Crafty Kim

An all purpose approach for dealing with unruly tomatoes

For reasons that I doubt I'll ever understand, tomatoes grow like weeds in our back yard. This is Tim holding just a tiny part of our tomato harvest from last week:

I imagine the prolific tomatoes have something to do with the amount of sunlight, our willingness to tolerate unruly tomato behavior, and the fact that Tim doesn't really like tomatoes. He's not opposed to ketchup or pasta sauce or salsa, just raw tomatoes. As a result, we end up using most of our tomato bounty to make various kinds of sauces. I've probably read a bit too much about Lillian Gilbreth, but I'm very into the idea of finding more efficient ways of doing things, especially when confronted with pounds and pounds of tomatoes.

To aid in the efficient tomato-use effort, I rely on a handy (not really a recipe) recipe. You start out with ingredients that look something like this:

In this case, the tomatoes, garlic, basil, and most of the hot peppers are from our garden. The onions are from our favorite farmers at the East Nashville farmer's market, some of the hot peppers are from our weekly CSA basket.

All Purpose Roasted Tomato Base
Tomatoes, enough of any variety to fill a roasting pan
Onions, about 3 per roasting pan
Garlic, about 1 head per roasting pan
Olive oil
Sea salt
Pepper, freshly ground

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees F. Slice tomatoes in half pole to pole (removing stem end and other blemishes) and place in the roasting pan, cut side up. Cut onions into quarters or halves for smaller onions and distribute throughout roasting pan. Remove skins and ends from cloves of garlic and scatter through pan. Drizzle lightly with olive oil. Add a handful (1 teaspoon or so) of sea salt and add freshly ground pepper to taste. Do not cover pan. Place in pre-heated oven and cook for 45-50 minutes. Remove from oven and blend with hand-held blender to desired degree of smoothness. Make sure to include any juices that form in the pan, this is the tastiest bit of the sauce.

If you want to make pasta sauce:
Use as is or add in thinly sliced fresh basil, fresh oregano, and/or pine nuts.

This week's tomato sauce looked like this, served over some super tasty homemade ricotta gnocchi:

If you want to make fresh salsa:
While tomato sauce is cooking, place any variety of washed hot peppers into a small dish, drizzle with olive oil, and cover the pan with foil. Place in oven with tomatoes and cook for 30-40 minutes. Pull off the stem. Remove seeds if you'd like a milder salsa (although roasting really mellows everything out). Add to tomato sauce and blend. I also like to throw in some freshly chopped onion when I'm using this salsa.

This week's version of salsa looked like this:

If you want to make pizza sauce:
Depending on the tomato variety used, the sauce may be thick enough to use as pizza sauce as is. If the sauce is not thick enough, place in pot and simmer until it reaches the desired thickness.

I imagine if you were into tomato soup, you could also puree the tomato base really well and end up with some tasty soup. The anti-tomato soup faction is fairly strong at my house, so I haven't tried this. I know a lot of tomato sauces call for you to remove the tomato seeds, but they don't bother me. I've also seen a lot of recipes that tell you to remove the skins from the tomatoes. I used to try to get most of the skins off, but I've found that they either blend up nicely or are easily removed using my stick blender.

All of these variations freeze really well. This year, we planted paste tomatoes, San Marzano variety, which makes a fairly tasty sauce with a perfect amount of liquid. I personally prefer using heirloom varieties of all kinds - I think they produce a more interesting sauce. The San Marzano sauce works really well though and is quite tasty. If we do end up with excess liquid, we simply reduce the sauce a bit on the stovetop and it turns out just fine. It's really important not to toss out the sauce that forms in the roasting pan, as this is the tastiest part of the sauce in my opinion.

ps I know you're all really wondering "why not plant fewer tomatoes? wouldn't that solve the problem of too many tomatoes?" and trust me, we've tried that. If we plant fewer tomato plants, we still get the same number of tomatoes. I call it The First Law of Tomatoes: Conservation of Tomato Production. Regardless of how many seedlings you plant, you always end up with the same number of tomatoes to use.

Trees. They grow.

I've been laughingly referring to our backyard as a jungle for weeks now. I've apparently been saying that every year in July, but it's more true than ever this year. See?

Look at the great shade on the back of the house! We have insane afternoon sun in the backyard and it's nice to finally have something to block a bit of it and cool the house off naturally.

The tree on the left is a curly willow that originally came in a flower arrangement I sent Tim. It lived for many years in a large pot and never got taller than 3 feet. When we moved into our house, we planted it in the backyard were it's gradually gotten a wee bit taller every year.

The bushy thing on the right is a Celeste Fig tree that also started as a twig. It's never produced as many figs as it has the potential to produce - celeste figs suffer from fig drop whenever the weather shifts dramatically between hot/humid and hot (but cooler) temperatures, which effectively describes to a T the weather in Nashville.

Compare that to July 2006:

And then if you really want a laugh, to November 2004:

Happy Wednesday!

The daylilies in our yard are blooming like crazy right now. This color is my favorite.

Happy Saturday!

An iris from our front yard, drying out after overnight rains:

I really love irises, they're one of my favorite flowers. Nashville is crazy with irises at this time of year, you can't walk down the street without seeing some fabulous patch of flowers in bloom. Light purple, dark purple, white, yellow, the variety is amazing. Our little iris patch is doing quite well this year, now that they've had a few years to get established. I'm really happy with where our front garden is now and I'm pleased with our early decision to go with perennials for the whole front yard. There's some maintenance involved in the fall and in the early spring, but other than that, we can just sit back and enjoy.

The back yard is another story. After our garden experiences in Japan, we're both thinking about how to incorporate some of the gardening techniques we saw into our own garden. Maybe a water feature? Or a dry garden? Looking forward to planning and experimenting with some ideas.

Helloooo, daffodil!

Presenting the first daffodil of 2008, picture taken on March 6th!

There were actually two daffodils blooming in the same spot, but we had rain and chilly temperatures and the second one was looking a bit down on its luck. These daffodils actually opened on Monday, March 3rd. I like to keep track of when the first daffodil blooms (er... I'm weird that way?) so for the record, previous first daffodils have bloomed on:

2007: February 27th
2006: March 5th
2005: March 19th (no photo of that one, sorry!)

I can tell from the photo that the 2007 first daffodil was in the same spot as this year's first daffodil. Must be a nice warm corner of the yard?

Our yard seems to be getting a bit of a slow start this year, or at least it feels that way. I think everything might still be recovering from last year's late freeze and long drought. We have the usual amount of crocuses, daffodils, and tulips - they're just blooming a little on the slow side. The garlic we planted in the fall is coming along nicely, the rosemary bush made it through the winter (so far), and the chives are popping up again.

We've been out in the yard a bit lately getting everything ready for spring and summer. The big task so far was trimming back our three butterfly bushes. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but basically we take 6-7 foot tall bushes and trim them down to 12 inches tall. The hassle does always pay off though - the trimming promotes vigorous blooming and keeps the bushes from taking over the sidewalk in front of our house. Always best to avoid having the shrubbery attack the pedestrians. More flowers = more butterflies, which is my favorite part of these bushes. We also trimmed some low branches from the curly willow in the backyard and attempted to do some shaping of the fig trees.

Next up: planting the new irises and daylilies we bought at the Lawn & Garden Show, getting the raised beds ready for the vegetable garden, and coping with the hazardous blackberry jungle in the backyard.

Of course, after I took the picture of the daffodil, a snowstorm moved through and we looked like this for all of 48 hours:

Things are all back to normal now. We were in the 70's Wednesday and Thursday - blissful weather (although we've got rain moving through now and it's supposed to get colder after that - ahhhhh March).

******

Okay, and just to follow up on the whole exam thing (where I was away for a week or two because I was working on my qualifying exam). I didn't pass, but I didn't fail either. I've got two more essays to write, one more meeting, and then am hoping to be done. So. Freaking. Sick. Of. School. I kind of feel like every time I actually get some momentum going, I hit a brick wall. And I really can't even vent about the parts of it that make me the most upset here, but trust me - Tim has been an even more patient listener than usual. Time until vacation: 3 weeks (thank god - the only thing that would make me happier is if we were leaving tomorrow).

The good news? We actually found a room at a traditional inn in Kyoto. This is kind of funny - we're going to Japan at this time of year because it's cherry blossom season and sort of missed the idea that, uh... everyone else knows it's cherry blossom season too (including the people who actually live in Japan). It was a bit dicey tracking down a room in Kyoto but Tim managed to find a traditional inn that looks fairly nice. Still working on rooms in a few other towns, but now we've got lodgings for the entire first half of the trip, yeah! Will post more details on our itinerary, etc soon.

I thought I was going to finish Icarus this weekend...

... but instead I'm stopping with the last 4 rows and the bind off to wrap up. It's only 8:30 pm, but we got up crazy early this morning to address the rather out-of-control state of our garden. After all that intense lace knitting, I don't want to mess it up on the bind off just because I'm tired :)

On the plus side, our garden is all neat and tidy and ship-shape for the winter (except for the bits that are still growing - like the two watermelon and oodles of tiny cucumbers). We also planted garlic, which will overwinter and hopefully be ready to harvest around May.

One last thing... FYI, next Saturday (October 13th) is the OKTOBERFEST celebration in my neighborhood, and also the Germantown Homes Tour, which is always interesting. The proceeds benefit our neighborhood association, as well as the two historic churches in the neighborhood. There's also a big Tennessee History Festival going on at Bicentennial Mall just a few blocks away. And on top of that the Southern Festival of Books is being held on the legislative plaza. So, if the weather is nice, swing by north Nashville next weekend for some fun times.

Have a fig!

"This fig tree never does well, we hardly get any figs from it, it looks terrible. I don't even care if it makes it through the winter. If it's still alive next fall, I'm moving it to that hidden corner so we don't have to keep looking at this scraggly mess."
-Kim, Fall 2006, talking about our strawberry verte fig tree

Fall 2007:

Ahhh, famous last words in gardening. The strawberry verte fig tree apparently took my threats seriously and has gone crazy this year. The last two years? It's been maybe 5 feet tall (if that) and given us maybe 2-3 figs all year. This year? Not only is it taller than our 6 foot tall fence, it's actually much taller than Tim can even reach. And I've lost count of how many figs it's produced so far - in part because there's been a ton and in part because I'm fighting a losing battle with some kind of wildlife to get to the ripe figs first.

I don't think I'm going to rethink my gardening paradigm (ie to be menacing towards my plants rather than supportive), but I'm glad it's worked out in this case.

Oh. And the fig tree? It's not moving - it gets to stay right where it is.

There's a (not so little) secret in my garden!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes:

With a few peppers and some basil thrown in for good measure.

I always throw some kind of experiment into our garden every year, something fun and different. I always go with the assumption it might be a total and complete failure but if nothing else it might turn out well.

This year's experiment: watermelon. I thought with the new large raised bed, we might have enough room. As it turns out, I apparently picked the perfect watermelon variety for this otherwise horrible gardening year here in middle Tennessee. We've had a drought all summer and the temperatures for all of August have been beyond bad for any kind of agriculture. The watermelon variety I picked is called Desert King and it does best in hot and dry summers - what a crazy coincidence of planting! On top of picking the best variety for the weird summer we've had, we also planted the seeds much later than is really ideal for this area. But again, we hit that hot weather at the perfect time for our melon!

Without further ado, here is my happy watermelon, growing happily away. I took a picture without something for a size comparison, and you totally couldn't tell how big it was. Thank goodness Tim is a good sport (although it's a bit of his own fault - he kept saying the watermelon was as big as his head):

There are actually two problems though. First, the whole "we've got plenty of space to grow watermelon now" idea? Yeah, um... NO, not at all. Not only did the melon vines (which I thought were supposed to be more like bushes for this variety?) take over the entire top section of the raised bed (oh well, who needs zucchini?) they've made fairly aggressive moves into our yard, into the rest of the large raised bed, and actually behind our fence into the neighbor's yard (oops!). Second, I have no clue how to tell when the melon is actually ripe. There's some way you're supposed to watch when the vines around the melon start to turn brown as a barometer for ripeness, something else about thumping the melons, and then an also amusing idea about just checking that the melon has been growing for the appropriate # of days (81-90 days). The last idea seems the most pseudo-scientific, but to be honest, I have no clue when the melon started. Bad gardener! Our CSA farmers said to use the nearby tendril method when Tim asked them this weekend.

The rest of the garden is looking, to put it mildly, quite rough. Even with daily watering using our drip irrigation system, several of the plants got some nasty scalding from the sun - some of the tomatoes actually got sun burn! I've never seen anything like that before. In previous years, we usually have tomatoes to harvest well into the fall - early October at least. But I think this year, all of our tomatoes and peppers are going to be done in the next week or two. And they're all going to be ripe at the same time. Yikes! I feel some tomato sauce making in my immediate future.

See? Not the pretty happy garden I expect to see at the start of September. I'm not even going to consider posting a picture of our Japanese maple. She recovered brilliantly from that late spring frost, but the poor dear is just a shell of her normal self at this point. Leaves all with sunburn. We've been giving her a good dose of water every few days but man... this year has been rough on all plant life in Nashville, except for possibly the weeds.

The really good news? Our absurdly bad heat wave appears to have broken (at least a little bit). I find it almost amusing that I consider 90 degrees to be pleasant at this point, after all those days in the hundreds. I'm definitely not looking forward to seeing what our water bill for August looks like. We're on budget billing for the electric company (we get the same bill every month, based on average yearly usage from previous years) so at least we're not seeing any crazy electric bills yet. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's going to cool off even more in the next couple of weeks and that we'll get some of the rain that we desperately need.

Harvest

With all the warm water and (thank goodness, finally!) rain lately, our garden has been growing like crazy. The beans in particular seem to love the hot weather. Here's what I picked the other night:

The purple bush beans, which look almost too pretty to eat, turn green when you cook them. Seeds of Change suggested eating them raw to add color to salads, but I wasn't that keen on the raw flavor so we cooked them anyway.

We've been picking radishes for a while, but here are a few of the remaining radishes. The white icicle radishes are wicked spicy, but delicious. The French breakfast radishes (the pink one) is not as exciting, but I think it would have tasted better picked earlier.

And here's my lone rogue scarlet red gladiolus. I have NO IDEA where this came from, possibly from my sister Karen. It's the only red flower in our entire yard and I look forward to it every summer. I need to get organized and find some other red glads for sale so I can plant a bunch of them.

I really love glads, they're one of my favorite flowers. We have a bunch of them planted along the sidewalk in our front yard and have more in the back yard too. When I was planting them, I was in what I like to call my purple-pink phase so almost all of them are either dark purple colors (which I still find yummy) or pastel pinks (which I'm not as fond of anymore).

The best part was that we turned around and used almost all of these veggies for dinner the night they were picked. We made a nice simple salad with the arugula, adding blue cheese, walnuts, and pears with a store-bought raspberry vinagrette. Steamed the beans. Added the peas and the radishes to the salad. And I put the glad in a tall vase and put it on the kitchen counter, where it's been cheering me up all week.

I really need to pick the rest of the arugula tonight, it's about to go crazy and stage a garden uprising if I don't take care of it. I think I'll probably whip up some arugula pesto with it, and then freeze most of the pesto. I like the arugula, but I don't love salads enough to finish off all of what's in our garden :)

Garden update

It hardly seems possible that it's actually time to start picking produce from our garden; it feels like we just planted everything yesterday.

Here's a picture of one of our raised beds - it must have an ideal balance between sun and shade and rain etc etc, because everything grows well in it. Click on the image to go to flickr to see what everything is.

Here's our arugula, which is totally ready to pick - this is planted where the asparagus used to be, it's exciting to be making better use of that space!

Radishes seem to love the new raised bed, they're growing like gangbusters there. This picture is one of our white icicle radishes, tasty but spicy:

The purple bush beans have some lovely purple flowers (and since this picture was taken, actually have little beans on them):

And the blackberry and raspberry bushes have a million berries on them, which will be awesome if we can get them before the birds do:

I even have a genuine garden mystery. I apparently mis-labeled the seedlings in the seed tray. I planted something that I thought was a jalepeno pepper plant in the raised bed, but I've never seen a jalepeno plant that looked like this:

I have no clue what it is, possibly a flower plant?

Even our daylilies are delivering nicely this year:

The only real downside right now is that we're still in the middle of a drought. The lack of consistent rain combined with the unseasonably high temperatures we've been having the last 2 weeks mean that we need to irrigate more than usual. Tim painstakingly installed a drip watering system when we first built the raised beds, so it's the most efficient and effective method of watering available to us but I still hate having to use it. We're not watering our landscape plants at all but they seem to be doing well so far. I have thought about installing a rain barrel or a grey water system, but I've been told that you should not use water from these options on plants intended for consumption which is the main thing we need. I know we're as efficient as we can be, but I just wish there were other options.