Apples AND Tomatoes to Go

by
Raymond Alexander Kukkee


We had apples this season. Lots of apples.  How blessed we are. We know that some apple-growing areas had poor crops caused by weird, hot spring weather and late frost; but somehow,
 we  were not too badly affected.   The bears didn't get the apples, either, nor did the deer.  Apples and more apples,  we picked them happily, and they are all in great shape.
 No doubt about it, even our apple inspector was impressed! 

The Apple Inspector Approves the Apples

The apple inspector gave us the high sign.   Apples are cool.  
Even E.B.S. (Ebony the Short) and     T.T.T.  (Tilly the Tall), our resident pups, love to play with an apple--and munch on them. 
We had to digress a little, didn't we?

Now for tomatoes.  
We like tomatoes. Big ones, small ones, cherry tomatoes,  heritage tomatoes. Beefsteak, Manitoba, Tiny Tims, Sophie's choice--We like them all.   We use them both green and red.

 Check out the green in the greenhouse!   Not bad for one single plant! We have about 20 producing plants molly-coddled in the greenhouse just in case the weather is bad.
These tomato plants are organic--no fertilizers or sprays of any kind!

Green tomatoes --One plant in Greenhouse

Those are tomatoes IN the greenhouse. The tomatoes are indeterminate type plants, pruned, shortened and defoliated after the second or third set of flowers set fruit.  Not bad, 27 individual  tomatoes on one bushy plant  --at first count!

How about outside?  "Field" tomatoes ?  You mean the ones out in the garden?
 We have those  too! Check these out! 

Field Tomatoes ripen on the vine

Well, okay, you can only see a few in this photo.  There are many more.  They're ripening on the vine--at least until frost threatens.Do they look strange?  They are.
 The tomato plants in the garden beds have been defoliated to allow the tomatoes to ripen in the sun.  Normal, natural, healthy!   My resident genius gardener figured this one out.  Leaving excess foliage over the tomatoes invites trapped moisture, mould,  slugs, and other insects. In our geographic location in NW Ontario, in late summer we get very heavy dew overnight.
  Removing excess foliage allows the remaining tomato plant stems and leaves  to stay healthy and dry, discouraging mould, insects, and spoilage,  encourages  the plants to feed the tomatoes,  and the result is much  bigger, better quality fruit.

We do have to admire the creativity of Mother Nature too, even out in the tomato patch. This tomato is a curiosity,  just plain weird and huge.  It weighs in at:  1 lb, 9 oz.(  702 grams)  It clearly had no growth issues even if it's design is strange.  I bet a slice of this tomato would work fine on a bagel sandwich with that hole in the middle... 

A Weird Giant Tomato--not quite ripe..yet

Would you squeeze that one in a mason jar for winter instead? Make spaghetti sauce with it? Tomato sauce?  Salsa?    Would you want to?  Why not eat it fresh instead !  We'll let it ripen a bit more...

 Did you know that  green tomatoes will ripen on the table indoors  as long as they are  shiny when picked? Tomatoes that are very immature and not shiny, dull-looking-- will not ripen properly.

Here's what we do with our tomatoes each season. My resident genius makes preserves and a "few"  other things. Lucky me!

• Canned tomatoes (processed in glass Mason jars)  (110 liters last season) 
• Tomato sauce
• tomato paste 
• "Ketchup" 
• Tomato soup
• Prepared pizza sauce (includes spices)
• Prepared spaghetti sauce (includes spices)
• Tomato juice (plain)
• Tomato juice (spiced, i.e. cocktail juice)
• Salsa  (Using both green and red tomatoes0
• Green tomato mincemeat  (Yes, mincemeat for Christmas tarts! )
• Brown sauce (Similar to, but better than commercial "HP"brown sauce )
• Hot sauce (including Habanero or other very hot peppers)
• Barbecue sauce 
• Enchilada sauce 
• Bruschetta ( somewhat like a salsa)
• Chutney 
• Chicken wing sauce 
• Creole sauce 
• Seafood Cocktail sauce
• Green Chili sauce 
• Sweet & Sour sauce 
• Sun-dried (dessicated) tomatoes

That's about it.   I may have forgotten  a few.   We may even freeze a few skinned tomatoes too, if we have freezer space.
No matter,  that's enough already--for now, ---at least until we discover some additional use for tomatoes.
Who knows, we may even want  to use that weird tomato if it doesn't end up in a bagel.

By the way, don't forget to save some tomato seeds for next year!  Check in with Uncle Mac over at the shed  to find out how! 



Is that Incoming I hear?

Photographs by the author.

A Heap of Garden Updates

Remember the"heap" gardening experiment last year?

A rather simple concept it began; piling up garden trash in the same place every year, burying it at the very bottom of the heap, which is covered with a soil layer.  The decomposing organic matter composts in place, enriching the soil with earthworm castings and micro-nutrients.
The growth potential is no less than amazing,  here's what the "heap" looks like now!

The Heap 2012

And yes, it is HUGE, at about 12 feet wide and 20 feet long.  We have Hubbard squash, cantaloupe, cucumbers, and Spaghetti squash all growing on the heap.  Hm..a few pumpkins too.  Imagine that. Flowers everywhere, some like this one.

Squash? Pumpkin? Cantaloupe?....  I know, a flower!

It seems that even with the strange, even weird weather, the garden is proceeding along just fine!
 The garlic is high,  see these scapes? Straightened out, some of them are over five feet high.
          Although garlic scapes  are wonderful to eat in stir-fries or salads,  I'm letting these  super- scapes ripen so I will have a new supply of bulbils  to propagate more of  this specific garlic.  When the florets develop bulbils, and ripen, they will be harvested and dried for a couple of weeks. The small bulbils can be planted this fall,  a couple of weeks after harvesting. 

Very tall Garlic Scapes

Let's look at the spuds!  We have four varieties,  all hilled up nicely, aren't they?  The plants look small, but the hills are huge.  Quite a change from the soggy spring mud isn't it?  Nary a weed in sight, too! Well, almost! Looks like more work sprouting!

Four Varieties of Spuds growing in the Fog

We have four varieties of spuds planted in this patch.  See? It's right  beside the heap.
 "Gold Rush", "Yukon Gold",  "Kennebec" and an old Heritage white potato variety called "Pimpernel". Last year we bought 2 lbs of "Pimpernel" seed potatoes as an experiment and  ended up with a wheelbarrow full of potatoes.  We saved some of the seed to replant,  and this year we have two long rows-- happily growing.

Sweet corn in the foggy morn seems to be doing fine too--the leaves on this corn are unbelievable, over 4" wide!   It, too, is growing happily.  No wonder, it is heavily mulched. Last year this same variety, by the end of the growing season, had  reached close to  8' tall. 

Sweet corn doing just fine! 

Off to the beanery we go, where purple and yellow beans grow.  Not a weed in this heavily mulched intensive-grow style bean bed!  Beans are ready to pick!

These are yellow wax beans;  the Purple ones  are way down  there.....

Let's hop on  over to the tomato patch.  As you can see, it's a jungle!

Tomato Jungle

A compact, prolific Heritage tomato plant   "Sophie's Choice"

  One of our  most interesting experiments this season  is a  Heritage tomato variety named "Sophie's Choice".     It is a prolific tomato,  a very compact plant--and has, at last count, at least a dozen good-sized tomatoes on it.  Curiously, one is already beginning to ripen.   We will be saving seeds from this amazing tomato plant as the tomatoes ripen on the vine.  It seems to be a determinate type, unusually efficient, compact, and happily,--- a  very early variety.    We have to wonder if the ongoing progressive  ripening  as opposed to ripening en masse caused this amazing  tomato variety to fall out of favour with commercial growers.  Their loss, our gain.

Well, that's  about it for the garden update except for the carrots, cabbage, tomatilloes, Swiss chard, lettuce, onions, peas, dill, zucchini,  novel pumpkins -and THE turnip.  
Yes, we only had ONE turnip sprout. It's growing quite happily.   Go figure.  ONE seed out of a hundred.  Maybe Uncle Mac   who has all kinds of weird stuff happening over at the shed  can get Farm Girl to explain that one!

For our resident gardener dedicated to all things beautiful  I have to add one of her favourite garden things, a spotted lily.  Know why?

Spotted Asian Lily

She graciously took the photo of this pink Calla lily for me.    
 We really needed this special picture for our friend Glory Lennon, the brilliant gardening zeitgeist over at Glory's Garden.  I hereby offer,  as promised...a  pink Calla lily, and yes, we grew it, not in the garden, but in a pot, right outside the door!

Calla Lily            photo by  w.l.kukkee 2012

  Kind of short, isn't it?  Here at Incoming Bytes we all know that with all things growing,  both beautiful and good things come in small packages!


Is that Incoming I hear?