Let's Get Crazy

It's been awhile since I could honestly claim to be in the throes of The Tomato Crazy. But I think this year might be the year.

Sunday night I planted out five quite large tomato plants that were too big for the box in the kitchen anymore. A. prepared a very nice spot for them. He divided half of the more-sheltered backyard garden into what he calls "flooding cells." They're square and have berms of earth all around the sides, to hold the water so he can just put the hose in there and, well, flood it.

We found that this is the only way to ensure tomatoes get enough water in our somewhat arid climate. Sprinklers don't cut it.

In addition to those five, I have seven more plants that aren't big enough to go outside. So that's a total of a dozen tomato plants. With the possibility of more from the giant Sysco Roma tomato seeds I asked Cubby to shove into an empty seed-starting container. Those are just starting to sprout.

Okay, so it's a far cry from the 120 seedlings I ended up with one year at Blackrock, but I'm still pretty excited to have those dozen+. And if I can actually get them to produce (unlike last year), that could well be a large quantity of tomatoes.

Dare I say maybe even a shitload? Yes, I dare. And dare I say that I'm even looking forward to sweating copiously in the kitchen while I can jar upon jar of homegrown tomatoes? Yes, I dare say even that. (Though I'm sure there will be some complaining right about August if that does come to pass.)

In addition to the tomatoes, I have way more pepper plants than I was anticipating having. The first planting was so slow to come up that I planted some more. And then, as I might have expected, they all came up. Mostly thanks to the heating pad I put under them.

So now I have eight bell pepper plants in pots, plus the paprika peppers the MiL sent us are just starting to come up now. There are two of those so far, with a possibility of three more to come.

So there, again, we're going to have about a dozen plants. And again, I am excited. Bell peppers are one of those things I always buy when I get to a store, but they're kind of expensive and, well, almost 100 miles away. If I can manage to have dozens of bell peppers right in my backyard? I will be living the dream.

Maybe that's not everyone's dream. And maybe I'm crazy, but it's a kind of crazy I'm willing to live with.

The Alpha and the Omega

In the beginning, there were microgreens. And in the end . . .

Fancy-pants: Fall Edition

There's a serious rain and windstorm coming our way tonight, so A. took advantage of the sunny and warm weather today to more or less pull out the rest of the garden.

With the dubious help of his minions, of course.

I was not helping, as I was busy in the house with this one:

Phbbbt on your microgreens, says Poppy. Gimme more milk.

The microgreens are from the salad greens and arugula A. planted a month or so ago. There really hasn't been enough sun on the garden at this time of year for them to grow much, so he decided to just cut them at the micro stage.

He also filled a box with tomatoes in various stages of ripeness, meanwhile congratulating himself (and justifiably so) on building the woodchuck greenhouse so he can be harvesting the last of the tomatoes in late October.

The remaining few beets came out, too, leaving only the collard greens in the garden. A. keeps asking me if he can pull those out, but I refuse to let him. Collard greens taste better after it gets cold. And anyway, they can handle a lot of cold weather out in the garden, where it's much easier to store them than in my refrigerator.

So collard greens and the garlic (also planted by A.) in the garden; tomatoes, microgreens, and beets in the house. Thus ends Gardening Season 2017.

A round of applause for A., a reluctant but successful gardener who ensured my winter's supply of Finny's sauce. He done good.

Days of Flies and Tomatoes

Our tomatoes are certainly loving this very unseasonable heat. A. harvested another box full of paste tomatoes for me this morning, so I spent part of the morning canning six more quarts of tomatoes in the hot water bath canner.

And then I had to put on the air conditioning.

I could feel bad about this, except that I am: 1) not at all heat tolerant, 2) 8.25 months pregnant, and 3) dealing with a cold.

Screw guilt. Give me the almost-October A/C.

Also in tomato news, A. had the brilliant idea of drying some of the tomatoes outside. Might as well make use of 89 degrees with punishing sun, right*? He has three trays full of the beefsteak variety of tomatoes drying on top of the Subaru. It's so nice to see the Subaru as food dehydrator put to use again.

I also find it funny that A. seems to have finally succumbed to the Tomato Crazy. It must be catching.

Unfortunately, this hot weather has also brought out the flies. In droves. The three big glass doors in the living room leading to the elevated porch look like a horror movie. Flies EVVVVVERYWHERE. The kids love swatting them, which is fine, but more always appear. We must have swatted four dozen flies yesterday.

I am befuddled by this. All the windows and doors are shut tight. How are they getting in?

At least they seem to confine themselves to the windows, though. They're not attracted to food or people. But still. There are smeared fly guts all over my doors, which I am waiting to scrub off until the end of the heat wave because I know there will be more until it cools down.

So gross.

So that's where we are. Preserving tomatoes, swatting and sweeping up flies, and running the air conditioner until further notice.

* Fun fact: It was hotter at my house on the Canadian border yesterday than it was at my parents' house in Tucson, Arizona. How's that for messed up?

Happy Fall! Oh Wait . . .

Yes, today is the official start of fall. So why is my forecast calling for 87 degrees on Sunday?

That is not sweater weather.

(I think that the weather is supposed to be some kind of online conversational suicide, right? But too bad. That's what I'm talking about today.)

Last weekend it was 84 degrees here, so we took the kids to a local lake beach for a dinner cookout and their last chance to swim. Except apparently it wasn't their last chance, because we have multiple days coming up that are going to be over 80 degrees.

In case you missed it, I do not live in southern Arizona. It is not supposed to be hot here at the end of September.

So much for the frozen north.

The tomatoes, of course, are loving this hot, sunny weather. Especially under their cozy woodchuck greenhouse. A. is the designated harvester this year, as the greenhouse requires a person to duck and literally crawl around to actually get to the tomatoes, and those are not things the 8-months-pregnant body can do without great difficulty. So every couple of days, A. goes out there and proudly bears into the house a big box full of ripe tomatoes.

I spent this morning making salsa and pressure canning it--plus a few random quart jars of plain, raw-pack, not-even-skinned chunks of tomatoes--to take care of the fifty pounds or so of tomatoes that were on the counter. I expect the same amount of tomatoes will be landing on my counter tomorrow.

Sure would have been nice if the tomatoes could have ripened when I wasn't due to have a baby, like, ANY TIME, but I'm not complaining. Much. And I'm trying not to complain too much about the unseasonable heat, because I know I'll be desperate for any hint of warmth in March.

But still. Eighty-seven degrees. That's crazy.

How's the weather where you are, my lovelies?

Eat Your Clutter

Though I would never be considered a meticulous housekeeper--let's not talk about the last time I cleaned behind the television, for instance--I do have some serious issues with clutter. It adversely affects me in a very noticeable way. Emotionally, mostly.

This is very unfortunate, considering that I live in a two-bedroom house with four other people, three of whom are small children. And that there will shortly be another small child in this already-crowded house.

I spend a lot of time picking up, putting away, and throwing things out when I can get away with it.

My absolute least-favorite kind is the kitchen counter clutter. My children are forbidden from putting any of their toys, pencils, papers, or other junk on the kitchen counters. That's my work space. My cubicle desk, if you like. It drives me crazy to have to work around non-essential items.

But this time of year, I don't mind a certain kind of kitchen counter clutter.

Tomato clutter is A-OK. Also, carrots, pears, garlic, and shallots. Worth the counter real estate.

It makes me happy to see my counter filling up with tomatoes. It also makes A. happy, because it means that we all have to be appropriately congratulatory about his woodchuck greenhouse, without which I doubt there would be enough ripe tomatoes to clutter up anything.

Of course, this kind of clutter is much more satisfying to take care of than, say, picking up a thousand small pieces of cardboard from Cubby's latest complicated cardboard creation*. Because this kind of clutter gets turned into Finny's tomato sauce. Also, at the command of Prince Jack, some apple/pear sauce.

Don't cross the boy with the crown.

Then most of the clutter turns into food for the freezer.

Actually, the apple and pear sauce (in the jar) will probably all get eaten before I have to freeze any. But some of the tomato sauce will get to the freezer. Hooray.

The only downside? More clutter in the form of this:

Dishes are absolutely the worst part of food preservation. Jack agrees.

* That kid makes everything out of cardboard. Crowns (he made the one Jack is wearing in the photo), robots, castles, and, lately, a smartphone. Yes, out of cardboard. He made little letter pieces that can be arranged to type things out. He informed me quite earnestly that he's been puzzling over how to add Minecraft to it next. And this is why I will never buy him a real smartphone like his friend from school has, which constitutes his sole exposure to the addicting devices. Much better to make them out of cardboard. At least when you're seven years old.

Woodchuck DIY

One thing about being married to a woodchuck man is that the term "DIY" takes on a meaning far beyond that of your average Home Depot project.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago A. and I were lamenting all the green tomatoes in our garden and how we just weren't going to get the warm weather to ripen them. "We need a greenhouse," said A.

So he built one. Starting with trees from the brush behind the house.

If your projects start with chainsawing trees down, you might be a woodchuck.

I used to be his unskilled--and frankly, kind of unwilling--helper with these projects. But I have now passed the torch.

And the hatchet for trimming.

A.'s new helper is a lot more enthusiastic. As well as more skilled, to be honest.

After a lot of cutting, trimming, dragging, and wiring, there was a frame the likes of which I could have never imagined.

Maybe we'll just move in with the tomatoes this winter. The structure is certainly big enough.

The project had to be put on hold until the plastic for the covering could be procured at a store, but on Tuesday, the tomatoes were comfortably settled in their rustic greenhouse.

Sides coming soon to up the sauna atmosphere.

Just in time, too, as it was 38 degrees when I woke up this morning. Tomatoes do not enjoy 38 degrees. 

You know what does enjoy 38 degrees, though? Hanging lamb carcasses. Specifically the one that's hanging under the porch right now. 

After severe sticker shock at grocery store meat prices last week, and seeing a relatively cold forecast for the next few days, A. decided to butcher the first of the lambs. He killed it and dressed it out yesterday--with the enthusiastic assistance of all three children--and it's hanging under the porch until at least tomorrow, when he'll cut it up.

Lamb and tomatoes underway. Winter is coming, and we're getting ready, woodchuck-style.

Ahhhh, Home

Where the sheep are yelling for corn and the tomatoes are sloooooowly ripening.

The first thing Cubby did when he got out of the car at home was run to the garden to see if there were any ripe tomatoes. Because he is definitely his mother's child.

It's a far cry from the late-summer liquor cabinet of old, but it's a start.

There was also a very large Mortgage Lifter tomato that I cooked for dinner last night, along with the green beans that I also sent Cubby out to harvest.*

So handy having a child to harvest things for me. Also handy to be able to come home and browse in the garden for dinner instead of stopping at a store.

We're supposed to have a few days of warm, sunny weather that should help the tomatoes along. If I'm lucky, I may even get enough to make some of Finny's tomato sauce, which is the highest calling for summer tomatoes.

Fingers crossed.

* Plus bacon and eggs and rice, because man cannot live on tomatoes and green beans alone. 

Just Call Me The Crazy Garden Lady

This morning I actually said to A., "I hate to leave my garden for a whole week. But I guess I've done everything I can to prepare it for my absence."

Apparently, the garden is my fifth child.

Then again, all my children are coming with me tomorrow when we leave for Blackrock for a week, but the garden will be left to fend for itself.

My preparation mostly consisted of stripping the pea and bean plants of every last small pea and bean, so that I don't come home to overly matured legumes that have caused the plants to stop producing.

Can we just talk for a moment about how incredible it is that I'm still harvesting peas in mid-August?

Peas are a cool-weather crop. They stop producing when it gets hot and dry. At Blackrock, I would rarely get more than one good harvest from the pea plants before they would wither away. But here, this year, it's been so cool and wet that it took forever for the peas to start producing anything at all, but once they did they don't seem to be giving up.

I did pull the shelling peas out this morning, though. They were starting to die, and were harboring an alarming colony of slugs (another result of our cool, wet summer), so I decided to rip them out. I left the snap peas in, though, after harvesting a full two quarts of snap peas from three plants.

The carrots have also been outstanding this year. A. planted a full two packets of seed in April, and they all came up. We started eating the thinnings from the carrots about two months ago, and we've had a steady supply since. The kids more or less free-range in the carrot rows, eating however many they want whenever they want, and we still have incredible quantities of quite large carrots out there.

Unfortunately, the weather that has been so beneficial for the peas and carrots has been very, very sad for the summer crops. Particularly the cucumbers and tomatoes.

There are dozens upon dozens of tomatoes on my sixteen plants and not a single one was ripe. Not one. What a screw. And here we are facing down a killing frost in about a month.

However!

As I was working my way around the tomato forest to get to another patch of green beans to harvest, I spied . . . is that red?

Yes! It's the much-anticipated First Tomato!

I found it in the very center of a remarkably bushy Juliet plant. I haven't been checking the interiors of the plants much, figuring the tomatoes on the outside that are more exposed to the sun would ripen first. I guess I was wrong, because I found the one Juliet that was entirely ripe, and then a few more that were almost ripe, and all were way inside the tomato jungle.

Cubby was in the garden with me when I found it, and he was so excited that he raced into the house yelling to the household at large that there was a ripe tomato.

That's my boy.

Everyone came out to admire the tomatoes I had found. And then I ate the ripe one. Myself. Oh yes, I did. It's a tradition.

I now have some hope that when we get back in a week there will be a lot more red to greet us in the tomato patch. That would be a sweet homecoming indeed.

And in the meantime, we have lots of snap peas and carrots for our long drive tomorrow.

Nothing like homegrown carrot sticks.

Farewell, beloved garden. Ripen lots of tomatoes while I'm gone, okay?

The Great Backyard Campout

Yesterday afternoon, after we had returned from a necessary but somewhat boring trip to the small city to drop off A.'s rental car, get some tomato plants*, and buy a lug nut to replace the one that fell off of the Subaru, I suggested to A. that perhaps we should move the kids' tent outside and let them "camp out" on the lawn that night.

A. has been wanting to take them camping, but he knew it would just be a miserable experience because of the bugs. I thought maybe the bugs around the house would be tolerable at least, though I wasn't sure Cubby would be very enthused about faux-camping in the backyard.

Cubby once memorably remarked upon arrival at a state campground in Arizona, "Are you kidding? We're going to camp in this parking lot?"

Go wild or go home, that's Mountain Man Cubby's motto.

But then A. said if he set up the big tent on the lawn and told Cubby they were going to camp out there to get Jack used to the idea of sleeping in a tent, it would probably be okay.

I also added that perhaps we could cook hot dogs in the firepit A. made in the brushy area behind the house. Because every campout needs a fire.

So that's what we did.

A. decided to take his bike to the general store four miles away to get the hot dogs. I asked him to get hot dogs, buns, and chips. He came back with hot dogs, buns . . . and beer.

I couldn't very well send him back to ride another eight miles for chips, even though I was bummed about the no-chips thing. What's a cookout without fun snacks? And fun snacks are in short supply at our house. This was the best I could come up with.

Nori and anchovies just don't scream, "All-American holiday fun." 

At least I managed to scrounge up enough lemons for lemonade and the last of some marshmallows. Add in some pickled carrots, radishes from the garden, and Star Wars plates sent by my mom for Cubby's birthday that I forgot to use in February, and you have one festive cookout.

But not really.

Anyway.

A. got the fire going and cooked some hot dogs.

Just steps away from the garden and a freshly-picked arugula garnish.

Charlie was displeased because the only hot dogs at the general store were the red hot dogs, which are a local variety that are bright red with some kind of scary dye and which Charlie declared unfit for consumption the one time we tried them. Frankly, I agree. So he had ham and cheese in his bun, and I ate a salad.

Then they made some really gross-looking "sandwiches" with roasted marshmallows and more hot dog buns, because we didn't even have the right ingredients for S'mores. And then they finished up some coconut-flour cookies I had made the day before. (These are really good, even though the name of the blog makes me cringe.)

This was obviously the weirdest campout food ever.

They spent the next couple of hours racing around like maniacs, pretending to be raptors.

Tent-dwelling raptors, apparently.

At 8:30 p.m., A. announced that Jack was so tired he was seeing elephants, so they all got ready for bed and got into the tent. I listened to the ensuing tent insanity from the comfort of the house. The last of the shrieking died down by 9:30 p.m. 

At 3:30 a.m., A. came in with Jack, both of them cold from inadequate covers. A. put Jack right into his sleep sack and into his bed and we heard no more from him. Then A. got into bed in the house.

At 4:30 a.m., Cubby came in demanding to know why Daddy wasn't in the tent anymore. Then he said he was cold and got into his bed.

This only proves to me that everyone really prefers his own bed over a sleeping bag in a tent, and I still do not understand why anyone would ever voluntarily sleep in a tent.

But Charlie is still out there. I went out to check on him and found him sound asleep in the tent, with good old dog Mia zonked out in guard-dog position right in front of the tent's entrance.

I expect they'll all be awake shortly, requiring hot baths and a large breakfast and already ready to do it all again.

* Six Juliet plants and six Mortgage Lifters are now in the ground. Hooray for The Tomato Crazy: Northwoods Version!

Things To Love

It's fresh salsa season! Whee! 

Pass the chips.

Now, I am of the firm opinion that salsa must be diced finely so you don't end up with enormous chunks of peppers or, God forbid, onion on your chip. And to do that dicing, you must have a large cutting board so the various ingredients aren't falling off the edge of the cutting board.

So annoying. Good thing my dad made me that nice big cutting board there.

Another thing to love? A. has started carving me kitchen utensils out of birch wood.

This shape would not have occurred to me to request, but it's amazingly useful for scraping the bottom of pots.

My next request is a very sturdy spoon for mixing up bread dough. I already broke one of the cheap, flimsy wooden spoons that were already in the house. Oops. A.'s on it, though.

Happy beginning of the holiday weekend, my lovelies! My plans include chips and salsa and a Sidecar. I hope your weekend is similarly exciting. (And if those plans don't sound exciting to you, well, then you're obviously not in constant company with three small boys day in and day out. It tends to lower the standards for excitement.)

Slow Pizza U.S.A.

Two days to make the sourdough dough . . .

One hour to roast and puree the tomato sauce . . .

Twenty minutes to grate the mozzarella cheese* and slice mushrooms and bell peppers . . .

Thirty minutes to bake . . .

And finally . . .

Half-eaten pepperoni.

Half-eaten bell pepper and mushroom.

It's a long way from Papa John's delivery, but worth the wait for sure.

* At least I wasn't making my own mozzarella and pepperoni. Though I don't rule out any crazy kitchen preparations anymore.

Travel-weary Tomatoes

Last summer, I did not plant a single tomato seed. In fact, I didn't plant anything at all. This was a particularly wrenching decision, because that very spring I had been sent several packages of tomato seeds saved and stored by my good Internet-friend Finny. 

She lives in California and actually farms for a living now, but this was before she was a farmer and she had an amazingly prolific and well-cared-for backyard garden from which she got impressive quantities of tomatoes. And then she saved the seeds. And then she packaged them up all pretty in little special envelopes with photos on the front of each variety and description of the fruits. 

It was all very efficient and exact and totally not the way I do things. Finny's a nice friend to have.

But then I didn't plant anything. So the seeds sat in my freezer, patiently waiting until I got off my ass and had a garden again.

This spring, I did. Thanks largely to Cubby's enthusiasm for planting tomato seeds, we started quite a few in the spring and got the plants in the ground in due time. A. had to surround them with fencing to keep away the aggressive deer, and they set quite a lot of fruits.

Then we moved. All those poor tomatoes, abandoned at the very cusp of ripening.

However! All those trips A. has been taking back to Blackrock, while challenging for me, do result in him bringing back large quantities of produce from the garden. The MiL certainly can't eat it all, so every time he comes home, he brings me something from the garden. 

When he pulled up yesterday, he unloaded a box of tomatoes and an entire Styrofoam cooler totally full of basil.

I spent about 45 minutes this morning making at least two quarts of pesto, and then I roasted the tomatoes with a head of garlic (also from the garden at Blackrock). They were almost all Finny's tomatoes, which had traveled in seed form from California to Blackrock, grew in the garden at Blackrock, and then traveled from Blackrock to the Canadian border.

They look pretty good after their long journey, don't they?

Of course, a box of Finny's tomatoes must be made into Finny's sauce. So they were. And it was good.

Merry Christmas to Me

Our annual village Christmas festival was this past Saturday. I had to go so I could fulfill my obligation of sitting at the preschool fundraising table, selling various crafts. Right next to the table I was (wo)manning was the church bake sale. They had the usual assortment of banana breads, cookies, pies, and . . . what's that on the end? OH MY GOD, THOSE ARE FRESH TOMATOES.

Apparently, one of their church members grows patio tomatoes on her enclosed and heated porch into the winter. They were selling pint boxes for four dollars. I got the last one.

You can keep your cookies and pies. If I can get fresh, homegrown tomatoes in December, my Christmas is going to be merry.

This Might Be It for the Year

I'm sure you've all noticed (humor me) a distinct lack of garden talk this year. That's because there's been a distinct lack of interest by me in the garden this year.

WHAT? Is this the apocalypse? My garden fervor has waned? No exhaustive posts about vegetables? No incessant whining about canning? NO TOMATO CRAZY?

Nope.

I could blame it all on my children--and in fact their tendency to suck all my time and energy is a large part of it--but really it just comes down to the fact that I have not made the garden a priority this year. There are several reasons for this, but one of them is that I feel defeated by it. It's just so big. And so weedy. And I'm so tired all the time. 

The MiL did most of the planting in the spring. Then the deer and rabbits showed up and razed the joint. They more or less totally destroyed the tomatoes. And the beets. They've taken nibbles of everything in there, even the peppers.

They sheared off the top layer of leaves on the long row of Dragon Tongue beans I did manage to plant, but they did not actually destroy them. It's a testament to this variety that even with extensive deer damage, they're still producing frightening numbers of beans.

Because I didn't plant enough cucumbers for anything more than fresh eating--and I don't care enough to go buy a bushel of pickling cucumbers for pickles--I decided to make some Dilly Beans.

A summer without some kind of pickle would be a sad summer indeed.

Those four and a half pints of Dilly Beans are most probably going to be the sum total of my canning for this year. I can live with that. 

Though I sure do miss having my own canned tomatoes in the winter.

I Fail at Photos Again

I know you've been absolutely rabid with curiosity about the garden this year. What about the beans? Have they survived a rabbit invasion (unlike last year)? What about the kohlrabi? What is that, even? WHAT ABOUT THE TOMATOES, FOR GOD'S SAKE?

Not to worry, my lovelies. Brace yourselves for exhaustive garden nattering, without even the dubious relief of photographs. Because I'm too lazy to bring my camera out there when I tour around looking for green beans.

Spoiler! The green beans are thriving! Mostly because I planted them in the part of the garden closer to the house, so the rabbits came through the gully fence and stopped at the peas near the fence to gorge rather than risk coming too close to the dogs to get to the beans.

They did eat most of the peas, but that's okay. I consider those almost a sacrificial rabbit crop at this point.

We had a banner year for kohlrabi this year. I guess it liked all the rain. Kohlrabi is really weird looking. It looks like this. The bulbous part is peeled and then either eaten raw or cooked. We like it raw. It tastes like a broccoli stem, which is my favorite part of broccoli. The greens can be cooked just like collard greens. We ate all the bulb parts raw and then I blanched and froze most of the greens for the winter. Bonus.

The beets also enjoyed all the rain, but they really need to be pulled up now and dealt with before they get all woody and gross. That'll be a nice chore for one of these 93-degree days we're going to have this week. Nothing like boiling an enormous pot of beets to turn the kitchen into a sauna.

I planted a relatively small corn patch this year, mostly for Cubby. The corn is just starting to tassle. I think most of it will probably be consumed raw off the cob while standing in the patch. Cubby does love his corn.

We have insane numbers of leeks out there. INSANE. Which will be most welcome around January, when they're STILL out there. Hooray for vegetables from the garden in the middle of winter!

I planted a few jalapeno pepper plants. They have not done a damn thing except sit there, essentially the same size as when I put them in. Guess they haven't liked the rain, unlike the kohlrabi and beets.

The basil, on the other hand, is a riotous collection of bushes that really need to be whacked down and pesto-ed.

And the tomatoes? Still waiting for The First Tomato. Waitingwaitingwaitingwaiting. There are a lot of tomatoes on the plants already, though, so when they start getting ripe . . . well. The Crazy returns.

I can't wait.

A Short History of My Tomato Staking

What? That title didn't grab you? Don't you want to hear all about my various tomato staking methods over the years?

Oh good! I knew you did.

In my younger, more ambitious, and (most importantly) child-free years, I made some SERIOUS STAKING. Craziness with bamboo and sisal twine. It was really cool-looking and extremely effective for supporting the tomatoes. Win for me.

Then I had a baby. And there goes any time for constructing elaborate tomato scaffolding. I think one year I did a bamboo stake on either side of each plant. That worked okay.

Then there was last year. The Garden Year Which Will Live in Infamy. Last year in the garden sucked--thanks to Charlie's arrival in July--and the tomatoes were no exception. I was under no illusions that I would be properly staking any tomatoes last summer. I knew damn well I wasn't going to be tying up the plants when they needed it. So I had A. put in two posts at the end of each row of tomatoes with fencing in between the posts. The idea being I could maybe pull the plants through the fencing and support them at least a little that way.

That worked about as well as you might expect. That is, it didn't.

Like I said: sucked.

So now what? Thanks to a series of events that's too boring to go into here (WAY more boring than a detailed discussion of tomato staking, which I bet you didn't think was possible), I no longer have a large supply of bamboo stakes. But I still have 25 tomato plants. What to do?

Why, call on my own personal superhero of course: Woodchuck Man.

A. was all, "You need stakes? I'll get you stakes."

So he cut down some small locust trees and used his ax, wedges, and sledgehammer to split them into stakes. Which he then pounded into the ground next to the tomato plants, using the sledgehammer again. He tells me that all tomato stakes used to be split hardwood like that. He can't imagine why nobody does it anymore.

OH REALLY?

Would YOU do all of that? Nope, me neither. But I married someone who would, lucky me. And so now . . .

Bam! Tomato stakes.

Locust wood pretty much never rots, so I can keep using these stakes for the rest of my gardening life. We have locust posts on this property that are at least fifty years old. So these stakes could last longer than I do.

There's a thought.

Enough with the reflections of mortality courtesy of tomato stakes. Point is, the tomatoes are in, the stakes are in, and now the low temperatures just have to get the hell out of the thirties so those plants actually grow big enough to stake.

Anytime, tomatoes. Anytime.

I Can't Stop the Lameness

It's just a part of me. You require evidence? I am happy to oblige.

I just ordered a book through the inter-library loan service called An Amish Garden: A Year in the Life of an Amish Garden. Yeah, I sure did. And I am SO EXCITED to read it and SO BUMMED that it's so new it doesn't even have a proper listing in the library system yet and I have to wait for it. But I'm first on the list when it's available to be checked out!

Lame? Without doubt.

You're still harboring hope that I might not be so lame as I appear on the surface? Well then, let me dash those hopes by telling you that I have been anxiously awaiting the time when the local garden center place puts all their hot weather seedlings out for purchase. Because of the frost we had this week, they've been keeping the tomatoes and peppers and basil and whatnot safe in the greenhouses. But I called today and they said the tomatoes were out.

And so I immediately bribed Cubby with ice cream from the ice cream stand next door to the garden center so I could go buy my paste tomato plants (I never start these from seed myself) and jalapeno plants. Yup. Sugar rush for my kid just so I could get even more tomato plants.

Whatever. He thought it was awesome he got to eat some strawberry ice cream and I thought it was awesome I have more seedlings to plant. Charlie didn't get to do anything particularly awesome, but that's the way it is when you're ten months old.

I haven't put the new plants in the ground yet, but I will sometime in the next few days. Then I will have 25 tomato plants in the garden and you know what that means: The Tomato Crazy is SO ON.

Lame? Yeah. But I'm okay with it.

Is This a Hint?

After a casual conversation with Mr. Jason about aquaponics (basically, growing fish and vegetables in a water system), he said he would bring me a book he had read about it.

Then he showed up yesterday with two books about the subject, plus the information from a seminar he attended about it.

Mr. Jason lives in an apartment near a city, but he has the interests of a country dweller.  I suspect he's hoping we'll get interested in aquaponics and try it out here on our country estate (HAHA).  And knowing A., if he studies the various systems involved in aquaponics and starts imagining how he could make them from spare bits of junk in the milk barn and chicken wire or whatever, we might end up with an enormous fish tank of tilapia in the Pit of Despair and some tomatoes growing in fish poop.

Personally, I could do without it.  I'm okay with my tomatoes grown in soil.

And speaking of which!   Only a few more weeks before the tomato seeds get planted!  TOMATO CRAZY, HERE WE COME!

But not aqua Tomato Crazy.  That's too crazy even for me.

Sharing Is Caring

And isn't it just so sweet that Cubby cares enough about his baby brother to share his drippy, nasty cold with him?

Here he shares the joy of this wretched musical toy given to Charlie by our very nice neighbors that plays perky little songs over and over if you so much as look in its direction.  Irritating as it is, it's still better than two children with a cold.

And because I care so much about you, allow me to share this very pretty photo I took of the curly maple bowl made by my dad the (not amateur) carpenter extraordinaire--and expert bowl turner--on its maiden voyage as a food vessel.

I'm sure my formerly vegan father is relieved that it is holding tomato salad and not something like lamb hearts.  A not-impossible thing to find in a bowl at Blackrock, unfortunately.

Have a lovely day, poppets.

Nothing To Do with My Kids

(It's so unusual these days to talk about anything other than those little dictators of my every waking moment--and the non-waking ones too--that I felt the need to announce it right up front.)

I may be jinxing things here by telling you this, but . . . we have chicks again.  There are three of them, and since these chicks were hatched in the coop, we have a much better chance of keeping them from becoming feral cat bait.  And before anyone comments to this effect. . . no, I do not have photos.  Maybe later.  If I manage to get the camera outside at some time in the near future.  I make no promises.

The tomatoes are starting to ripen in significant numbers.  Because I didn't really stake them properly this year and many of the tomatoes are actually resting right on the ground, I'm losing quite a few to insects and slugs, but I'm still harvesting a respectable number.  I froze a sheet pan full of whole paste tomatoes today.  That's what I'm doing this year instead of canning them.  I also froze the tomato juice I made the other day.

The freezer is my best friend this year.

Speaking of the garden, a couple of days ago I went in there to harvest tomatoes and AHHHHH!!! Dead bunny staring up at me with lifeless eyes from right in front of my tomato plants.  If the dogs had killed it, they would have eaten it, so I have no idea how it died and ended up splayed out in my tomato patch.  Maybe it died from overeating.  My bean plants.  Little bastard.  One down.

I think that's all.  Back to our regularly scheduled child-centric programming . . .