so bitter they’re only good cooked, and frankly, the arugula was crowding out the peppers in that bed. So, out they came and…
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I don’t know why it’s taken me five years of gardening in these beds to see the light as far as mulch goes, but I’m a convert. I mulched the tomatoes in the new beds first — it gets really hot against that fence, the remote thermometer routinely reads in the high 90s and 100s during a sunny afternoon, and tomatoes don’t like to have hot feet. So I mulched with a couple of inches of straw. I was shocked at how effective it’s been. Even with the recent hot weather I’m only having to water every couple of days…
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The weather has finally gotten nice, and the garden is so lovely that I find I want to spend all my time out here. I’m blogging from the garden right this very minute. My new fence adds just the right privacy — I no longer feel watched by my neighbor — and I seem to have been out here all the time lately. Of course, spring came so late that I was effectively trapped in the house from October until June. So now, it’s all outside, all the time. I’ve been eating breakfast and dinner using my dining tables Perth…
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Here it is — my first basket of greens — this is Senza Testa from Seeds of Italy. I love this strange green — it grows like a weed, is slightly bitter, a little fuzzy, and really nice. I cooked these with some onion, chile, garlic and vermouth. Then I finished it off with some of my Milk Lady’s delicious yellow Jersey cream and ate it over pasta. I also harvested this crate of broccoli rabe — both the Cima di Rapa Quarantina – Broccoli Rabe and the Cima di Rapa Sessantina. I’ve planted both of these at the same…