Lazy summer days in the garden

It has been a lazy summer, we are staying mostly home and we are enjoying our garden as much as we can. I try to find a little time to work on the garden in the evening after work and after the little one goes to bed.

We are harvesting beautiful and delicious tomatoes. For lunch I made myself a fresh tomato salad with basil just a little bit of olive oil. It was perfect. 

Let me show you in pictures how days are here in our Philadelphia backyard. 

Tomatoes

Pretty zinnias

Giant sunflowers

We had a lot of concord grapes

A mix in our planters

Hollihocks

Bird bath and a garden fairy

Garden fairy 

The last of our peaches. We had so much I wasn't ready. I mostly ate them fresh and baked a couple crumbles ( mixed with blackberries ... delicious )

What about you ?

What is happening in your gardens ?

putting up tomatoes: crockpot tomato base & canned tomato jam

on any given day this week, if you were to walk into my kitchen, you would find tomatoes.

lots of tomatoes.

tomatoes chopped & tomatoes simmering in pots. tomatoes in crockpots & tomatoes roasting in the oven. tomatoes in the freezer & tomatoes put up for the winter.

it's the season of tomatoes & we are oh so thankful for the bounty!

today i want to share with you two new ways i preserve & put up tomatoes for the winter:

1. crockpot tomato base - a simple way to preserve your tomatoes when you're running short on time is to chop them up, skin & all, & place them in the crockpot. i add frozen or fresh basil for flavor. i put the crockpot on high & allow the tomatoes to simmer for around 12 hours. halfway through the cooking process, i remove the lid to allow the liquid to evaporate. once it's formed into a thick tomato base, i add two cups of tomato base to labeled ziplock bags & place them in the freezer. during the winter months, we add tomatoes to soups, chills, crockpot meals & more. this is the perfect base for adding to almost any meal. 

2. tomato jam - tomato jam is a lengthy process, but your home is sure to smell amazing! to make tomato jam, i followed this recipe. for extra flavor, as recommended by a friend, i added a hint of smoked paprika. it is delicious paired with bread & cream cheese!

happy tomato season!

- natalie

our favorite tomato varieties and tomato spacing trick

 

this weekend we planted tomatoes. 48 tomato plants to be exact. hello, canned tomato sauce & salsa! 

we planted four varieties - cherokee purple, sungolds, celebrity and brandywine. those are among our favorites for eating & canning. they also grow well here in the south. what are your favorite tomato varieties?

with a daunting task like an evening of planting tomatoes, a helpful little trick is always nice. 

our garden is on the smaller size so we like to maximize our bounty with precise spacing. my husband came up with a fun idea i thought i'd share with you today.

we planted our tomatoes exactly 2 ft. apart. this allows our homemade tomato cages to fit perfectly while providing enough space for our tomatoes to grow. using a piece of dried bamboo, a tape measurer & pruning shears, we cut a piece of bamboo exactly 2 ft. long. we then used this measuring (bamboo) stick to measure the spacing between each plant. 

 instead of worrying about getting your measuring tape or yard stick out each time you plant, simply place the measuring stick at the base of your tomato plant that has already been planted. at the end of the stick, plant your next tomato. it's easy peasy & a great activity for the youngins in the garden!

happy planting!

- natalie

abundance

The late summer garden means baskets full of food and crowded kitchen counters. Our dining table makes me claustrophobic lately, covered with bowls of tomatoes and zucchini squash and not always enough time to deal with it as quickly as I should. I won't even talk about the fridge full of beans and cucumbers. I won't lie, it's a little overwhelming sometimes.

This week I hope to do some canning, but in the mean time we've been as creative with meals as time allows, and loving the fact that produce never enters our grocery bags.

I wanted to share a few tasty things we've been especially enjoying recently.

Our favorite summer treat is slow roasted tomatoes, which we add to sandwiches, pasta, pizza, and anything else we can think of. Seriously, we talk about roasted tomatoes all year long, in anticipation of the next tomato harvest.  They're a little bit like bites of ketchup (did you add ketchup to everything when you were a kid, too?) only 6.9 million times better. Natalie talked about her method here last week.

I was turned on to a recipe for zucchini pizza crust recently, and have since made it twice. I doubled the batch the first time, and tripled it the next. It's a great way to use up a couple large summer squashes, and it makes a delicious, moist-yet-crispy crust. Make extra because leftover pizza is always a great idea.

The recipe seems pretty forgiving, and flour substitutions have worked well for me. I use a combination of brown rice flour and flax meal, in place of the almond meal called for.

I've also been blending up improv tomato sauces. This one was made with a mix of fresh and roasted tomatoes (mostly orange, hence the color), fresh picked Walla Walla sweet onion, ground sunflower seeds, sea salt, dulse and fresh oregano, thyme and savory. This particular sauce was pretty thick, making it a versatile sauce or spread.

So in the end, I guess growing a garden all comes down to pizza (just kidding). But really, these have been some of the most satisfying pizza pies I've ever made. Almost completely home grown, and so representative of the season right now. And one single place to combine all our favorite things. Don't forget the pesto!

What are your favorite summer meals?
(And, any favorite ways to preserve green beans?)

ideas for tomatoes

i have been a stranger around these parts for over a month now. that doesn't mean the happenings around the farm have slowed down. not one bit, really. the work is never ending around here, but it brings about a feeling of satisfaction that can't be matched. there's always a project to complete, an animal in need of care, a garden to weed, produce to harvest & a bounty of delicious summer goodies to put up. we are thankful for this work & this season of abundance! 

abundance is indeed the word to describe this time of year. every day we come in from the garden with a basket of tomatoes, peppers, basil & cucumbers. i have pickled, canned, preserved & frozen baskets of deliciously ripe produce this summer. 

this summer i have also found two new, family-approved ways to enjoy these favorites in our garden. 

inspired by a flurry of women on social media, i tried that one pot pasta that so many have talked about. i was a bit hesitant at first to serve this up at dinnertime for fear of soggy noodles & flavorless sauce, but i can now confidently share that it was indeed a hit. that martha is a genius!  we mixed some garden tomatoes, purple onion, basil & garlic in with the noodles. easy cooking, easy clean-up & a delicious dinner. win, win, win!

i also tried my hand at roasting tomatoes. i chopped up tomatoes skin & all, both small & large, & placed them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper. i spread a bit of olive oil on the top & then added a mix of salt, pepper, fresh rosemary & whole cloves of garlic. the small tomatoes roasted for about 3 hours at 225 degrees in the oven. the larger tomatoes took about 4 hours. 

we have enjoyed these slow-roasted tomatoes on salads, in leftover pasta & as a snack. i froze the leftovers on a cookie sheet & placed them in a freezer bag for the winter. just another way to enjoy this season of abundance during the cold winter months!

what are some new ways you have found to preserve the summer harvest? please share!

planting tomatoes

Things are moving along nicely in the field garden.

We planted our tomatoes at the end of May and almost forgot that our farmer friend had given us some mycorrhizae for our tomato plants. Earlier in the spring, we visited C. and she mentioned that she was planning to dip her tomato roots in a mycorrhizal solution in hopes of lessening the chances of tomato diseases such as early blight and septoria leaf spot. She doled us out a portion and suggested around 1 tsp per gallon of water.




Bone meal and Epsom salts in the planting holes.

Dipping the roots.

A storm arrived in the days following, and we lost 4 of our plants. Luckily, we have extras.

I'm excited to see if the mycorrhizae makes a difference. The four replacement plants won't be dipped in the solution, so it will be easy to see the difference. I'll be sure to report back.

Have any of you tried this? What have you noticed?

early fall harvests

 

okay, i'll admit it.  i am guilty of neglecting my gardens.  i know i'm not alone, which is why i feel comfortable admitting this here.  clearly taking on my most ambitious gardening efforts the same summer that i was planning a wedding [mine] and that my full-time job was extremely demanding was not the best idea.  but still, i do not regret it.  i know i could have actually pulled out the peas once they dried up back in july.  and i know i could have planted some fall crops in their place, and in the place of the garlic i harvested months ago.  but i didn't.  and you know what? it's okay.

as much as i may have neglected my gardens these past two months, it is still producing.  still making me happy every time i pick a tiny little cherry tomato off those volunteer plants wedged between the chard and beans.  still surprising me when i pulled up over a dozen small onions that i thought were dead and shriveled [even if they're not much larger than the starts i planted back in the early spring, i will still eat them with pride].

so. even though my garden could have been better, more productive, more lush, more organized.  it's not.  and i am still so very grateful for what it produces.  because of my efforts, or in spite of them. 

Tomatoes

This has not been the best year for tomatoes. In fact, most of our tomatoes (with the exception of Cherokee Purple) have experienced some serious cracking due to a dry July followed by heavy rains. We've also been contending with septoria leaf spot, watching as it crawls up the base of our plants. After reading up on septoria, I think we are partially to blame. We often plant our tomatoes a little closer together than is ideal, due to lack of space and our desire to plant many varieties. Have any of you been dealing with this fungus? It is quite common.

Still, the tomatoes are coming in (finally!) and I have my eye on a few ways to preserve them for winter eating:

Tomato Jam Food in Jars

DIY sun-dried tomatoes Todd Porter and Diane Cu

Salsa Rojo Local Kitchen

Do you have any favorite recipes for preserving tomatoes?

first tomatoes!

there's really not much else to say besides that.  these are three of my four first full-sized tomatoes this year [we ate the other one before i could get a photo. i might have been the most delicious thing i've ever tasted].

i have never been very successful with full-sized tomatoes [cherry tomatoes, especially amy's favorite sungolds have always been great!]. in fact, last year i only harvested one single tomato from nine plants, so i already know this year is better! i'm already on track for a bit of a bumper crop and i could not be more proud.

whether you grow them yourself, from seed or seedling, or sample some from a local farmer, the first tomatoes of the season are always cause for celebration. 

preserving the harvest

over the last couple of months i have spent hours in the kitchen preserving the harvests of our garden & surrounding farms. freezing pesto, pickling vegetables, making jam & canning tomatoes are among the many tasks on my to do list during the summer months. i particularly enjoy the act of preserving food; i feel a strong connection to the generations before me when i save food for the winter months.

above are several jars of herbed seasoned tomatoes made last night. my recipe came from ball's complete book of home preserving, by far the most helpful source i have found. do you have any sources for home preserving that are particularly helpful (& delicious)? i would really love to hear about your adventures in home preserving.

a trip to the farmers' market

i love a good farmers' market. there is just something about a saturday morning, local foods & farmers that really gets me. i'm sure you have similar feelings.

this weekend, we made a trip to the fayetteville farmers' market. this market is an hour north of us & the best in the area. although the trip to the farmers' market is very different from the bike ride to the market in our old town, it is exciting to know that an abundance of fresh food is so close, especially in this area of the country.

i was charmed by the pale white onions covered under the shade of a tent.

& the fennel stacked neatly for the taking. i purchased one & look forward to roasting it alongside a whole chicken tonight.

the textured leaves of this gourmet-variety cabbage are beautiful.

while we are still waiting for our bounty from the garden in our own backyard, we can thankfully rely on our farmers & their hard work.

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in other news, i wanted to share something interesting happening around here. deep into the month of july, arkansas is usually brimming with fresh tomatoes of all varieties. at the farmers' market in fayetteville, though, we noticed only a handful of farmers selling green tomatoes & only a couple with small, ripe tomatoes. this is also happening at the research & education farm, the kerr center for sustainable agriculture, where luke works. due to the high heats of 105 degrees lasting most of the day, our tomato plants are suffering & unable to produce. the knowledge that cold temperatures can damage tomato plants is also applied to very hot temperatures, too. flowers may bloom on the plants, but fruit never sets. in extreme conditions, blossom drop can occur.

thankfully, in our own garden, we have spotted two tomatoes. our nine plants are still holding onto their blossoms & growing by the day. it will be interesting to see what happens as this drought continues in the south.

pruning tomatoes

this season we have been very intentional about pruning our tomato plants. we have never gardened in such a small space so pruning is essential. this way our tomato plants are growing up rather than out & taking up more space than needed.

in order to encourage growth upward instead of outward, cut the side branches from the stem up to 3-6 inches from the soil line.

when doing this, make sure not to damage the stem & use a sharp tool to make a clean cut.

another way to prune your plant is by removing the "suckers" located in the joint connecting the side branch from the stem. if the suckers are allowed to grow, this will lead to a more dense, bushier tomato plant.

happy pruning of your happy, healthy tomato plants!

another note: make sure to prune only healthy tomato plants. weak plants will feel the shock of pruning & might not do well to the changes. also, prune gradually, making sure not to remove several branches at a time.