The garden is finally starting to produce! This year we planted 3 tomato plants, two red beefsteaks and one yellow variety. The plants are huge! I started pulling the tomatoes a day early to ensure we get to eat them. I was able to make this from our garden (except for the mozzarella, still looking for a way to get that fresh from our backyard).
Mmmm, fresh caprese Salad
These are our insanely tall and tippy tomato plants. I can't keep them upright, not with a 48" tomato cage, or with a stake driven into the ground with a 48" tomato cage zip tied to it. They are out of control, but they are producing tomatoes, so I'm not going to mess with them. The middle one tipped over and the top branches broke, so now we have a bunch of green tomatoes - I see fried green tomatoes in our future.
Don't you love our rainbow of tomatoes (and one jalapeno) on the windowsill? Yummy yummers. There was a time - a long time - in my life when my response to tomatoes would not have been yummy yummers. I used to dislike them greatly. I was that girl who always special ordered everything with no tomatoes. But around 2008, I discovered the beauty of the garden fresh tomato. I was forever changed. Now I very rarely ask for no tomatoes in food, unless they are cherry tomatoes - those still have too many guts for me, or as Miss Elaina (Daniel Tiger reference) would say they are too squirty for me. In fact, my lunch today was a yellow and a red tomato, sliced with salt and pepper - so delicious.
Our compost always tends to give us extra plants that we can replant in appropriate locations (like the raised garden or in a spot not directly under the tomatoes). Usually we have a lot of tomato plants and squash plants. We have an extra grape tomato and roma (I think) tomato plants. The squash plants are always a mystery until they start producing squash. We've had (unplanned heirloom?) spaghetti squash, zucchini, yellow squash, and whatever this is. The flower falls off of these, but nothing starts to grow/something is eating them, so we haven't been able to identify it yet. Please excuse the weeds, I haven't gotten out there in a while to take care of those, plus this plant has spines, so I'm not going to mess with stuff underneath it.
The yard is also blooming. We've done a lot of work to this yard in the 4 years we've been here, but this year may take the cake. We've pulled out 3 large (overgrown) bushes from various locations along the fence and pulled some other invaders that required heavy machinery to remove. Also we filled in some low spots along the fences (with a high spot under one of the bushes) and planted grass seed. It's starting to finally look like someone cares around here. These are the flowers in bloom right now.
What kind of flowers are the pink ones?glads?
ReplyDeleteThey are glads!
ReplyDelete