I'm making sauce today - canning tomorrow. The biggest tomato in the right of this pic is a Pink Oxhart. The rest are Romas, except for the smallest ones which are the Amish paste tomatoes.
While this has been an abysmal year for tomatoes.. I actually got quite a few today. Our weather has not cooperated at all... and then I've been on the sick list...and now we are feeling fall getting closer and closer... We won't have near enough tomatoes for our needs. But we'll savor the ones we have.
A few garden notes.
Remember I was complaining about those small and useless Amish paste tomatoes and I should never grow them again? HA! They turned out to be the most prolific and most disease/weather resistant of the whole lot. I'll be saving the seeds like gold for next year. The few plants that I let grow bloomed and fruited well - and were true to last year's plants. Never say never.
At least one experiment went right. I grew winter wheat and buckwheat as a cover crop in the upper garden to help the soil. I wasn't convinced it worked until I bushwacked thru the weeds and found these beauties:
The two on the right are from the improved soil
These are Romas - from the same tray and seed packet. The one of the left is from the lower garden where I thought the soil was better. But as you can see the two on the right from the upper garden were bigger, meatier, and more lovely. I'll be buying winter wheat and buckwheat by the wheelbarrow load for this fall/next early spring. Wow what a great result!
Happy Tomato-ing for the folks who have 'em... I feel your pain, for folks who don't. Whats in your sink today?
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3 comments:
My sink was full of zucchini today, I hollowed them out a bit, stuffed them, and into the oven they went...dinner soon.:) Oh, and my wife made a loaf of fresh bread to go with it.
I'm glad to hear that you had luck with your Amish tomatoes. I grew them last year and they did OK, this year is a bad tomato year so after reading your post I will not judge them to harshly until next year. We are trying another paste type variety called "Sausage" this year, so far they are looking pretty good.
Hey Mr H! We discovered stuffed zucc's earlier this summer. Fantastic!
I've heard of the Sausage ones.. would love to see them when yours are ready.
In my sink today is more maters... and I've started a cheese from the goats milk. Something for you to look forward to when you get your milkers
;-)
I'm glad to finally know someone who has done a cover crop. I keep reading about them, but don't really know exactly what to do with them.
Did you just turn it under into the soil? How far in advance of planting did you have to turn it under? And did you have any trouble with it growing back as "weeds" in your veggie garden?
If you have any good links to refer me to that would be great!!
My tomatoes look really good this year. The mice like them too, ARRGHHH! Why can't they just pick ONE and eat the whole thing? Why do they have to take a bite out of every one?? Aggrivating little buggars.
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