Or maybe you haven't noticed because you have other things on your mind. Things like a job or children or a mortgage or the fact that you can't find your very favorite pair of shoes that you wore all the time last winter and so you aren't really sitting around wondering about the state of my tomatoes.
But I'm going to tell you about them anyway, because the state is sad, duckies. It is very, very sad. It's worse than the year the Blight hit, even. There just . . . aren't any tomatoes. I guess the drought that lasted all of July came right when the plants would have been setting all their fruits. So there are no tomatoes. The plants look okay, but they just haven't produced anything.
Well, not anything. Just not much. I have a normal-sized bowl of tomatoes on the counter. But not the Dish Pan. And without the Dish Pan full of tomatoes, there is no canning. So far I've canned only eight pints of salsa. That's it. No plain tomatoes at all, no sauce, no juice, no NOTHING. I'm going to have to try to buy some tomatoes to can, but I don't think anyone has very many tomatoes in this area this year, so we'll have to see about that.
And that's why there's no Tomato Crazy this year.
However! We will make up for it with the Jalapeno Crazy, because GOOD LORD did the jalapenos like that drought. I have MASSES of jalapenos. HUGE jalapenos. I have more jalapenos on my counter right now than tomatoes, which is totally unnatural. Too bad I don't really even like jalapenos much. But I'll pickle them all anyway, because A. and the MiL like them, and my brother, dad, and sister-in-law LOVE them. So I guess I'll be giving away a lot of pickled jalapenos this year.
Also crazy? The pears. They will destroy me. A. and I finally picked the Bosc pears from our tree last Sunday. There were a shitload of pears on that tree, y'all. You may recall I already have 35 quarts of pears in the cellar. I think I'm going to end up with at least twenty more quarts. That's right. That's 55 quarts of pears.
The tomatoes may suck this year, but the Crazy lives on.
We didn't get many tomatoes this year either in our little garden--for the opposite reason, too much rain. Mary in MN
ReplyDeletePear salsa perhaps? Beth
ReplyDeleteRoast and dry some of those jalapenos for chipotle powder. Awesome for chili.
ReplyDeleteWord verification: buslend -- loaning the VW van
I usually put up about 30 bags of tomatoes in the freezer. This year we barely had enough to eat, and I have none in the freezer. I live in Alabama. I guess it was a bad year for tomatoes everywhere.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that pears make a good spread - pear butter, similar to apple butter, which isn't a butter at all.
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how relieved I am to read about everyone's poor tomato season. I lost most of my summer having to be out of town for extended periods of time and I felt particularly depressed at having been unable to take care of the garden. It helps a lot to know my absence wasn't the only reason I don't have a good tomato crop this year. Thank you and I hope we're all Tomato Crazy next year.
ReplyDeleteOklahoma's tomato crop sucked this year, also. Too dry at the important point. We have a few, but not like usual.
ReplyDeleteWow! Wow. Whoa. Sorry, dude.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia must've been spared this year. But the peppers! That's awesome! Our pepper and cucumber crops have been sucky this year.
My jalapeno plant JUST put out its first flower. Slacker. And I've only had enough Green Goddess to can one measly pint of pepperoncini.