I walked outside the other day, into the street garden with scissors in hand to clip some flowers intended for the host of a party I was attending. As I bent over to snip a few Black-eyed Susan stems I discovered that the flowers were completely gone. All that remained were the ragged ends of …
Because I woke up this morning and said to myself, “Self, you do not have enough tomatoes. Must. Get. More. Between the bowls in the fridge, the bowls on the counter, the bowl that was just roasted, the bowl that was oven-dried, and the tomatoes still in the garden what you really need right now …
And earlier this evening we enjoyed Homemade Oven-roasted Heirloom Tomato Soup. How To: It’s so simple you’ll be asking yourself why you didn’t make it before. Cook longer in the oven or heat it up afterwards in a pot and you’ve got sauce good enough for pastas and pizza. The only difference is the thickness …
Whomever says tomatoes can not and should not be grown in pots has not witnessed some of the surprising discoveries I have made over the years. While out biking yesterday afternoon, I happened upon this fully mature, volunteer cherry tomato growing up from the dusty earth beneath a pile of discarded parking lot blocks. I …
Yesterday afternoon, while working on the garden, a woman stopped to chat and mentioned that she had seen my sad and pathetic sign (my words, not hers) and knew who had destroyed the day lilies. It was the dudes who change the advertising on the large billboard that hangs on the wall over the garden! …
The bottoms of all of the ‘Purple Calabash’ tomatoes are so bumpy and misshapen that they are morphing into cartoonish grumpy old man faces as they ripen and mature. Today a friend remarked that we are so programmed to accept perfectly smooth-shaped produce that people often refer to lumpy heirloom tomato varieties as “ugly.” We …
Aside from several handfuls of ‘Whippersnapper’ tomatoes that started ripening over a month ago there have been tomatoes here and there but not in the numbers we’re starting to see on the roof and over at the community garden plot. Despite a tray-full like this I am still eying clusters of green tomatoes dripping off …
The result of some interesting cross-pollination found at one of the farm stands at the Farmers Market this afternoon. I’ve seen some strange mixes in the past but let’s just say I don’t see anyone using this miracle of nature as the basis for a new-fangled variety. I can just see the catalogue description now: …
A friend pointed me to this opinion piece in the New York Times that looks at the Eat Local concept as a way to mark environmental impact in food production. The article describes a New Zealand study that challenges the assumption that distance traveled automatically means higher fossil fuel consumption. The study doesn’t undermine the …
Adorably teeny tiny Mexican Sour Gherkins (Melothria scabra) are starting to pop up all over the vines I’ve got growing at my community garden plot. The fruit in the picture is about half and inch or so and should be approximately 1-2″ when fully ripe however I am extremely impatient and picked a few for …
I know. I don’t post anything for ages and then I give you this. I received a simple little pocket-sized point-and-shoot digital camera for my birthday and have been excitedly testing out the video feature. The following are two short videos from day one with the camera. I call this first one, “Tomatillo in the …
I made a quick trip to my community garden plot yesterday where several large zucchinis and cucumbers were quickly expanding into over-sized monster vegetables. I had been gone for 6 days and Davin was unable to get into the garden with a poorly copied key. There are more cucumbers on the way and little scalloped …