Magnificent Kale

The kale is fast becoming the star of the new garden. It's grown fast and without complaint. I feared I'd killed some of the seedlings when I tried to dig them up and transplant while thinning the row. Nope. They survived, despite neglect (was out of town for a couple days and didn't water).

Kale doing great.

The tomatoes are giving me dirty looks every time I go down into the basement to water them. "Why aren't you transplanting us? Surely all danger of frost is well past!" Yeah, well, they're right. I'll try to harden them off this week then put them out next weekend. So quit nagging me tomatoes! The variety is exceedingly unimpressive this year - Cherokee Purple, a few cherries, and one measly San Marzano. I have a number of volunteers that sprang up around the zucchini, I may just roll the dice and see what I get.

Please be San Marzanos!

Soon I'll be in zucchini city. Here's number one!

First meal of zucchini!

Sure, he's only an inch long at the moment, but I figure by the end of the week he'll be the size of a baseball bat.

Also planted a row of cucumbers. All pickling. We have quite the infestation of anti-cuke bugs at the community garden, so we'll see if I get anything. I'll set up a trellis for them in the next day or two, before they get going.

Progress Report

I started plants in the basement a bit late, but I do have seedlings at this point. The bad news, I have all of ONE San Marzano. Tons of cherry tomatoes and Cherokee Purple. Not too many peppers and eggplants, but a few.

At the community garden I have garlic from last fall, which somehow survived the swampy conditions of the winter and early spring. I put in zucchini a bit before the last frost date and they're going strong. The surprise superstar of the garden is kale. Planted quite a bit, thinned and transplanted some, thought they would keel over, but they seem to have survived.

Kale post thinning.

Last Year's Tomato Harvest, This Year's Plans

So I kept a fairly careful accounting of all the tomatoes I hauled in last year, but then neglected to post it. Here's what I got:

• 7.00 lbs 4th of July
• 8.93 lbs 4th
• 12.96 lbs 4th
• 
  
• 5.65 lbs Amish Paste?
• 12.91 lbs AP
• 17.72 lbs AP
• 
  
• 11.66 lbs Cherokee Purple
• 
  
• 5.41 lbs Brandywine
• 8.28 lbs Brandywine
• 13.14 lbs Brandywine
• 14.66 lbs Brandywine
• 
  
• 0.83 lbs Indigo Rose
• 
  
• 2.45 lbs Plum Regal
• 4.46 lbs   Plum Regal
• 18.51 lbs Plum Regal
• 
  
• 8.25 lbs Roma
• 
  
• 5.03 lbs Rutgers
• 9.15 lbs   Rutgers
• 12.63 lbs Rutgers
• 
  
• 3.41 lbs   San Marzano
• 9.03 lbs   SM
• 12.54 lbs SM
• 
  
• 12.26 lbs Speckled Roman

The total was about 250 lbs, though toward the end of the season I got sloppy with my recording, so this is only about 217 of it. Not a bad haul. I was very sick of canning spaghetti sauce by the end of it. In fact, I still have quite a bit left to go through.

In addition to the spaghetti sauce, which I used a lot of, I canned up some tomato juice, which I really enjoyed. Also dehydrated a mess of them, aiming at sun-dried tomatoes, and used hardly any of those. They didn't come out too great. 

I also taste tested sauce made from Roma, Amish Paste, and San Marzano. Maybe my taste buds are inept, but there was no clear favorite. I was a bit surprised, given the reputation of San Marzanos that they weren't a clear favorite. Some folks say that the soil where they're grown in Italy makes it hard to replicate their flavor elsewhere. *shrug* I like all of them. Given that, I decided this year to go monoculture (heh) and just do San Marzanos. Them main reason being that they seemed slightly more prolific than the Romas and unlike the huge Amish Paste beasts don't need to be cut up to fit in the KitchenAid sauce making attachment. 

I liked the Brandywines, but all too often I feel like they went from green to red to rotten very fast. And they were huge, so they bent my cages to the ground too. When I finally get around to making some solid cages out of concrete reinforcing wire I'll try them again. Maybe Mortgage Lifter as well. 

For this years planting, I think I'll cut back from 4 rows of tomatoes to 3, leaving some room for cucumbers (oh yeah, pickling time!). That leaves 18 slots to fill. Here's my current though, though we'll see how my starts do.

• 9 San Marzano - sauce seems to be my biggest use for the harvest, so focus on those
• 2 Fourth of July - have been reliable and productive
• 1 Rutgers - a nice tomato
• 3 Cherokee Purple - delicious, my favorite
• 3 wildcards, time to go seed shopping

So many tomatoes

The community garden is flooding me with tomatoes. Here is a sample of the types I grew this year.

Sungold wins the tomato race

Cucumbers are starting to come in. Not quite enough to make a batch of pickles yet. think I'll make a batch of cucumber-zucchini relish with the few cukes and the loads of zucchini I have so far. Will have to remember to post it, I fear last year's (delicious) recipe is lost to the ages.

About 10 Sungold so far with high hopes of many more to come.

Sungold = yum

 Yellow pear already showing a TON of green ones, so hopefully I'll have loads of those.

Yellow Pear. Currently Green Pear.

 Gooseberries are gone. Enjoyed them, few though there were. Although seem to be more each year. Maybe next year enough for some jam. Elderberries look great. In fact they're kind of blocking off the entrance to my fenced in garden, so I may have to prune/trellis/tie them up.

Elderberries

Zucchini Time

Over the past week and a half or two weeks I've hauled about 2 lbs, 5 oz of zucchini out of my plot. Given away quite a bit of that and eaten a LOT of zucchini. I've seen wormsign on my plants - little orange vine borer guys flying around. But the plants are still very healthy. I'm going to be very serious about succession planting this year and see how much zucchini I can get post-bugpocalypse. I've always happily grown Black Beauty, but Elite is producing fabulously well.

Oh, my first tomato was end of the first week in July. So far only Sungolds from the front patio.

Toodling right along

Every year I say I'll be so much more diligent. Every year. And yet every year I fall behind, plan poorly, do a fraction of what I wanted to. Ah well. I didn't plant all the tomato varieties I intended to, but I have a decent selection. Here's what the community garden looks like. My swanky new 20' x 25' plot.

The garden plot

8 varieties of paste tomatoes. I made a lot of spaghetti sauce last year. I was very happy with the Amish paste, they're a local heirloom and they do very well in the community garden. Everyone talks up San Marzanos as the pinnacle of sauce tomatoes, so those were well represented as well. Plus a Roma. My Roma seeds were old and didn't germinate well. I wanted to include them for comparison if nothing else.

The rest:

• Cherokee purple - delicious if not prolific
• Brandywine
• Rutgers
• 4th of July - Their main virtue is supposed to be that they produce early, but I got them in late. Still, they've always done well for me.
• Plum Regal
• Indigo Rose - Supposed to be dark purple!
• Speckled Roman

Poor Tigerella didn't make the cut this year - didn't have seeds. Too bad, they'll be back though.

At home I'm doing cherry tomatoes. Right now I have four kinds in the dirt.

• Black Cherry - love the look and taste
• Sungold - Delicious and VERY prolific
• Yellow Pear - Adds another color to the mix, supposed to be prolific.
• Red Cherry large fruited - they always do well for me

First Sungold, plant is thriving on the front patio.

Totally dropped the ball on peppers this year. Not even growing jalapenos! I do have three kinds.

• Capt Joe E. Parker - A New Mexico type
• Long Cayenne
• Capperino - A small round type suitable for stuffing

Yeah, definitely dropped the ball. Ah well. 

Eggplants were even worse, only ONE came up of the 16 or so I planted. Husk cherries were a total zero. Not one sprouted. Too bad, those were sweet and tasty, would have loved to make some jam or a pie or something. Maybe try harder on those next year.

My cucumber setup from the last post has not kept the weeds out. Top of the chore list is weeding that patch. Only a few came up.

Also planted green beans. Not many sprouted, and some critter has been at them. Initially thought it was a groundhog but now I'm thinking it might have been deer. Leaving the back light on, maybe they'll be afraid to come in that close to the house.

One nice surprise, last year's dill seeded itself. I found 3 nice plants in some two gallon buckets I had it in last year. Those are huge, but a bit spindly. Further investigation turned up about 10 tiny volunteers springing up amongst the cherry tomato plants in the fenced in garden in the back yard. Which gets me excited for pickling. Set up some more cuke seeds on wet paper towels, I need more of them if I want to be awash in cukes for pickling. Although a smidge late to start.