2009 Veggie Garden

[newtohosta-no more]

I do love fresh tomatoes right off the vine, so I hope you'll enjoy that tomato , GT!
DH and I just got back from checking on his garden and it looks like we will be having cukes and zukes any day now too.

[nanny_56]

We have eaten 4 lcrook neck squash now. That plant is taking over my little space....I had no idea they could get SO BIG!!!!!

Waitng for all the maters to get ripe!

[kHT]

Just popping in to post a current photo of the corn, no messenger this year.

[JaneG]

Hi Karma! That looks great!

Our corn mostly straightened itself up after the storm and we have tassles and silk on the Ambrosia, with the Sugar Buns just couple days behind.

[kHT]

JaneG that is great new on your corn and tassels already, wow! I noted this afternoon just one with a tassel. We will be eating corn soon!
We had our first zuc today and there is one for bread if we cool down some. Can't wait to see what this week will do to it all as we have a
solid week of 90s.

[JaneG]

So you are getting the 90 degree weather, huh? Normally we would be sweltering right now, but it has been cooler than usual. We had one hot week about a month ago, since then it's been very mild. I never thought I would say this . . . but I'd love to have some HOT weather, the garden really needs it. Our high temperature yesterday was 71 degrees, which set a record for the lowest high on that date. Today it was one degree warmer. This is crazy for July in the midwest.

Send those 90 degree temps my way when you are done with them!! (I hate the heat, I can't believe I just asked to send it my way! But the garden needs it.)

[kHT]

You got it Jane!! I'll even send the triple digits we are to get Sat. your way!! It's all due to climate change, sorry if one doesn't believe in this but it's
all here. The PNW is much hotter than normal and for the past few years we are seeing less and less rain. Where as the upper Midwest is now seeing
what we in the PNW the cooler damp weather. This whole world is changin'!

[kHT]

In just 5 day of heat look at the crop and DH keeps asking if I'm using Messenger? There is no more to be had so I keep telling him no!

[kHT]

We have been putting up corn and today was my day for tomatoes! I just boiled them and ran them thru the majic bullet
juicer and made juice and paste, nothing wasted!

[govgirl75]

Yummy!
We are waiting patiently for tomatoes here. The plants are huge and very green and are taking over the entire garden. I pulled the beans out and they leaned over and took the row. I feel as though I am living in the movie "Day of the Triffids" and will wake up and find the tomato plants have invaded the house. We got desperate for tomatoes, so I made fried green tomatoes with dinner on Sunday. I am eying Dusty's Zucchini Casserole recipe and wondering if it would work with green tomatoes. I just hope some of them will ripen so we can make sauce and ketchup. This has been a weird summer, so maybe we will get a late frost so the tomatoes will have longer to ripen. Fingers crossed.
Glo

[Gardentoad]

Hey Karma,
Do you do any dehydrating? I started making my own (sun) dried tomatoes last year and I just love them. We don't have enough hot dry days to do it in the natural sun so I use a dehydrator. I also can a lot of salsa. This year I dried the tomatoes and canned them in small condiment jars from this recipe and they came out beautiful:
http://chezpim.typepad.com/blogs/2006/1 ... fit_o.html

I used to make tomatoe sauce but since I can buy it in 28 oz. jars for around a dollar apiece and just add some of my own home grown pepper, oregano, basil and garlic to kick up the flavor I don't consider it worth the trouble to stand over a hot pot of sauce while it cooks down.
I have been roasting red peppers and making a spread with them this year. That's a lot of work to peel them all and a lot of peppers make just a little spread but it is so good on sandwiches or added to plain hummus.

[kHT]

Thanks GT, that is a great way to do tomatos! We haven't had ours out in years and now that I have the Magic Bullet it's
just so much faster. Matter of fact I did another batch yesterday as someone wanted Chilli, this person hates tomatos!
I put both the paste and juice in the batch and to my surprise it was really great, better than the can of Campbells that is
usually used.

[PeasInABucket]

Oh that's a beautiful corn crop. I miss freshly picked corn. I haven't tried making my own sun-dried tomatoes before. Do you add any seasoning or do you just place them in the dehydrator or out in the sun?

[Gardentoad]

Oh that's a beautiful corn crop. I miss freshly picked corn. I haven't tried making my own sun-dried tomatoes before. Do you add any seasoning or do you just place them in the dehydrator or out in the sun?

I only add sea salt just before dehydrating them . Some people sprinkle them with dried basil and/or oregano. I use a dehydrator. I don't have dry weather for enough days to use the natural sun.

You can just cut them in half and dry them with the seeds or remove the seed. I remove the seeds, but so I don't loose any tomato flavor, I put the seeds in a strainer and collect the juice surrounding them. I then add the juice back to the tomato halves with the salt.

This year I made 2 dozen small jars of dried tomatoes in oil with the garlic and basil. I canned 4 dozen jars of salsa and I have 10 sandwich bags of just dried salted tomato. There are quite a few pink to just red tomatoes sitting on my kitchen table right now, and a few green ones still on the vine, but tomato season is now over for me this year.

[newtohosta-no more]

I think I'll plan on planting more tomatoes next year and digging out the dehydrator.