August 2013, New England

Camp, Your garden looks so pretty, so healthy. 

Look at that garden grow, Camp!  I knew you'd catch up with at amazing green thumb of yours...and green pointer & green ring & green pinky &, &, &...

camprn wrote:
It is my understanding that we are fortunate in the north as both late and early blight do not survive freezing temperatures, unless it is on surviving plant tissue, like a potato that got left in the ground and come out of dormancy the following spring.

This is good to know since I had that bout of early blight on the toms a while back.  

Speaking of toms, I had to pick 2 large greenish ones today as they had strange looking holes in them and my curiosity got the best of me.  After dissecting them it looked like something was just passing thru, then left.  So I cut out that area, sauteed them up with some beet greens, cabbage, garlic & salt, and plopped it on some rice.  Holy moly were they good!  I had no idea you could do that with green toms!  

Today I pulled out a bunch of greens and lettuces that have served me numerous harvests and then planted the usual stuff today for fall:
I also have 3 different lettuces growing in the window waiting out this heat.

I then pulled up the rest of the onions as I need the space. Some of the onions are so small that I guess I'll use them for seed next year.  Is that how it's done?  
Under the wood is the spinach I planted a couple weeks ago when it was so cool.  Shading it like this seems to keep it happy...so far.

Todays harvest less what was eaten for supper:
The box contains my lettuce for the week. Yum!

CC

Nice! Great idea about the wood shade, CC.

I read an article snippet, someone said they put their green tomatoes on a tray and slide them under the bed and by Christmas they're ripe! I wonder if that would work. I think I'll try it. 

Didn't know you could eat green tomatoes. Mine are ALL green still, except for some cherry tomatoes. Today I pulled 4 hornworms off, one was the biggest I've ever seen. 

And my 4 x 8 onion bed is now almost completely volunteer tomatoes. This is what happens when you compost directly in the garden boxes! Funny how we so carefully plant indoors and set up lights and water and soil starter, etc., and then you have the volunteers in the garden that just pop up, all green and hardy and just as robust as the nurtured little ones. Kids these days....

Everyone's gardens are looking so lush & green! 

I'm finally starting to get some production out of mine, though at this point, I'm not very hopeful at all that the toms will ripen.  DH said it was 38 this morning when he got up. 

So far, 'Uralskiy Ranniy' has been the star, giving me 3 ripe red toms with two more about ready and 5-6 more good sized ones behind those.  It's a dwarf plant & has earned a spot in next year's garden fer-sure!  The other tom that I've gotten to taste was 'Sungella', which wasn't particularly tasty.  I have another on the windowsill hoping that maybe I picked them too soon and the flavor will improve if I give it a day or two.

The rest are loaded with VERY green toms, although one of the cherries, 'Peacevine Cherry' is starting to show some color.

I also picked 4 eggplants from my 'Baby' eggplant and have left a fruit on it to mature in order to get some seeds from it.  I'm not sure that the variety's name really *is* 'Baby', but that's how it was sold to me, and so far it's lived up to it's name: small plant, small soft-ball sized fruit, as well as productive, early and tasty.  What's not to love?

Molly, never fear! If it get's to where you are going to have a frost, pick everything green and bring it in the house. Last year I had fresh tomatoes on the Thanksgiving table that had ripened inside.  

This is what it looked like for me last year the day before frost. I cut the vines of the cherry types and lugged the whole mess of it onto the 3 season porch for later gleaning.

And if you have a lot, make green tomato dill pickles, relish, or chutney. The cherry tomatoes are great for dilly pickles.

Kay

Camp, how did you keep the tomatoes until Thanksgiving? What a treat that must have been!

martha wrote:Camp, how did you keep the tomatoes until Thanksgiving? What a treat that must have been!

Some of them simply took that long to ripen inside.

But they didn't rot - how did you do that?

martha wrote:But they didn't rot - how did you do that?

well, some of them didn't make it all the way to November and December... for a variety of reasons... some of them did rot, some of them got fried green, some were turned into pickles, and some of them ripened as late as December. I had hundreds of green tomatoes at first frost last season.  

I had a ton of green tomatoes last frost too, and they pretty much rotted so I dumped them in the compost pile. Which have probably turned out to be my volunteers this summer... I had put them in a paper bag in the cupboard (you know how they say paper bags help to ripen things).

So I would say, lay them single layer, flat.

NHGardener wrote:I had a ton of green tomatoes last frost too, and they pretty much rotted so I dumped them in the compost pile. Which have probably turned out to be my volunteers this summer... I had put them in a paper bag in the cupboard (you know how they say paper bags help to ripen things).

So I would say, lay them single layer, flat.

Yes, agreed! I kept most of my larger green tomatoes in a single layer in flat, low sided, cardboard trays.

Getting ready for a taste test this weekend: 
Pink Brandywines
 
CC

What a beautiful day!

Why are none of my tomatoes turning red? There are a ton of blossoms, tons of bumblebees, many green tomatoes, and there they sit. Green. Day after day. Weird.

The cherry tomatoes are red. I've been using those.

CapeCoddess wrote:Look at that garden grow, Camp!  I knew you'd catch up with at amazing green thumb of yours...and green pointer & green ring & green pinky &, &, &...

camprn wrote:
It is my understanding that we are fortunate in the north as both late and early blight do not survive freezing temperatures, unless it is on surviving plant tissue, like a potato that got left in the ground and come out of dormancy the following spring.

This is good to know since I had that bout of early blight on the toms a while back.  

Yes, this is very good to know!

Speaking of toms, I had to pick 2 large greenish ones today as they had strange looking holes in them and my curiosity got the best of me.  After dissecting them it looked like something was just passing thru, then left.  So I cut out that area, sauteed them up with some beet greens, cabbage, garlic & salt, and plopped it on some rice.  Holy moly were they good!  I had no idea you could do that with green toms!  

Me neither. I just tried them for the first time this summer, and they're really good, aren't they? Makes me not worry too much if my tomatoes aren't all ripened by the time the plants start dying off this fall. I'll be happy to eat 'em green.

Gilberties. A volunteer squash of unknown type in the lower right of the frame.




Two volunteer yellow pear tomato plants. That is a 6' tall ladder, the box is about 8 inches deep.


Rattlesnake pole beans.

Wait a minute, hold the press...Camp, are you saying those tall plants next to the ladder are volunteer pear toms???  

And what's the writing on the ruler for? Something to do with the honey?

CC

CapeCoddess wrote:
Wait a minute, hold the press...Camp, are you saying those tall plants next to the ladder are volunteer pear toms???  

Yes, I found them growing amongst the early planted chard and I transplanted them. I had no idea what type of tomato they were when I transplanted them. I ignored them for the longest time and they put out a bunch of suckers and were sprawled on the ground. I finally put a pole in the ground and tied them up about 4 weeks ago. Gave them a heavy pruning at that time and another one today.

CapeCoddess wrote:
And what's the writing on the ruler for?  Something to do with the honey?

CC

The writing on the ruler are measurements for cutting honey comb to fit into a jar. The jar is then filled with liquid honey. It is called chunk honey.

Looks like your gilberties are still green, too.

My volunteer tomatoes are sprawled over the beds too, but i didn't tie them up. Yesterday when I went out there I saw a mole or vole or something like that scampering from one bed to another. Maybe that's the reason I have no red tomatoes....

Next summer, there will be no weeds (between boxes) and no sprawling. Ship shape and clean as a whistle.

I'm getting to be a believer in 1x8 or 2x8 boxes, and not 4x8s. Garlic or something really low maintenance - onions too - would work in a 4x8, but otherwise, picking is too hard, esp. if one side is trellised.

NHGardener wrote:
I'm getting to be a believer in 1x8 or 2x8 boxes, and not 4x8s. Garlic or something really low maintenance - onions too - would work in a 4x8, but otherwise, picking is too hard, esp. if one side is trellised.

I'm with you, NHG!  Even watering with the watering can can be difficult on the trellised ones.  I love my smaller cupboard boxes. I like the 'new' 3x6 but get mad when I have to get up off my duff to go to the other side to weed/thin/harvest/water.  2 by anything will be in my future.

OK, I put the mother through the tomato taste test tonight.  She is a Supertaster and has taste buds like Chris Kimball on Americas Test Kitchen.  

Here's what we had to test:  
All were heirlooms except the Supersonic.  All were completely ripe on the bottom to the point of having to be picked now or be ruined.

The heirloom weigh-in:  
Considering that I saw heirlooms on sale for $5/lb yesterday at the farmers market, this is almost $12 of tomatoes here.    Crazy, right?

Here they are sliced - Pink Brandywine, Beefsteak, Red Brandywine, Supersonic (which we ate most of before I thought to take this photo):

OK, here are the results - none were the least bit acid, none needed salt, she couldn't pick a favorite as all were excellent but different:  
That's 'Mild' not 'Mud'.  The numbers in the () are the weights in oz.

For my average taste buds the Pink Brandywine was a bit blah.  The rest were excellent but I favor the Supersonic.

And there you have it.  See ya in Sept!   

CC

Aha, CC. That just confirms my latest train of thought: Just plant the darn tomato. They're all good.

Rain, beautiful rain. My garden really needed this steady constant rain.

Okay. So I dug up some beautiful red volunteer potatoes yesterday. We had them in homefries this morning. Yum. These must have been from when I threw the reject potatoes in there to compost last summer. They are much better looking than any of the potatoes I tried to plant last year.

So if you take your old potatoes, throw them in a bed, what do you think the chances are they will sprout the following year? Is it true that potatoes can sit there all winter and then sprout? Because if that's the case, it's easier to just toss your rejects into a bed to grow as bigger and better potatoes next summer.

Or, it could have been just a fluke.

But, it works with spinach, right? What other vegetables does it work with, that if you just leave them in the ground as seeds, they sprout the following year?

I'd rather plant in fall than in spring.

NHG, just an FYI, there is a new September thread that has begun.
I too am happy for the rain.

Regarding planting potatoes in the fall, I think you have a fluke, but it does happen in NE. One thing to consider is making sure the planted tubers are disease free. Blight can carry over in living tissue (tubers).
I plant garlic and some flower seed in the fall. I tried spinach last year but it was a bust. I am going to try again.

Oops! Thanks for telling me camprn.