The End of The Garden

It's been a long while since I've posted!
Too long. So here's what's been happening since August (in the garden for now)!
My tomato plants took a weird cue from the cooling weather and each shot up a few feet in every direction. pretty weird. And now, I have TONS of green tomatoes that won't have enough time to ripen before the inevitable frost.
So here's the first update, some stuff I picked today, but nowhere near all the green tomatoes.
I guess I'm gonna have to do a lot of pickling, and fried green tomatoes! Maybe green salsa?
I've actually come to love fried green tomatoes since I've made them a few times from fallen green tomatoes, and I LOVE anything deep fried. The last time I made fried green tomatoes, I also made breadcrumb-coated fried avocado, broccoli, and ripe Roma tomatoes. I used specifically Roma, because they aren't that juicy. They were pretty good. The green ones are my favorite though.


So here's what I picked today, and brought in out of the cold:

Here's the recipe I use for fried green tomatoes, it's kind of cheating, and I'm sure it's better with buttermilk and corn meal. I'll try a more interesting one soon!

Squirrels. Grawr.

I haven't been out to water and check on my plants in a day or two because it's been pretty rainy the past few days. I went out today to pick a ripe tomato, and discovered a squirrel(s) has dug huge holes in all my pots.
It wouldn't be the biggest deal if squirrels were digging in my garden (even though it would be terribly annoying), but since I have pots that are quite small, a hole that size cause severely damage the root system of the plant and kill it. Major grr. Maybe I'll just fertilize and hope in some way that will help the plants not die. And they even dug in the hot pepper plants! I thought they'd at least stay away from those.

Anyhoo, I picked a bit today. The peppers and tomatoes seem to have tons more growing and ripening. I've noticed that some of the bell peppers are getting their leaves eaten up so I'll have to spray with dish soap and water. Earlier in the season my Italian eggplant was completely covered in aphids and was dying. I know I could've bought ladybugs I've heard they're pretty effective, but putting dish soap and water in to a spray bottle and rinsing the plant off with water after sounds a lot easier and cheaper. All the aphids were gone after doing the soap spray and rinsing with water for about three days in a row.
The squash and cucumbers seem to have caught more of that horrible powdery mildew that doesn't seem to ever go away (even with constant application of fungicide). I guess I just need to put in more time maintaining the garden for now with all the pests, constant rain, humidity, and lower temperatures. Hopefully the squirrels with stay away from the pots since I sprinkled lots of powdered cayenne in them . It's weird though, they didn't touch any of the veggies/fruit, they just dug. Last year I had the issue with them eating all my tomatoes before they were ripe enough to pick.

So here's some fruit from today!

First strawberry in a while! And also an early girl tomato. Also a very strangely shaped cucumber.

Unexpected Harvest

As I said in a post or two ago, nothing looked like it was gonna be ripe for the next few days at least, but I just went out to water and found out I was mistaken. I guess the plants were in dire need of fertilizing because I did so a few days ago, and each of the tomato plants have actually grown a foot taller and bushier, and so many are ripe! The same with all the peppers (hot and sweet)! And the Ichiban eggplants have grown tons of new leaves and flowers! Nice surprises are always great in the garden, they sure beat out finding squirrels have discovered your plants and dug in your pots. Which are the kind of surprises I'm used to.

So here's today's harvest.

Tomaaatoooesss

dried cayenne

cayenne seeds saved!

peppahs

Even more tomatoes, I just find the different colours so pretty. One cherry tomato plant I have growing was labelled Black Cherry Tomato but sadly it was mislabeled and they're just extremely large cherries.

Some more of the garden:

The darn squirrels keep munchin' on my aloe

Garden Update

Things seem to still be blooming and growing new fruit constantly, but right now besides tomatoes, nothing's really ready to be picked for a while. My zucchinis keep growing baby ones, but the past three times they decided not to actually grow fully, but turn yellow and fall off. The bell peppers seem to have finally started producing lots of little ones, which is great. I was worried I wouldn't get any bell peppers this season because until recently they weren't even flowering and it's already August.
So here's a few plants.

jalapenos, red pepper (not ripe), and sweet banana

'Super sweet 100' cherries, green peppers, and the surprise tomatoes. 

Eggplant, the surprise weed tomatoes, and cherry toms.

While picking my eggplants, I discovered that the top green part of eggplants and the plant itself had thorns/ spikes all over it! I was not expecting that and was pretty surprised. 'Tis hard to pick something with a top of spikes.
I don't know if it'll be obvious from this picture but...spikes!

On the left side, a thorn! Ahh.

 Anyhoo here are some tomatoes I picked today. Mmmm. These golden ones are so delicious and sweet I've picked about five or more a day since the plant started producing (and eaten then right after)! I'm going to try out saving seeds from tomatoes ( which is more complicated than things like peppers and herbs) when the season ends so I can get a plant similar to this one. It's so hardy and amazing.

Mmm so delicious.

Today's Harvest

Ooooh rainbow!

And here's everything so far:

Fried Eggplant

    Three of my eggplants have ripened! although they're all supposed to be a lot bigger, I'm not so surprised they're so small since I have them in pots that aren't big enough. Two are Ichiban (although they don't look like it) and one is Italian.

(Two of the three)

 I fried them after first salting them, then brushing them with olive oil. The way I salt eggplant is to put down some paper towel, sprinkle salt on them and then put down the sliced eggplant. I then salt the side facing up, and put more paper towels (one layer) on top and letting them sit for anywhere from 5 to30 minutes, however long I need to prepare anything else. The paper towel will get a bit wet from the eggplant, that should happen. I do this because apparently this process takes out any bitterness when you fry/barbeque the eggplant. My favorite way to cook eggplant is to do this and then BBQ it, but my barbeque broke a month ago. Super sad, I look forward to BBQing all winter. Frying the eggplant is a very close second though.

Tomato Branch Transplant

     I have a couple of tomato plants that were passed onto me from a friend who had no room for them in her garden when we were planting it a month or so ago. She didn't know what kind they were (she also got them from a friend), and looked a bit sickly so I didn't think much of them at the time when planted them into the only plastic pots I had left which were pretty tiny. I didn't expect them to survive very long.
   They surprised me and have grown huge! I never put up any stakes or cages for them so they kind of grew into each other into a bush. Now they are actually growing pretty inneresting tomatoes, some pear shaped and others looking like they might be beefsteak!
   Last week there was a crazy storm here and we got quite a bit of hail, which bruised up one of my zucchinis and knocked some of the tomatoes over, which cracked a branch that looked like it was about to flower off the stem of one of the plants. I decided maybe I could keep it in water, and it would maybe survive a bit like a flower and maybe in that time so roots would grow, since I've seen tomato plants grow roots all along its branches high above the soil.

And it worked!

Roots!

After a day, there were small bumps on the bottom two inches of the stem, and after two days, tiny roots started to form! This was after four or five days. I potted it into soil and out it back outside, since it started to look like it needed more sun, which it wasn't getting so much of outside. Next time I'd keep it in water longer, since the roots aren't very fully developed.

It's now outside, and so far so good!

Garden Update and Dandelion Stir Fry

It's been a few days since I've posted,

so here are some updated garden pictures, and yet another recipe for dandelions!

So many colouursss

I  finally bought a tea ball. I've wanted one for a long time and I decided I needed one for my mint and dandelion root grounds, so I bought this adorable one from David's Tea. I love the little grapefruit weight at the end of the chain!

peppahs.

Dandelion (and a bit of kale) stir fry!

 

 

 

 

 

 The stir fry. I served it with kale, fried eggs and tomato with some pita to scoop up the yolk for dinner. Mmmm.

Easy dandelion stir-fry:

What you will need: Washed dandelion leaves, oil, garlic, and ginger.

- In a wok (or whatever you want to use for stir-frying) put in some cooking oil. Not much, just to fry the garlic.

- 2-3 cloves of garlic cut up as small as possible. Add after the oil heats up a bit. Make sure it doesn't burn.

(Feel free to use less garlic, I love fried garlic)

- While the garlic is cooking add some (or lots) of ginger to taste,

- Add the dandelion leaves, and stir it all up. If it's taking a while to cook thoroughly, put a tiny bit of water in and a lid over the wok to steam the leaves. Might need some salt.

Goes really well over rice or with eggs!

 

What I picked today. Yay peppers!

 Also it turns out the squirrels have discovered my backyard garden and have been digging in the pots (major Grrr). So I (with some help) cut up some of the habaneros and put them everywhere to guard against further squirrel attacks. Also put some cayenne pepper along the fence for good measure. I hate squirrels. I hope the peppers will scare 'em away.

Dandelions!

So, I have tons of large dandelions growing all over my backyard. I had no further work to do in my garden yesterday so I decided to pick all the large dandelion leaves I could find and make a salad or something.

 

 

Mmmm free healthy green leafy veggies. . .

 

 

 

I ended up making dandelion chips (much like kale chips) which are super easy to make, which is great because I wasn't up for stir frying or washing a wok at midnight.

Here's how to make them:
After washing the leaves thoroughly, break them into pieces (the leafier the better, get rid of most of the stem), and drizzle a little olive oil over them and place them on a parchment paper-covered cookie sheet.
Then it's in the oven for about 10 minutes on 350-375° F. 
Make sure to check them, so they don't burn! They cook pretty darn fast. Garnish with sea salt and really any other spice you want.
Here's the full recipe.

Before...and no after picture, they were devoured upon coming out of the oven.

 

 

 

And here are some other things to do with dandelions: Make caffeine-free coffee, salads, and more.
Yummmm.

It's A Rainy Day. . .

A perfect day for my first blog post! Since going outside at all is now out of the question, with the hail and all.

Anyhoo, most of my garden is ripening! Most of what has been ready until now has been one tomato or a cucumber every so often that they get devoured right away. But my eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes, and even the mildew ridden zucchini plant are blooming with veggies.

The zucchini and eggplants have already been devoured. I'm trying to dry some of the cayenne peppers (the red ones), to have during the winter, and putting some in the freezer. Gonna take a second try at pickling the jalapenos, I wasn't a huge fan of the first batch I made. But that could be because the pickling spice I bought had strange additions like cloves and cinnamon in it. Or maybe because I'm making this up as I go along?
I still don't know what to do with the habanero, and I'm a little afraid of it. Being so incredibly high on the Scoville scale, and all.

Wish me luck!