the garden thread

These were last week photos. Everything is bigger now. Just starting to get some of the full sized tomatoes ripe.









In the corner behind the sunflower is where Bigfoot (or a cougar) makes lots of noise at night sometimes. Kind of a deep rumbling yelling sound from something that sounds big.

 

Nice looking watermelon!

I threw some cantaloupe and watermelon seeds in the ground last week just for the heck of it. Probably won't have time to produce anything, but who knows!

 

The ducks do real good hunting for bugs. Tried to teach them to pull weeds but they never caught on.



Next year I will plant more sunflowers in the vegetable garden. They bring in lots of bees and butterflies for pollinating.

 

You might get something. I just planted the melon plants a little over 3 weeks ago. They just kind of sat there for a week before they took off with the growth.

 

I'm hoping so. I figure here in middle TN we got till about late November before the possibility of frost

 

My sunflowers took a hit from the rabbits too. I noticed that I have a few of the dwarf sunflowers producing buds and I'm hoping. this is my haul from tonight. Roma's are just starting to ripen.

 

Look at all of those sungolds. Mine just started ripening but less than half of them make it from the garden to the kitchen.

 

We've had more sungolds than we could eat, so I threw them in a pot, cooked them until mushy, and then through a food mill to get rid of the skin & seeds and back in the pot to reduce. (There were some other tomatoes in there, too, but mostly sungolds.) I was planning to make sauce, but ended up with a summer cold and needed some soup. Added a little cream, S&P, and olive oil and had sungold soup. Fairly sweet for a tomato soup, but really good!

 

That variety is called sun sugar and are sweeter than my strawberries!

 

The cantaloupe and watermelon are coming up! Talk about a late start. I'll probably have 3-5 plants each once I thin them out.

 

Lucretia I will have to try your soup idea.
Didn't take photos but picked my first couple Green Zebras last night.
Toasted ciabatta bread, cream cheese and sliced tomato. Delicious!

 

pulled the tators the other day and talk about disapointing. maybe a quarter of the harvest compared to last year too cool and too much rain compacted the soil and split many of the spuds. hardly any of them got to full size. always next year tho

 

Some of the first tomatoes are ripening now. Many are not the normal red varieties so I am going by feel to decide when I think they are ripe. So far they are all delicious.

 

My first tomato finally came off the vine today! Not much, but it was delicious. It's a Speckled Roman, supposedly a cooking tomato, but it had great flavor raw.

 

Taylor,
That Roma almost looks too pretty to eat. I bet it tasted great.

Looking in the garden this morning I saw that one of my Berkley Tie Dye tomatoes was starting to color.
I will try to get a photo this eve.

 

Hey Mark,
Looking forward to the photo if you get around to it. I've got a Marvel Stripe that started to color a couple days ago. I'm thinking one or two more days and it'll be ready to go. Looking forward to trying that one out as well. I may snap a pic of my meager little garden tomorrow after I get done playing with some steel and delivering some sharp knives.

 

These are yesterday's pickings.
These are called Husk Tomatoes or Ground Cherries. They are the size of a small cherry tomato and taste like a cross between a pineapple and cantelope.

Next are a mix of small tomatoes.

....and some larger varieties. The pink and green is the Berkley Tie Dye.

 

Never seen those Husk Tomatoes before. Pineapple and cantaloupe? I'd probably love those things.

 

That's quite a hall. Any special plans?

 

I bet those Husk Tomatoes would make an awesome salsa!