The Vine That Ate Troy Avenue

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View from the front of the garden

No, you're not looking at a scene from an agricultural horror flick. What you're seeing is a monster tomato plant that has all but consumed my ancient azalea bush and is using it as its own personal trellis. This vine spontaneously sprang up in the middle of my garden of its own accord. Had I intentionally planted it, I would have placed it in a container. I thought about pulling it up but then I got lazy and decided to leave it and allow it to take its course. OH MY, I got a whole lot  more than I bargained for. Turns out that this tomato was an indeterminate variety. That means that it is a sprawling vine that keeps on growing and growing and growing until weather or other conditions kill it off. Some of those tentacles are over eight feet long!! If I had known that when I saw that cute little plant spring out of the ground, I might have yanked it out without any mercy but I'm actually glad I didn't. Turns out that:

View from the back of the garden

Indeterminate Tomato Varieties Have Better Tomato Flavor*

“Determinate” and “indeterminate” are terms used to describe a tomato variety’s growth habit — but many gardeners don’t realize these categories relate to flavor, too. Most determinate tomato plants have fewer leaves per fruit than their sprawling indeterminate cousins. These compact determinate plants have the advantage of growing better in containers and producing all of their harvest at once, which makes them great for processing. But, don’t expect them to be as flavorful as the vining indeterminate varieties that have more leaves to convert sunlight into sugars and, thus, develop more intense, complex flavors (*Source).

The fruits of my labor

Who knew? Not me, but I can tell you this. Those little tomatoes, pictured here, are delicious. My son pops them in his mouth and eats them like candy. I've used them in salads, in stews, made tomato sauce with them and they are great. Best I've ever grown, really, and I never would have known this had I ripped it out of the ground. And it's still producing in October! I have dozens of green tomatoes on the vine waiting to ripen. 

Basil, Lettuce seeds, and more

These days I've been harvesting as much as I can because the days are shorter and the weather is cooler. Here you'll see a picture of Italian basil, red lettuce seed heads, some tiny potatoes that were hiding from me last time and a green pepper. Those leaves are going to be dehydrated, those seeds will be separated out from the heads for next year, and those potatoes and pepper are destined for my cooking pot. BONUS: the cooler weather benefits cilantro which has begun to grow in my garden now from seeds that dropped from the spring crop. More tasty herbs on the horizon. The cycle begins again.

This year's growing season is winding down but I'm still reaping the benefits and planning next year's garden. I'm smiling just at the thought of it.

#LoveMyGarden 



Ballo ergo sum - Gitana, the Creative Diva

Homemade Tomato Sauce

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This year I was blessed with an unexpectedly large crop of cherry tomatoes and a much smaller, yet no less respectable, crop of peppers. My basil exploded and literally took over the garden. With this abundance of produce, I had to do something or lose it to neglect. I decided to try my hand a making my own tomato base for spaghetti sauce.

In order to peel my tomatoes, I cut an "X" on all my tomatoes at one end and plunged them into boiling water for about a minute or less. Then I removed them and plunged them into an ice water bath. This causes the tomato skin lift away from the tomato flesh, making them easy to peel.I transferred them from pot to pot using a spaghetti colander made to fit inside the pot. All I had to do was load the strainer, dip it into the boiling pot, then pick it up and plunge it into ice water to stop them from overcooking.

After peeling all the tomatoes, I placed them all in a food processor and processed them, seeds and all, until they were smooth, after which I placed them in a large pot to simmer. As they simmered, I added homegrown peppers and basil to the sauce, as well as oregano, black pepper, onions, garlic, some fennel, rosemary, marjoram, a little salt, and pork sausage that had been pre-cooked to remove the excess fat.  I let the whole thing simmer for almost two hours until the sausages were cooked through. Processing tomatoes in this way creates a thin, dark pink liquid, quite unlike the thick, dark red sauce found on the grocer's shelf. I used a little corn starch to thicken it up a bit.

I am proud to say that the sauce was great. Even my son and husband, my biggest food critics, commented on how tasty it was.I froze the remainder and reheated it a few days later and it was still great tasting although the sauce thinned out a bit.

Garden fresh ingredients. Seriously, we are all spoiled rotten in this household.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Harvest Time

This is the time of year my husband risks life and limb to harvest the apples in our tree. This is no small feat when you consider my tree, which I purchased believing it to be a dwarf variety, is over 25 feet high. We didn't harvest as many apples as we usually do but there were enough for me to make two apple pies and a couple quarts of fresh apple juice. This year I have a masticating juicer that I have been putting through its paces and it hasn't disappointed me yet. In addition to apples, I've juiced pineapples, carrots and pears. It is my intention to move as far away from processed foods as possible and the juicer is one step in that direction.

Another step towards healthier eating is my dehydrator. Dehydrating isn't something I know very much about but I decided to give it a go for the first time last week using some freshly picked basil. I learned a couple of things pretty fast. One: dehydrating takes a lot longer than you expect; two: dehydrating takes A LOT LONGER than you expect. Because I didn't have a dehydration guide, I had no idea how long it would take to dry my basil. Three batches later I can confidently say that it takes 18 hours...yes, that's right...18 hours to dry basil. This doesn't count the initial washing and drying of the wet leaves before placing them in the machine.

Speaking of that, there was no way I was going to be hand drying several hundred basil leaves by hand with paper towels so I decided to speed up the process by placing them on a sweater rack and putting the leaves in my clothes dryer on air dry (no heat). Worked like a charm. Word to the wise: basil is at its best when picked BEFORE they bloom. That's when the leaves contain the most oil and are the most aromatic. My first batch came from post-bloom plants and the results were not nearly as aromatic as my final batch which came from plants with no flowers on them. My son had suggested I try dehydrating bananas to make banana chips which I think is a great idea but I can only imagine how many days it will take to adequately dry a high moisture fruit like banana.

Hmmm, juicer, dehydrator, vacuum sealer (got that too!)...now if I could only find room for a pressure canner...

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Glorious, Glorious

A bee samples a golden marigold.

Petunias in their final curtain call.

Basil (foreground) and marigolds.

Glorious morning glories.

Today was a very gray day in Brooklyn, comfortably cool but gray. Although it didn't rain, the overhead clouds cast a sad pallor over everything. Luckily I have a cure for the gray day blues waiting right outside my front door. It brings a smile to my face and greets everyone who passes with brightness and joy. Of course I'm talking about my garden. Although autumn is leaving its mark on her, she fights back with beauty and bounty. Here, take a look. Isn't she pretty?

Hanging plants on my porch.

Snapdragons

Asters and Alyssum

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva