The Garden - Volunteers, Food, Weeds and Blight

In recent years my sunflowers have been "volunteers", planted by last years' fallen seeds wherever they may end up after the garden has been turned and tilled.

 

The birds will have few, but large heads to feed on very soon.

Hopefully they will leave a seed or two behind for next year.

As always, my vegetable garden started with big dreams - too big - but food was harvested.

Some of the asparagus I planted from seed three years ago had a second, small, delicious crop.

But as soon as we had the combination of heat(came early in June) and rain(came abundantly in July), the garden - as usual - became a weedy mess, saved only by Dave's vigilant weeding and mulching during the stinking heat.

However, the dispiriting thing was what seemed to be blight.

It started here,...

... and soon branched out.

A few batches of sauce are in the freezer, but much more of the harvest went to the chickens.

At least it didn't go to waste.

The chickens were very happy.

 As Mia likes to remind me - 

Man plans. God laughs.

Oven Dried Tomatoes - Or - How to Stay Warm When The Temperature Cools!

I love the intense flavor in roasted vegetables, and sun dried tomatoes are right up there in taste. Its also a great way to store those too many tomatoes. A couple weeks ago, when we had some cooler days, I got started on this storage project. First I picked and washed a colander full of the small varieties of tomatoes from the garden. I had quite a bounty, and we just couldn't eat them fast enough. For most of the tomatoes I just sliced them in half, but some of the bigger tomatoes were cut in slices for quicker drying. Next time I will quarter them instead.Then I placed them in rows, not touching, in Pyrex dishes where I had sprinkled a layer of salt, and gave them another sprinkle of salt on top. When you type in "oven dried tomatoes" in your "search" box, you will not find one recipe alike. Some have you marinate the tomatoes; heavily spice the tomatoes; oil the tomatoes; peel the tomatoes. I did none of this. I would not recommend peeling the tomatoes though. The slices that exposed the flesh to the glass were reduced to almost nothing, and were difficult to pry from the glass. Resting the tomatoes on their skin make them easy to collect. The first batch I made followed a dinner that had been cooking at 400 degrees. I popped the tomatoes in and let the oven cool to 200. I looked up several recipes that gave temperatures from 130 to 200F, and I would recommend 200F with occasionally moving things along with a temperature boost to 400 and then turning it back down to 200 for a couple hours. One thing you need to be sure of is that the pieces are totally dry. You retrieve the pieces one by one, depending on size, and I think the process took at least eight hours. Maybe more. Some recipes said it would take 16 hours, so you may want to leave them on your lowest setting overnight. I did this on a dry day, so I'm sure that helped.I then let them cool before I put them in a freezer bag to keep frozen for when I need them in a recipe. Again, some recipes stored the tomatoes in oil and I might do that another time, but I wanted mine to keep as long as possible without spoiling.

There is nothing like the taste of summer food in the cold of winter.
I can't wait!

Garden Anatomy

Summer Salad

Tonight we'll need salad with our burritos, and happy to say, it will all be from our garden, weed haven that it is.

I tried a few mixes of salads and greens with mixed success. One or the other individual plant would bolt, and so I yanked that out of the garden while the rest of the blend was OK. I think part of it was too much at once, and trying to use everything as it came, and maybe waiting a bit too long.

The peppers are sneaking in, and I am in love with the color and smell of this creamy colored one. To me its like jewelry - beautiful and precious.

After my earlier panic, the tomatoes are holding up, and I think have improved since my late blight scare, but we still have yellow shoulders. The chickens are enjoying the trimmings, so no waste as usual.

But no store bought in months now, and much greener, prettier food. Almost a shame not to put it in a vase and admire.

Late Blight

I'm getting a little nervous. One end of my tomato row is looking a bit unwell, but I still have tomatoes on the vine. Perhaps its just the moisture and my bad gardening habits. But with each salad I make, I take time to savor the taste of these tomatoes, just in case the season is tragically short. Even non-gardeners have read enough about late blight to know something bad is happening to tomatoes and potatoes. Today an Op-Ed gave me a lot of food for thought. Interestingly, it was written by a chef who cares about where food comes from. You Say Tomato, I Say Agricultural Disaster .

According to plant pathologists, this killer round of blight began with a widespread infiltration of the disease in tomato starter plants. Large retailers like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart bought starter plants from industrial breeding operations in the South and distributed them throughout the Northeast. (Fungal spores, which can travel up to 40 miles, may also have been dispersed in transit.) Once those infected starter plants arrived at the stores, they were purchased and planted, transferring their pathogens like tiny Trojan horses into backyard and community gardens. Perhaps this is why the Northeast was hit so viciously: instead of being spread through large farms, the blight sneaked through lots of little gardens, enabling it to escape the attention of the people who track plant diseases.

In my summary, this article makes another case for Buy Fresh-Buy Local in the case of starter plants. I'm not sure if the information is fact or theory, but it makes some sense. It will make me think more about my source choices

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09barber.html?th&emc=th