No, those aren't giant weeds- they're tomatoes! Pretty great, right?! Care of the garden has been a pretty nice collaboration between Andy and I this Summer: Andy waters and I do pretty much everything else. This turns out to be a fairly even split, as if I had been left to water, I think we would be rockin' a lot more brownish greenery by now. Some of the garden bore greater fruit than others. The cucumbers did great for a while, and we frankly had cucumbers up the ying-yang. Those cukes (along with a wayward dill sprig that was flowering on the front porch) did turn into some very nice pickleage earlier this Summer:
Eventually, the cucumber plant's leaves began to wither, and the vines, then the cucumbers themselves followed. It was just as well, as we had a fridge compartment full of them at the time, but it would be nice to figure out what happened. We got a few Roma beans and peppers at the beginning of the season, but I think that as the tomato plants grew to mammoth proportions and blocked the sun, we got large plants without any edibleness attached. Somewhat disappointing, but we figure this should work out better when we've got a bigger space to garden, with less competition for the vital sunshine.
Back to what did work: baby carrots! I stared at the green fronds for over a month trying to figure out when to pluck the darn things. But when I did... how totally exciting! Like little dirty orange presents lying in wait just under the ground! We got a few duds (maybe from planting too close?) but here is a pick of the freshly plucked yield:
I considered doing something with the fronds. A google search turned up carrot green teas and soups, even a whole website from the UK dedicated to carrot fronds(!). Eventually, I ended up just throwing them out though. Kind of a bummer, but maybe next year? Or not... I think I have to be in a particularly hard-core mood to make that work. The carrots themselves (along with peppers, baby potatoes and onions scored from the farmer's market) made for a tasty roasted veggie melange. Sorry for the fuzziness of the below photo- I'm still working on my indoor photography skillz:
And now on to the crowning joy of our garden: the tomatoes. Ah, the tomatoes! At the beginning of the Summer as the first Brandywine's began to ripen, nearly ripe tomatoes began to disappear from the garden, only to be found half eaten by the fence in the yard. Clearly, we had a varmint. I figured we could combat this by picking the tomatoes a little early, before the critter was interested. Well, then our little friend became even more brazen, absconding with green tomatoes, then leaving half behind. Oh, mad is not even the word to describe the feelings I had towards this intruder! We sprinkled cayenne powder around the garden to burn his little nostrils, and this seemed to work for a week. Then he came back with a vengeance, placing little bites into each of our 'maters! This was where the madness needed to stop. So, we wrapped the garden in mesh designed to keep birds out. Well, that seemed to have do it, lazy little bastards. And thank the lord, because I got this close to rethinking my position on shooting small defenseless animals. Nevertheless, we've ended up with an amazing yield that just keeps on coming! Here's a photo of a recent few day's bounty:
Most of these tomatoes wound up in a tomato sauce for 11 family members, but others landed in a tasty salsa that accompanied slow-cooker pork carnita tacos.
I don't break out the slow cooker much, but I will say this recipe was incredibly easy and delicious: take pork shoulder (we used locally sourced, bone-in), rub liberally with latin spices (I used cumin and adobo mix), thinly slice an onion, spread on bottom of the cooker, add a couple cups of chicken broth and lime juice, add pork, set it on low for 8-10 hours and forget it! I did add one last step, which was to spread the shredded meat on a cookie sheet and broil it at the end to get a little bit of crispiness! Yum! Here's the finished product:
