this week, in the garden

I have been busy in the garden: weeding, planting, tending, expanding. I have added two news flower beds, well, a new bed in front of the garden fence and expanded another behind it. The new bed is the first to break away from the garden fence line on the front side: The expanded bed is […]

further progress…

Weekend No. 3 waking up the garden. My relationship with the garden is mending from last year’s break… Perennials continue to fill in, more veggies are getting sown… In addition to cleaning up and clearing out beds, I sowed a good bunch of seeds today as well. They were packaged and sold for planting in […]

untangling the overgrowth

Last year was rough for the garden. My old position at work required so much overtime that very little was planted in time. When season ended and the summer heat arrived, I was so angry about the shit life-work balance I had that I took it out on the garden, lacking the motivation to endure […]

the first fall harvest

My husband’s Southern farmboy-ness is finally rubbing off on me. While I have attempted cooking my own mustard greens before, this time was wholly successful. The mustard greens are from our netted fall beds. While we nibbled out of it when I thinned the sproutlings, this is the first mature harvesting. My husband makes amazing […]

out of the garden…

…with the tastes of summer October! Pulling vine-ripened tomatoes on October 6th. The basil got blasted in the last cool spell, so I have to seek out good leaves, but about half of the tomato plants have lost their place on the calendar. This. This is the garden living we’ve been moving toward…

getting saucy

I made tomato sauce today. This was my first time ever blanching and peeling tomatoes. It might be an okay task… Per usual, I started with a recipe, but more for steps and times the measurements. Two cloves of garlic? No, one whole head. I also added more carrots than listed, mostly since we’re growing […]

brad’s atomic grape

The most intriguing tomato I have grown is Brad’s Atomic Grape tomato. Two years ago was the first try, and I lost all the tomatoes I had started from seed. Last year I had better results with my “from seed” efforts, and I got four sturdy healthy plants. Then we had long, dry periods of […]

terra cotta

Say ‘Hello’ to Terra Cotta, one of the new tomato varieties in our garden: A green cap fades into beautiful orange skin. The meat is a marbled mix of the two colors. The taste is high in acid but more berry-like in its sweetness.

you take the good, you take the bad…

…and there you have the facts of ‘maters. The Terra Cotta is promising: full healthy plants with large clusters of fruit, slow to ripen. The Black Beauty had a great start, but the most mature fruit just rotted on the vine. The plant looks perfectly healthy. The San Marzano are prolific, even if the lower […]

what’s the ‘mater?

Overall our tomatoes are doing well. We are losing a few plants, but they put out a good round of fruit before they started drying out. The other plants are doing fine. This is the third time I’ve grown Black Prince, and each time they only get so far into summer before the plant shrivels […]