 Squishy slugs getting to know each other on my strawberry plants  I think that these slugs are having intimate relations on this nice soft slippery leaf. Disgusting creatures acting out their carnal XXX desires on my strawberries. Lucky slugs today. Squished gross slugs tomorrow. Have fun guys, because tomorrow you will be ant food.
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 Tomatoes-eye view of blender  One of the three huge bags of tomatoes that got picked last night for freezing  Plum tomatoes definitely have more paste and less water. The residue that remains behind on the sides of the pans hardens into "tomato candy," My son and I stood in front of the sink scraping the sides of the pans till they were so clean they did not need to be put into the dish washer. The crusty stuff reminded me of the apricot rolls I used to eat as a kid and I wondered why the hell our food industry has not yet seen value in making this stuff available for sale at candy counters as an option to the sugar/high fructose corn syrup stuff that rots your teeth and makes us fat. Sounds weird but I'm serious, this stuff is great! I guess they would have to come up with a better name than "tomato candy."  I picked beets yesterday. Pretty cool plant  A customer gave these to me for seeds. Nuclear powered hot scalding peppers. She blends them into chili. Her plants looked horrible. I asked her what kind of plant food she used and she said "nothing." I could tell!  Gross yet minor damage  Just one of many little bastards. Will identify and scheme this winter.  Yet another bumper crop. Just cut minor blemishes off, slice up and put in blender.  Frying pan surface area gets rid of water faster  Plum tomatoes with eggplant for freezing  This is last nights dinner with Cauliflower and tomato sauce poured over the top in the oven at 350 With a garden like this who needs the grocery store??? No sense in having a big garden unless you process the food, especially when you least feel like it.....Jose!!!
 I eat tomatoes like other people eat apples. Cucumbers too. I'm going surfing all day today and undoubtedly I'll be wanting to snack on something hydrating and food-like but not heavy.
 Removing water from the blended tomatoes, simmering them down into a paste. You gotta use plum tomatoes because if you use normal tomatoes you will stand at the stove all day. Let it cool, pour into zip lock baggies for efficient storage in the freezer.  Eggplant mixed in with heirloom tomato paste  Different tomatoes have different colors- so do the sauces  Done and packaged for efficient freezing  I cut way way back all the basil. Now there's nothing left but sticks. Hopefully they will grow back in time for producing tomato paste for winter     Scissors offer sweet revenge  Bad bad bug. It got snipped also  Cut the tomato off the plant- don't rip it or you might also be pulling off the next crop  Half the eggplants from just four plants  From four plants  All heirloom tomatoes with zero chemicals. Minor issues with some of them but I don't care- I'll just cut the blemishes off. I guess that's the trade off with organic.    Holy moly.
I stumbled upon a great idea (that old Italian gardeners could say is common knowledge). Don't plant everything at the same time in the spring. Plant a lot but don't stop. Plant little by little after your initial planting and you will get fresh food supplied to you by Mother Nature a little bit at a time. This cauliflower was excess at the nursery. Looked like shit actually but I planted them anyway with our custom food in the hole. The plants came back, the weather got cooler and now I have TONS of fresh healthy organic cauliflower!  I just trimmed the rosemary into cone-shaped trees for Christmas and this is the result. Now I've got to go get lamb to cook so I can use the rosemary!
 Four types of potatoes will keep developing till the first freeze. What an EASY plant to grow!  I forgot I planted these then saw these huge round green skinned cucumbers that weren't cucumbers at all.  Summer-planted cauliflower loving the cooler weather. Definitely a plant you gotta spray to kill these hidden gross caterpillars. BT will kill them when sprayed on (it's not a chemical, it's a biological control).  Cauliflower stems and all cooking like bacon in a frying pan. Certainly tastes great, like candy. It was yesterday's lunch.  Heirloom tomatoes sliced with vinegar and seasonings. Even kids eat this down to nothing- amazing plants.  Fried in garlic and olive oil is eggplant just picked with home made barbecue sauce (recipe posted about two weeks ago). Tastes so good even my son ate it- nothing left.     I figured I would save seeds and start them myself next year from my best plants. Made sense to me. To do this I knew I had to dry them really well before bagging them, bag needs a label, and I put a few grains of rice in to finish the drying just in case the seeds wanted to rot. You don't need many seeds at all. This pile of drying cayenne peppers came from just six plants-enough for years of spicing, so I really only needed to just keep one or two seeds. I started drying them on a stump that I could see sucking the moisture out of the seeds immediately.
Really, why buy them when you can grow them? It's not hard but not that easy at the same time. More on that later! |
AuthorDavid Benjamin- horticulture degree North Carolina State University graduated 1983, has worked at the nursery since 1976. Somewhat tired of eating grocery store food. Archives
December 2018
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