Tomatoes: A Sad Story

Last year our tomatoes sucked – plain and simple.  We didn’t have a single fruit ripen on the vine and the ones that were brought inside didn’t do that great either.  We attempted to ripen the tomatoes inside using two different methods.

The first method was the pick the tomatoes and simply to lay them on a brown paper covered table in the basement.  (The table wasn’t big enough for all of them so we put some in cardboard boxes on the floor.)  These tomatoes did change color but I’m not sure if you could say they ripened.  By the time they were red their skins were starting to shrivel and the flesh inside was starting to dry out and break down.

The second method was to remove the entire plant from the ground leaving the tomatoes attached and hang them in the cold room.  We used this method before and it worked wonderfully; this year it didn’t work at all.  Instead of ripening, the tomatoes shriveled, started to mold, and proceeded to fall off the plants.  This was very disappointing as we had utilized this method on the healthiest plants with the most fruit because of previous success.

When we hung the plants upside down we did one thing different from previous occasions and this “one thing” proved to give the exact opposite results.  Previously we left the roots on the plants, this year we removed the roots.  We cut the roots off because the root system is difficult to remove from the ground and it creates a lot of mess inside.   I’m thinking that by removing the roots we killed the plant rendering it incapable feeding/ripening the tomatoes; if we ever do this again we’ll be sure to leave the roots on the plant.

(If all works out as planned we won’t have to ripen tomatoes inside anymore as the intent is to build a greenhouse in the spring.)

Anyway, we had brought all the tomatoes inside in mid September.  By the time the end of October rolled around, as sad as the tomatoes looked, something needed to be done with them.  We simply couldn’t turf them; there was a lot of time and effort put into them.  There may have been a hand full of tomatoes that we could have eaten as is but the bulk of them were not looking too appetizing.  So what did I do with them?  I made tomato juice – lots of tomato juice.

I washed and cut them in chucks, and placed them in my largest pot; by the time I was done my 2 gallon pot was almost overflowing with tomatoes.  After cooking on low for a few hours I gave them a quick blend with my boat motor (hand mixer) and then they were ready for straining.  To strain them I ladled the mixture into a fine mesh strainer and then used the underside of the ladle to stir/force the juice through the strainer.  This would push the juice and some plump through leaving the seeds and skin behind to be easily discarded.  When everything was said and done, I ended up with about 30 cups of pure tomato juice.  Unfortunately the quality of the juice wasn’t that great, it was watery and quite acidic.

So what does one do with 30 cups of tomato juice? Freeze it and worry about it later!

Last weekend I finally took a few of the containers of tomato juice and made tomato soup.  The recipe I used was one that I had used last year and had found on a blog a visit frequently.  I had to tweak the recipe a little because of the poor flavor of my juice and also because I had tomato juice instead of tomatoes.  All and all it turned out pretty good.

We served it will a dollop of sour cream for some extra richness.  Soup anyone?

Tomato Soup Recipe:  http://www.formerchef.com/2009/08/02/how-to-make-fresh-tomato-soup

A Smell of Summer

I love the smell of dill.  It’s such a fresh vibrant smell that reminds me of summer.

Besides liking its fragrant aroma, why do I grow dill and do I use it for?  My mom would always grow it to use in her pickles but I can’t remember it being used in anything else.  I grow it for my pickles too; but I use very little of what I grow.  So what do we do with the rest of it?

We try to use it as seasoning in some of our cooking.  I say try because more often than not we forgot about it or are too lazy to go pick it.  Dill pairs well with potatoes.  Sometimes we will throw some of the leaves/franz (the fernie stuff) in with potatoes while they boil/steam, or cut it fine and season pan fried potatoes with it.  (I love pan fried tators and dill… yum!!)  On occasion I’ve used it to make my own dill dip and if I would plan ahead more often I would do this a lot more as I love dill dip.  I’ve never put it in soup or salads but they’re both viable options.

Last year the dill in the garden didn’t grow too well so we didn’t have too much good quality dill left at the end of the season.  The cool weather early in the season stunted its growth and all the rain weakened its flavor - it was disappointing.

Two years ago in the fall I picked a bunch of dill and dried it the food dehydrated.  The best part about this was the entire house smelt like dill for about a week.  It dried and stored well but the flavor just wasn’t there.

This fall I decided to freeze it.  One weekend early in the fall I picked what was still healthy and had survived the frost.  I only picked the franze as I’ve never used the heads/flowers except for pickling.  After picking it, I gave it a quick bath and air dried it.  Once dry it was given a quick chop, put in an air tight container (I used a freezer jam container) and put in the freezer.  The idea behind this method is whenever we wanted dill all we had to do is take the container out of the freezer, open it and sprinkle some dill. 

Last night with dinner we had fried tators will dill, the entire house ended up full with the pungent smell of dill.  It was wonderful!  It reminded me of being in the garden on a hot summer day.  It was a smell that broke my will power to put off “anything garden” until March as I ended up spending the night on the couch seed shopping and planning the garden.

Cooking Tip:       As the chef house (aka Steve) has discovered, dill does not do well with excessive heat.  If you add it too soon in your cooking you will lose all of its flavor.  (This could be why I had a loss of flavor when I used the dehydrated a few years ago.)

No Excuses

No excuses?  Actually, I have tons of excuses for the lack of blog follow through, but I won’t waste your (or my) time with them.  It’s hard to believe my last posting was September 25 – almost 4 months ago!  

Just before Christmas I received my new seed catalogue and have been itching ever since to plan the garden for the upcoming season.  It’s taken a lot of will power but I have yet to do more than a quick flip through the catalogue.  I also know there are other things that need to be tended to right now and once I get into that catalogue the garden obsession will begin again.

Anyhoo, in light of the new catalogue I have been thinking a lot about my blog and all the things I mentioned I would blog about but never got around too.  Thankfully I was able to find a hand full of half started entries that I had intended to post in the fall.  Over the next little while I will try to polish ‘em up and post them.

Stay tuned!! J

Winding Down

As the garden winds down for the year, it seems as though so is the blogging.

Over the past few weeks everything excluding the carrots and turnips have been harvested and removed from the garden.  Unfortunately a lot of it is literally just lying around the house while we keep our fingers crossed that it will ripen. At the moment there are spaghetti squash in the living room in front of the windows and green tomatoes covering a table and the floor in the basement while others are hanging in the cold room.

The spaghetti squash needs sun and warmth to ripen which is why it has taken up residence in our living room; I am glad to report it is slowly turning yellow. (That’s a good sign.)  There hasn’t been much change in the tomatoes but there are a few that are starting to turn red. (We might get some after all!) 

We do have one lonely zucchini plant in the garden that is living under a permanent cover of burlap.  When I picked the last of the zucchini two weeks ago I left one plant as it was just starting to form a few zucchini and I was curious to see if they would develop.  The last time I looked they were still growing, slowly, and more leaves and buds seem to be growing as well.

The beets, both red and yellow, have be picked and pickled, the onions and garlic and drying in the cold room, the last of the swiss chard has been blanched and frozen, and the potatoes are drying in the wheel barrel in the garage.  The turnips (what doesn’t have worms) should be cleaned and blanched within a few days, and the carrots will probably be staying in the garden until Thanksgiving weekend.

I have an assortment of shorter blogs started regarding specific vegetables so be prepared to see and handful of new entries posted later this week. (hopefully)

Standing in the garden this afternoon seeing it so empty was both exciting and sad.  After a long summer of gardening it’s exhilarating to pull the plants knowing you don’t have to worry about them anymore; it gives you the freedom to move on to other things.  At the same time it’s sad because, well, it is done.

Not much left, 'tators are gone now too...

It’s kinda ironic but as one garden winds down, the next is already being planned.  While standing in the near empty garden this afternoon, and on a few other occasions, we’ve already had discussions of what to plant next year and how to do things differently.

Frost: A Silent Killer

For a garden, frost can have huge implications.  In the spring it can wipe out your new seedlings without hesitation and in the fall it can kill mature plants spoiling their fruit and an entire summer’s work in one night.

The average first frost date in Grande Prairie is September 13.  So far we’ve had “damaging” frost three times this year.  I say damaging frost because excluding these occurrences, there were signs of frost but the garden was not affected.

The first damaging frost occurred on the evening of September 1.  Because of the warmer days it was hard to imagine having a frosty evening so I reluctantly threw some burlap over the spaghetti squash.  The next morning the spaghetti squash was warm and cozy and the zucchini, tomatoes, and beans all had their top leaves burnt and killed by the frost.  Thankfully it was not a hard frost, but it was enough to do damage; it saw to the end to most of our zucchini plants.

The second occurrence was a few days ago (11^th) and was a hard frost, it fact, it actually froze.  This time we had the tomato plants, squash, zucs and beans covered and they survived reasonably well.  Instead of fighting with poly and small pieces of burlap, we dug out a huge tarp and covered just about everything in one sweep.  Surprisingly, the potato plants got hit extremely hard; they now are all brown and withered and will have to be harvested soon. 

The past week has seen frost on several occasions: I am beginning to see trend.  I was planning on picking everything that is above ground this weekend but ended up starting to pick the tomatoes mid week.  With the weather being cooler and the days shorter things are not going to ripen outside so it’s time to bring them inside and see what some warmth can produce.

In this country frost is a nudge telling you that it’s time to wrap things up, it’s a watered down preview of things to come.  I guess I can’t complain too much as we were lucky to avoid frost throughout the spring and summer months (if you exclude the June snow).

What’s been goin’ on...

The past 2.5 – 3 weeks have been a busy time for me.  Thankfully our summer was surprisingly extended until last Sunday.  The weather over the past few weeks has been well above seasonal with some of the hottest days of the year; we even came close to 30C a few times. 

The last week of August I took some time off from work and I made use of just about every minute.  I wasn’t planning on spending the week in the garden but ended up there just about every day for some reason or other.  If I recall correctly I spend 2 – 3 days picking, blanching and pickling beans, one day pickling cucumbers (Steve managed to get a hold of 20 lbs for me), one day picking and blanching swiss chard and peas.  Just by looking at everything in my freezer I know I did more but it’s all such a blur right now.  I don’t know how I would have managed to get everything done had I not had the extra time.

Needless to say everything is the garden is close to being done and it is starting to look a little anemic.  If it wasn’t for the warm weather it would have been done a while ago; most days I wish it was done already. 

After their last harvest the peas and green bean plants were removed.  The yellow beans are still in the garden and have just recently stopped producing; the green were pulled because we simply just didn’t want anymore.  The red beets have recently been removed as well and have already been pickled; the golden beets are still in the garden until I figure out what to do with them. 

The warm weather was a welcome gift for our sunflowers as it gave them a boost and they are now flowering and hopefully the frost doesn’t kill them for a while.  Unfortunately the warm weather didn’t help our tomatoes and we still don’t have any that are ripe.  We’ve had frost a few times and have taken to covering things at night because it would be such a waste to lose the green tomatoes and squash out of laziness.

Looking at the forecast I have a feeling the rest of the garden, excluding a few root veg, will be removed and brought inside this weekend.  This is something I am actually looking forward too; it’s the time of year where I’m ready to move on from the garden and do something else.

I’ll post some pictures from the past few weeks on facebook in the next day or so.

The Spinach Experiment

About three weeks ago, ironically just after complaining about being overwhelmed, I had a crazy idea. 

I had just returned from the Farmer’s Market where I had gone in search of spinach.  We didn’t get much spinach out of the garden this year so I thought it would be nice to buy some so that we would have more in the freezer to last through the winter.   There wasn’t a single vendor at the market that had any spinach and I was told by one that “you can’t grow spinach this time of year.” 

This got me thinking, why can’t you grow spinach this time of year?  I’ve tried a second planting of spinach two years in a row and have yet to have any success.  So I got on my computer and started doing some researching.  As it turns out spinach is a cold weather crop; it does best in the spring and in the fall and it is one of a few plants whose seed has a very poor germinate rate.  Also, if you plant spinach in the warmer months, it simply will not grow.  Once temperatures reach 23C it becomes dormant; seeds will not germinate and plants simply refuse to grow.

As the weather was cooler and it was mid August, I got the crazy idea that I would try planting some spinach.  I took to my computer again to see how I could increase my odds of success.  One common suggestion that I kept coming across was to soak your seed and to get it to sprout before planting.

So here I was, August 13, soaking spinach seed for a fall planting.

After soaking the seeds for almost 24 hours, I transferred them onto damp paper towel that was laid on a plate and covered them with another damp paper towel placing another plate on top; it was kind of a damp paper towel and spinach seed sandwich with plates for the bread.  The idea was to keep the seeds moist by keeping them in direct contact with the paper towel.  Twice a day I sprayed the paper towel with water to keep it damp.  After one day the seeds started to sprout.  We left them in the paper towel sandwich for a few days and then planted them in garden.

Seeds Sprouting after a day on the damp paper towel.

Sprouts planted.

Once planted, we watered them regularly and waited for something to happen.  Within 3 – 4 days it started to grow; and then it disappeared.  Everyday we checked it and saw new growth but the next day it was gone.  We had failed to take into account something very important.  That something was the over abundant amount of grasshoppers; they were eating the spinach as fast as it could grow.

New growth to feed the grasshoppers. :(

We tried covering the new growth to keep the grasshoppers from eating the spinach but then the weather turned unseasonably warm, we got tired of fighting the grasshoppers and eventually gave up.  It was frustrating because if the grasshoppers weren’t so plentiful I would probably have a decent amount of spinach in the garden right now.

It was an interesting experiment and if grasshoppers are a non-issue, I will attempt a fall plantings of spinach in the future.