Tomatoes 2011

It is that magic time again - tomato planting season!
We chose to buy starts this year instead of starting our own plants.  It has been another cold spring here, so I don't think we missed out too much by not starting months ago, as we might have done during another year.

I've added some new varieties to the mix.  So far I have planted:
(3) Health Kick
(3) Amish Paste
(3) San Marzano
(2) Stupice
(2) Oregon Spring
(1) Siberian

The last three varieties are supposed to be very cold tolerant. Not being cynical, just hedging my bet.

What the?!

Yes, I have experienced the time warp known as.... parenthood.
A few things in my life, such as this blog and my desperate need for a haircut, have been ignored over the past 8 months.

What has happened since I last posted? Well, last year ended up being dismal for gardeners here in the northwest.  It was a cold and wet spring followed by a fairly cold summer.  Somehow we managed to be one of the few success stories in backyard gardening and did harvest at least 70 pounds of tomatoes.  Our backyard is very protected from any cold winds, and I think this helped quite a bit. I felt so sorry for any new gardeners who were just starting out last year, and hope they weren't too discouraged to try again.

More Tomatoes

The tomatoes are coming in!

I picked another 1.6 pounds at the end of August, and 7.5 pounds last weekend! So we did get that first delicious batch of sauce on Labor Day Weekend, and I have my first freezer bag of peeled tomatoes for later in the year.  Yesterday I picked another 5.5 pounds bringing the total to about 16 pounds, and I'll be going out to pick more today, along with our first harvest of tomatillos.  So exciting!

Tomatoes!

It has been a long time coming.  We're about a month or more behind where we were last year, but we finally harvested our first ripe tomatoes yesterday! There were about 7 or 8 beautiful red tomatoes, totaling 1.4 pounds, and there are loads more that should be ripe in about a week.  We're hoping to make this year's first batch of homemade Penne all'Arrabbiata before Labor Day.  We just harvested all of our garlic, too - just in time!

Garlic Scapes & Potatoes

This week I cut off the tops of my garlic plants, also known as scapes.  The scape is the unopened flower at the tip of the stalk.  Cutting the scape off directs more of the plants energy into making a nice big bulb, instead of flowering. It is tasty in stir fries, with a more subtle flavor than the garlic bulb. You can buy scapes at some farmers markets - I saw some this weekend that were $1.00 for a bunch of 8, so I'm including these in my harvest total!


I also harvested our small crop of volunteer potatoes - 4.6 pounds!  Nice pay off for no work!

Harvest Tally

August 2010
3.0 pounds tomatoes -  market value $6.00
Approx 50 garlic bulbs + 6-12 Elephant Garlic - market value approx $15.00

August total $21.00

July 2010
4.6 pounds purple potatoes - market value $9.00
Approx 50 garlic scapes - market value $6.00

July total $15.00

June 2010
1 pint raspberries - market value $3.00
1.5 pounds snow peas - market value $5.00

June total $8.00

First Harvest!

It was a small first harvest, but a harvest nonetheless.  This week I picked about a pint of Raspberries and approximately 1.5 pounds of snow peas. I also picked a bunch of oregano to dry.

I planted out 4 tomatillo starts, an Anaheim pepper, and the one swiss chard start that didn't shrivel up and die from neglect, along with some corn that my neighbor gave me.

Forgot to mention that I spent $2.99 on a small bag of lime for the tomatoes - will add that to the garden input for a total of $20.12