Fit for a Zombie

We don't know what genetic accident caused this tomato's deformity, but we dubbed it "The Brain" -- fit for a zombie's distinguishing palate.

We documented its growth from flowering infancy to succulent death and showed all of our visitors our freak show baby.

The Brain lived an honorable life, brave to the end, when it was featured member of our dinner, shrouded in balsamic vinegar.

At left is pictured (lovingly presented by Farmer Dave) our most ribbon-worthy tomato. This prettier cousin of The Brain is a German Pink variety. (Yeah, it makes me feel a little weird, too, to know that the German Pink is the most genetically "ideal.")

--Camille

Wasted Toms

David told me to make notes on which tomatoes we will grow next year. One of them won't be tumbling toms. While they might do well in a hanging basket, we weren't thrilled with the flavor. Although they are advertised as "sweet, like you expect from a cherry tomato," we found them a little tart and dry. These poor plants suffered the worst of the fungus blight, owing to their leaves' proximity to the soil; interestingly enough, the tomatoes still ripened after all of the leaves were dead -- just not to a flavor we cared for much.

I'll pick the rest of them this weekend and make tomato jam. If they do well, maybe we can find some room for them on the deck next year.

In other tomato tastings, the sun sugars won awards for taste, resilience, and prolificacy. My friend Margaret turned us onto these sweet, yellow babes. Every day we stand outside and, straight off the vine, pop them in our mouths like candy. I struggle when giving away tomatoes to friends and neighbors -- I want them to experience sun sugars, but I'm always measuring our own store. I don't want to run out!

We also loved the stupice, which may be due, in part, to their early appearance -- when we were earnestly desiring the first tomatoes of the season. They are a nice size for sandwiches and prolific enough that we don't need to eye each other suspiciously in those early days, checking each other's measure.

The black krim (in the back on left) are delicious and a little mysterious. How can a pinkish-purple bottomed and green-shouldered tomato be ripe? David still consults me before plucking one from the vine.

Yellow brandywines (middle large tomato) are mellow and beautiful on the vine, so we'll plant those again. We hope they do better next year, however: this year we've gotten only three!

I like having the big cherry reds, because they produce enough for sharing, but we don't need the currant tomatoes as well. I didn't care for their tart flavor off the vine. I suppose we could leave them for salads, but they are problematic anyway: their skins are thick but they still seem to split at the slightest watering. I like how they look, but we haven't the room for such vanity.

We haven't been too impressed with the bessers, so they'll likely give way to more pruden's purple plants. I might add a few new varieties to fill in the gaps: white tomatoes, orange pineapples, and whatever the seed catalog says is the absolute best taste: that'll take some research. Sun sugars will get two more spaces -- maybe where the tumbling toms were this year -- because I just can't get enough of them.

--Camille

Mendel Lives

I have my own little genetics-studying monk here.

David noticed that some of the cucumbers low on the vines were morphing into different shapes. Well, really one new shape: a crook-neck squash shape. These cucumbers happened to be next to the crook-neck squash, and they seemed to be cross-pollinating! They stayed green but got stripes on their plump bottoms. Interbreeding!

I checked online and oops! Garderners' tip: don't plant cucumbers next to squash because they will form hybrids that ruin the flavor of the vegetables. We haven't eaten our "squa-cumbers" yet, but they sure are neat!

We will change their location next year anyway, because the squash just needs more room than we are willing to give with the raised beds. Our patty pan squash plants have dominated the onions and cow beans. Right now we have pumpkins and gourds growing in the lower-40 field, so we'll just extend that and grow more varieties there. (I figure we have six years before we need that lower lot for David's football games with Virginia and Kids #2 [and #3?].)

We'll probably plant potatoes there as well -- unless we discover a new gardeners' tip suggesting otherwise. [Two minutes later: Yup, squash and potatoes can't go together; just found a website about companion planting. Dill and radishes are supposed to be good for squash.]


-- Camille

Coming Soon to a Stomach Near Us

We've got enough ripened tomatoes to branch out from sandwiches (although we've each had one already today). I made a four-tomato and cucumber salad.

We're having it with grilled skirt steak and our own potatoes with our garlic and rosemary.

Heaven.

I take back my aforementioned frustration with the potatoes. We'll move them next year to the lower garden, because they take up prime real estate (and look ugly growing), but they just taste too good to stop growing them altogether.

-- Camille

Summer Blooms

We haven't focused much on our flower garden, but we did plant some perennials and annuals for color -- and Stephanie, David's mom, designed a pretty little patch in the front yard.

There's always next year -- this yard is an ongoing project.

Fruits of Our Labor

In reviewing our posts, I am surprised I haven't mentioned food. Cooking with our own produce is half the reason we garden! Our goal this summer is to have a meal made completely with our own labor, but that's unlikely: the meal would be unbalanced, because we don't raise enough protein or carbs. (If only we'd gotten those chickens I wanted....) Still, more and more of our plates feature our own food.

One of the first meals we made was Easter lunch: crab cakes with cilantro cream, braised fennel, roasted potatoes, roasted beets and artichokes, and a salad, which featured our first lettuces, tender and sweet. (Only the herbs and lettuces were ours.) We grew winter density, pinetree, deer's tongue, tom thumb, mesclun mix, and amaranth, a grain whose leaves are a vivid pink (see left). One of the amaranth (which can also be used as ornamental plantings) is gigantic -- a blazing pink and yellow two-foot plant in the middle of our herbs. We plan on growing some in the flower garden next year.












Our scapes were next, and we ate them with red chioggia beets were grew on the back porch. [We also grew yellow mangle beets, but they were crowded and grew more slowly. Once they were ready, I witnessed a squirrel filching them -- and took a video of his munching because it was cute. We'll consider the donation a tithe to the animals, who have been relatively kind to our garden.] Later, we stuffed trout with scapes and lemons and grilled them outside, inspired by Finn, a prequel to Twain's classic that I was reading at the time.




We didn't grow strawberries, but I picked scads at a local farm and made strawberry pie and 12 jars of strawberry jam. My ADD got the best of me, and I failed to add the sugar and pectin in the right order, so the jam refused to set completely. When I've had it on pb & j sandwiches, I race to lick the sides of the bread before it drips on my lap. The taste is fresh and the color vibrant, but jam it is not, so I've been passing it out to friends as "strawberry topping" for ice cream or yogurt. You know, it's all in the marketing.

Observant bakers will note my lattice [above] is poorly constructed. I am not good with spatial puzzles, and I couldn't follow the drawings in the Cook's Illustrated recipe. As the picture above also shows, I also lost track of time and let the whole mess boil over on the stove. Thank goodness we have an electric range. I can't imagine how hard clean up would've been with the nooks and crannies of a gas stove.


Next on our table were our wonderful purple and yellow bush beans. I made pesto, too, for cheese ravioli and another salad with our cucumbers and lettuces. (The tomatoes weren't ripe yet.) My carnivore husband surprised me by being completely satisfied with this vegetarian meal. Usually, he begrudgingly eats what I serve and laments the lack of meat -- or, inexplicably, supplements his meal with chips. Yes. David is a chip fiend. I am not sure if he likes chocolate or chips better, but each makes an appearance daily in his diet. He's blessed with a rapid-fire metabolism, so he can get away with it.



Then came blueberries, eight pounds of them, and not a one from our own bushes (thanks, birds). Franklin has a blueberry farm smack dab in the middle of town -- 5,000 bushes strong! -- and I stopped in last Saturday after going to a yard sale. The $3.25 a pound they charge is a steal, especially since the experience is pure therapy: 8:30 a.m., 70 degrees, slight breeze, ripe fruit, twittering birds (knocking out half the crop, the owner told me), huge bushes that allow you to stand up straight while picking, and the soft murmuring of people amid the rows. I picked a pound and then drove right home to get David. We returned to pick seven pounds more, and I made a blueberry pie -- with a crumb topping this time -- and served it at board game night with friends. I ate the last piece last night with ice cream. Sigh.

There were many other meals, most of which we didn't photograph, but we made sure to document (in film and video) the pièce de résistance (and -- frankly -- the raison d’être of our garden): our First Tomato Sandwich.

There are hard and fast rules for its construction: dark pumpernickel rye, lightly toasted, generous amounts of mayo (Hellman's regular is the only brand), and several layers of thinly sliced tomatoes. Avoiding delays is important for temperature: you want to bite into the sandwich when the bread is still warm and the mayo melty; the tomatoes should never, ever, EVER be refrigerated.

The type of tomato can vary, based on availability and interest. In this case, we used stupice, because they were the earliest to ripen -- though I did have a second sandwich made of sliced sun sugars (tiny little things), because I couldn't wait torturous days for the other tomatoes to be ready.

David takes the chip selection seriously, which I appreciate (not when we are shopping, but later, when we eat). This year, he couldn't decide, so we had both Pringles originals and Fritos. Chips are nice (and we also had baked beans), but those are really beside the point. Later, when the tomato tornado arrives (we hope!), we'll get more choosy about tomato variety and we might even vary the ingredients (David adds cheese and I add slivers of onion). For now, though, we're aiming for the Platonic ideal.

--Camille

Damage Control

Our tomatoes look like the walking wounded of a battle field. Owing to the abundance of nitrogen in the compost we used, they have grown out of control, outreaching our heads by several feet. Most people's tomatoes are chest high at this point, and our friend Paul's are wonderfully full and abundant. "I don't pick suckers," he said.

Maybe we need to let the suckers go next year but control the top growth. Some of the current tomato plants are ridiculous: bent over double on themselves. We have tied all of the plants to posts, which are woefully short, and tried to salvage some damage from the fungal infection by chopping off more leaves and letting others die off.

I read that copper would help the fungal situation, but I've not gotten myself over to the guys at Agway for help yet. We worked so hard getting the garden started (well, mostly that was David), so I am not sure what accounts for our current malaise. With tomato harvest rapidly approaching, I hope we don't ruin the season!

More embarrassing was our visit from our neighbor who said the garden was bone dry. I knew that, but I'd heard rain was coming all week, and I wanted to let Mother Nature do her stuff first. "Never listen to the news; just water!" Billy said, and he's right. Our raised beds do a good job draining, so overwatering isn't a problem.

Well, today it rained, and it was a light, long rain, which is the best kind for now. That way the tomatoes won't burst with a deluge.

So. Another issue with the tomatoes is the overabundance of small ones. We have current tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sun sugars, and tumbling toms. All four types are small. We have some monster brandywines, and german pinks (including the bizarre quadruple tomato pictured below [and this is a month-old photo, when it was 4 inches or so]), but very few solid, medium-size tomato-sandwich size fruits. One of our main pleasures is tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches on pumpernickel rye. Cherry tomatoes just won't cut it.
Next year, we've decided, we will plant 6 or 7 standard size tomato plants and then one each of the other, more exotic, varieties.

In happier news, we've eaten wonderful, wonderful yellow pencil pod and royal burgundy bush beans. I wish we had more room for additional plans and varieties. I've given some beans away, just because they are so pretty, but I want more for myself for eating! We've also had more zucchini and squash, pesto from the basil, and herbs. The colors in the garden are spectacular, with bright red peppers and amaranth, and these gorgeous purple eggplants.










The potatoes are still a mystery, and they aren't fun when we pull them up too soon, so I think we'll use that space (which seems wasted now) for more beans next year.

--Camille

Trouble in Eden

We returned from my brother's wedding in Florida to an exploded garden. We had tons of cucumbers (still tiny), loads of lettuce (gone bitter), and missing blueberries. It seems the bluebirds and robins like blueberries. Damn. Serves us right, though, for being so lax about getting the netting on. Next year.

We also discovered, especially in the last couple of days, that some of our plants have been munched. I suspect the woodchuck. He shows up in the lower yard several times a week, munching on various plants (including hostas), and dashes away when I open the sliding door. I can't tell if he has good eyesight or good hearing, but he doesn't have good manners. Based on the chomps' height -- and his proximity -- I blame him. Our acorn and butternut squash have no leaves, and the basil is mangled. I hope they can recover (and I need to make pesto soon).

This morning, I let the cats out at 3 a.m., coyotes be damed, so that they might earn their keep by securing the garden. (I let them out because I am up from 2:30 to 4:30 most mornings, for some reason -- baby is active, I think.)

Another unfortunate fact is the tomatoes' fungal problem. I take part of the blame (Mother Nature is also culpable). David suggested we planted the tomatoes too close together, but I just refused to believe him (I wanted to have as many plants as possible). Well, I think their wonderfully abundant leaves don't get enough circulation, and with the cool and rainy weather, they don't get dried by the sun. I tried to solve the problem by cutting off all the lower, yellowed leaves, but it keeps creeping upwards. So, let me publicly admit that My Husband Was Right.

I hope the tomatoes can ripen before we lose all the foliage. There are tons and tons of tomatoes already (especially on those crazy Tumbling Toms), but all are green. Can we wait three weeks?! We are dying to begin our daily tomato sandwiches.

In happier news, our beans (the bush ones, not the pole ones) are ready to eat, as are our zuchhinni and squash. We've also had some lovely swiss chard and herbs lately. When our sink gets fixed (it has a clog somewhere in the pipes), and I can get back into my kitchen, I will make some beans with a little butter. Summer!

Exhumed and Expired

We pulled up two potato plants, or maybe three, hoping for some larger potatoes than the marble-sized tuber we exhumed several days ago. David wanted to wait, but I am impulsive and impatient (and suggested, "We can just plant more!"), so we did it.

Ignorant in most things potato, we were disgusted to find the sloppy, gooey rot on this plant. (I just shivered writing about the memory.) I was sure our crop was ruined and that the four bugs we had noticed a week ago had demolished our stores.

I instantly thought about those poor Irish people who found every one of their potatoes looking like this. How dreadful.

After some panic, we figured out -- at least enough to satisfy ourselves -- that the rotted potatoes are the ones that we began with, the seed potatoes. The rest of the little buggers seem healthy, albeit small, and we'll cook them up tomorrow. How exciting!

Slowly but surely, more and more of our meals include delicacies from our own garden. It began with lettuce and herbs, but now we have beets and potatoes and peas. We should see some edible cucumbers and squash in the next week or so. I have no clue how long our beans will take (and where the SECOND crop I planted has gone -- are birds stealing them??!) , but garlic will be ready mid-July. The tomatoes -- will the day ever come? -- are blooming (so many different sizes and styles of flowers!), and we are planning a Tomato Harvest Festival in August to celebrate.

In less lively [ha] news, Finley killed a bird yesterday and a chipmunk today. If she would eat them, I wouldn't feel so bad, but then I don't want her to eat them. Eating wildlife is probably how she got worms last year. Ugh.

Anyway, I was on my deck, reading in the sun, and heard a robin shrieking. I glanced up to the left, saw a robin in the branches, and thought, "Poor little thing. He sure is upset." Two seconds later, Poochina runs up the steps with a baby robin and plunks it down right next to me! I am not generally freaked out by such things (except for that pigeon Sawyer brought home through the window in Dorchester), but I absolutely lost it. Maybe it was because I didn't have many clothes on or because I was prone on the lounge chair, both situations providing more skin area that Finley could touch with the dead thing.

I screamed and David ran out and Finley ran in and then Sawyer ran out and then in again. Finley left the scene so quickly, she must've forgotten her proud prize. When David went outside to document the scene, the cats returned and inspected the creature.

I imagine the chipmunks and the birds in our yard talking amongst themselves about this Cat Plague of 2007, when they lost quite a few of their number. I hope this baby's mama doesn't have a long memory.

I hope the coyotes out back aren't making their plans on the cats of 2007.

--Camille

Catching Up

Today is David's last day of school, a full eight days after mine, and he is beat. I remember being in his place two weeks ago, when I couldn't muster up excitement that the year was nearly over. I was swamped with 87 final exams and 50-something Huck Finn papers, so the tunnel was long and dark.

Exhausted, I left my classroom a wreck and returned just yesterday to start cleaning it. In the afternoon, I sunbathed on the back porch and read Finn, a new book by Jon Clinch that is a sort of prequel to Twain's classic. (It's deliciously sinister, by the way.)

Ahhhhh...finally, I truly feel On Vacation, my visit to school notwithstanding.

The garden is gloriously in bloom, and David has been diligent about upkeep and documenting it (by photos, not by blogging, obviously). Our Team Bernstein concept was shipwrecked for awhile when I was in my first trimester, scarfing down ginger ale and saltines and acting like a zombie. David was left to make all five raised beds, fill most of them himself, and rototill the soil until it was was sweet and smooth. I did a lot of the planning and planting, but he definitely played first string this year.

We worried that the "organic" compost we bought from a colorful and loquacious character in Franklin was more like mulch -- huge pieces of bark and wood -- but it seems to be doing well, especially after the addition of some good humus, compost, and fertilizer, then mixed together with the de-rocked original soil. We haven't tested the soil, and we did little to vary it for different vegetables (except for the potatoes' spot, to which we added sand). (Those purple flowers are from the purple potato plants.)

My niece Emma asked what other vegetables we grew (I'd sent her a photo of our first potato -- a marble-sized tuber), so I made a list:

garlic

eggplant

zucchini

yellow squash

acorn squash

butternut squash

15 types of tomatoes (34 plants in all)

3 types of potatoes

4 types of beans

peas

onions

8 types of lettuce

parsnips

carrots

swiss chard

celery

beets

paprika peppers

blueberries

catnip
herbs (basil [four types], oregano, marjoram, chives, cilantro, dill, lavender, rosemary,

chamomile, tarragon, parsley, and thyme)

The catnip took some strategizing, because last year, Sawyer and Finley (and several neighborhood cats) lounged all over the human herbs as they munched on their special treat. This time, we got smart, planting two catnip varieties away from the other plants, and spaced about a foot from each other. At the rate Sawyer is currently catnipping, it's a good thing: one plant can recover a few leaves while the other gets devoured. In a seed mix-up, I planted butterfly weed and catnip together and planted them both in the herb bed. The private stash is now blossoming, free from feline marauders, and I hope Sawyer doesn't notice. When he eats down his stores, we'll transplant the secret plants.

David says his favorite garden chore is collecting suckers from tomato plants, and he performs this task every day after school. Hands smelling of tomato leaves (there's nothing like that scent!), he is pleased to control the wayward growth of our favorite crop. It really has made a difference, I think, in the quality and size of our plants. They are the largest and strongest we've had to date, now that their energy is focused on producing a central stem and fruit. The tomatoes have varying lengths of time they need to produce a harvest (the shortest is 68 days, I think, and the longest almost 90!), but we already have a good many little green tomatoes and tons of flowers).

Here is a series of shots, taken approximately one week apart, of the same bed of tomato plants (June 7, 14, and 20th, respectively):