Looking Back: Tomato Success

According to the newsfolks, it’s time to baton the hatches, put on the galoshes and head inside for the first storm of the season. And after our dry few years, we’re ready for it. But I thought I’d take this time, while we are enjoying the indoors to reflect on the good things about this past growing season. Sure we were full of disappointments this year, but our tomatoes…our tomatoes were a huge success. Oh sure, at first I complained about how they weren’t turning red, but once they did, they came on in full force.

This year we limited ourselves to five plants, Better Boy, Consoluto Fiorentino, Italian Heirloom (generic name, isn’t it?), Big Rainbow and a Sweet 100. We also had a spare volunteer cherry tomato that has been sprawling along the ground with the melons too. All five plants that we planted were incredibly happy this year and all pulled their weight as heavy producers. Better Boy hit the ground running at the begining of the season and Big Rainbow has been pulling in the tail end of the season with baskets full of orange goodness.

Our Sweet 100 even reached the top of the 10 foot cage…way to go little plant!

We’ve made about 10 pints of canned sauce and have another handful of portions frozen in the freezer. Plus I dehydrated the Sweet 100’s this year and have about 2 cups of those in the pantry. We should be plenty supplied well into the winter with our own spaghetti sauce.

So tell me, what was your biggest garden success this past summer?

I Need Your Help – A Sonoma Garden is for Sale

I wasn’t going to share this at first because I like to keep some amount of privacy here, but in this market, in this economy, I think it’s time to be a little creative. So here goes. The main reason things have been a little silent around here is that we’ve found a new garden that we would like to tend. It’s still here in Sonoma, but it’s on almost two acres. Two flat, just waiting to be planted acres with a 1950’s vintage house on it. We’ve had our eye on the market for a while now, but we’re very picky. After turning our house and our backyard from the decrepit, funky junky garden into the cheerful (to our eyes at least) place we have, it’s hard to think of leaving. But this new place looks worth it. The potential is limitless in this new spot. More chickens, maybe some goats, a tractor, possibly a natural swimming pond, and I can’t wait to plant some Scarlet Oaks. But we have to sell our house to make this all work.

We’ve been very hard at work tidying up, fixing loose ends, decluttering, polishing, and putting things in their right place and our current garden (and house) is now on the market. And what I need help from you guys is to help us find a buyer.

In this age of social networking and all, I thought it might help to reach out and risk losing a little privacy if that will make our dream happen. And I trust you folks, you’ve always been more than friendly with us. So, if you or anyone you know is looking for a well built house with a chicken coop, large organic garden (we’ll even leave the compost piles if you like), within an easy walk to town and good schools, please take a look.

I know this economy is tough, and this deal might not work out, which is okay. We do love our place, but oh the dreaminess and possibilities of this new place are hard to resist!

We Taught a Little Class

This past weekend, we did something new. Along with the garden park manager, Rebecca, we taught a class on Winter Gardening at the Sonoma Garden Park. If you are local and haven’t been to this fantastic place on 7th Street East, here in Sonoma, you must go and soon! It is one of our favorite places to go for gardening inspiration. Every Saturday morning they have a Harvest Market in their straw bale barn where you can buy all sorts of produce and flowers. They even have a CSA to join as well.

My very favorite part of this place is the fig forest. It is this large circle of old fig trees that has completely become a room of it’s own. There is only one small doorway in which to enter and then you are surrounded by these ancient fig trees. Saturday it was set up for a wedding. How dreamy.

So we sat at a table much like this one and talked all about gardening in winter here. Things you can plant, tips on how to grow those winter crops. Different garden tasks, such as hygiene, pruning, composting, cover crops and keeping record.

Would you all be interested in talking winter gardening at some point? We could do a little week long series if you’d like.
Meanwhile, if you want to see more pictures of this magical place, click here.

Autumn in the Garden

Sure, it’s not quite autumn yet, but the signs are in the air. Leaves from our valley oaks are starting to slowly turn and fall to the ground. In our back beds, the cooler part of the yard, we have our fall seedlings starting to grow. And oh, what’s that you see? Yes, we laid drip lines this summer! With a timer! We’ve always watered everything with a hose, which takes a good three hours to do! It is exhausting, so setting in these drip lines has been an incredible time saver. And I’m sure a water saver too.

It has made such a difference to get regular water to these carrots and green beans. They were just sitting doing not much of anything with our sporadic hose watering. And now? They are growing like gangbusters.

We have a new long raised bed thanks to our fence that needed to be replaced. We’ve tried buying the expensive redwood 12″ boards for raised beds, but you know what? We like the old fence boards so much better. Don’t know why. In this long bed we have quite the selection of lettuce, pak choy, radishes, beets, carrots and turnips. I wish I could give you exact dates of planting and exactly what we did sow, however I’m not very good at following my own advice sometimes.

The corn is almost ready.

The peppers have finally come around. Remember how pitiful they were? And how bountiful they were last year?

Overall autumn is looking to be good in our garden. How about yours? Did you get a fall garden in yet?

Fallen Apple Applesauce

It’s hard to believe that it is actually applesauce making season again but it is! Last weekend we put up a bunch of jars and I thought I’d share with you our process. I’m sure there are as many applesauce recipes as there are people who make it, but if you haven’t tried making your own applesauce before, you really should try. It’s so easy! We have a golden delicious apple tree in our yard and typically we make applesauce out of the ugly apples that have fallen off the tree and leave the nice looking still-on-the-tree apples for eating and for pies. So the first order of business is to send out a troop of little boys to collect the fallen apples.

See, ugly, aren’t they? It takes extra time to cut them up, peel them and cut out the bad parts, about an hour to do an entire pot full, but it’s worth it in the end for not having to waste them.

We put the cut up apples into a pot with about a cup of water and a cup of sugar and set the heat on medium-hot. As I was cleaning the kitchen I would occasionally use a potato masher to press the apples down and smoosh them up. Then we started adding more water, probably about 3 or 4 more cups of it until it reached a nice ’saucy’ consistency. As the applesauce was getting close to where we wanted it to go (about 45 minutes of simmering) we added a tablespoon of cinnamon and more sugar to taste and started on the canning jars.

First put the jars you want to use in a large pot, then carry that over to the sink and fill up each jar with water and then add water to the pot until that water reaches to the shoulders of the shortest jar. Set these to boil on high to sterilize for a few minutes.

When the applesauce is ready to go and the jars are sterilized then we throw everything into the canning jar water to quickly sterilize, the lids, the screwtops, the funnel, the tongs, everything that is going to touch the jars, we give a quick sterilization.

Then very, very carefully, we pick the hot-water-filled jars out of the boiling water and empty them. Be prepared that chances are that you are going to get some hot water on you, so have a choice curse word on hand and Don’t Drop the Jar! Maybe it would be best to have a bowl of ice water on hand to dunk your burned hand into, that would be smart. After emptying out all the jars, place them on a heat safe surface, like your cutting board. Insert the canning funnel and fill up leaving 1/2 inch of room at the top.


After filling all the jars full, dip a clean towel into the still boiling water and gently wipe off the top of all the jars, just to make sure that everything is nice and clean. Then you’ll carefully pick up the lids out of the boiling water with tongs and place them on the lids. Then put all the screw tops on. You don’t need to screw them on super tight at this point, just securely.

Then place all the filled applesauce jars back into the boiling water and set your timer for 5 minutes. After letting them process in the hot water for five minutes, take them out, screw on the tops even tighter and wait for the tops to pop sealed.

And there you have it! Ugly Apple Applesauce! I hope you enjoy it, I know we will!

We’re Still Around

Phew, it’s been busy lately! But we are finding some time to harvest and to build new beds for the fall garden. I hope you have a good weekend and on Monday I’m going to share our recipe for Fallen Applesauce.

The Days of Canning Begin

It’s been quiet around these here parts, hasn’t it? Sorry about that. We’ve been fully wrapped up in this last part of summer…can you feel slight hints of autumn where you live too? The tomatoes have finally started kicking them out with regularity so we’ve been making sauce when we can.

These shown tomatoes are the largest that we’ve ever grown! Granted this peach is tiny for comparison, but these mysterious Italian Heirloom (that’s all the seed packet says) tomatoes are all weighing in well over a pound each. These combined with the funky ones, a few Better Boys and a handful of Sweet 100’s are filling the copper pot these days.

How about you? We all were struggling with tomatoes earlier this season, are they catching up for you?

Impractical Tomatoes

Our tomatoes have started to turn red now and are slowly trickling onto the counter top to be incorporated into our daily meals. Right now I’m fascinated by this variety, Constoluto Fiorentino:

I can’t say that it’s a very practical tomato. You can’t slice them for sandwiches all that well and even chopping them is a creative task, but sometimes garden fare needs to go beyond practical and just be beautiful.

Grow this Squash Next Year

We are growing the greatest new squash this year. It’s called Zucchino Rampicante. This one is both a summer and winter squash. You can eat it now like a zucchini or you can let them get big and be a hard skinned winter squash. We obviously haven’t tried it as a winter squash yet, but as a summer squash it tastes a lot like butternut. We’ve had some in soup and it was a nice treat to have that flavor mixed among the others.

As they are growing they are forming these large bulbs at the end like gourds are well over a foot long. I can’t wait to see what they look like and taste like when fully mature. You should try this one next year!

What new thing are you growing this year that you are excited about?

How to Make Homemade Deodorant – i love it!

Subtitled: Please Don’t Be a Stinky Gardener

Around the time that I took the dive into going without shampoo, I found not only the handmade hand lotion recipe but also a homemade deodorant recipe. I was immediately curious about the deodorant because the previous five or so months leading up to that I wasn’t wearing anything for a deodorant, which admittedly maybe was not a wise decision to make in the middle of summer. However, ever since Scott and I have known each other and gotten to that point in a new relationship where you get comfortable talking about such things as antiperspirant, he’s been trying to get me to stop using it. I was always an antipersperant user because I hated the feeling of being sweaty, but I did have to admit that all the correlations made between using that and getting breast cancer were worrisome. Of course it took me a good 7 years to head his warning, but I finally started testing out commercial deodorants that lacked the aluminum of antiperspirants. I tried all sorts from Burts Bees to Tom’s of Maine and some other lesser known brands and all of them made me sweatier feeling than if I wore nothing at all. It was the strangest thing! So last summer I decided to wear nothing at all under my arms and I noticed that I started to feel less sweatier (this is such a lovely topic to write about – yuck!) Anyway, being that it was summer and that I built a picket fence and we had plenty of 100+ degree days, I will be the first to admit that you probably wouldn’t have wanted to stand too close to me by the end of the day.

Now, I’m all for smelling like the beautiful human being that you are, but there’s human scent and then there’s stinky scent. That was what I needed to eliminate. When Amy Karol wrote about her deodorant recipe, I had to try it. I already wanted to buy emulsifying wax from Mountain Rose and now I just needed to order two more things and I was set for making a whole line of homemade body care products. It was easy to make, although scraping out the butters was a bit of a job, but nothing to deter me. I have to say that I LOVE this deodorant and I encourage you to try it! I’ve been wearing it everyday since last November and I’m on my second batch. It doesn’t make me sweatier and I’m stink free all day long. It’s fairly cost effective, at just under $3 a batch, which lasted me about five months.

Here’s hot to make the Homemade Deodorant: I’m going to list the ingredients and how to make it with pictures, but you should really click over to Amy’s Angry Chicken to read the exact recipe.

Ingredients:

• Baking Soda
• Corn Starch
• Shea Butter
• Cocoa Butter
• Vitamin E Tablets (optional)
• Essential Oil (optional)
• Small Jar – I used a 1/2 pint jar which holds the recipe perfectly

Vitamin E tablets are expensive to buy, I think I paid around $11 for my jar, so if you want to pass on this ingredient I think you can. For the essential oils, I chose a combination of Tea Tree Oil which has antibacterial properties (and if there’s anywhere I don’t want bacteria, it’s under my arms!) and Lavender Oil because I had bought some to make the hand lotion. It turned out to be a really nice combination.

Also as I mentioned, the butters took some scraping to get out of their jars. I basically scraped and scraped and then packed them into the tablespoon measure until I had enough. If you have the chance, make this in the summer when it’s much easier to scrap. This last batch was much easier to get out than the batch I made last November.

Then you simply put all of the ingredients into a microwaveable Pyrex measuring cup (don’t put the Vitamin E Tablets or the Essential Oil though yet) and microwave it for about 30 seconds and then stir. Then 30 seconds again and stir until it’s all melted and combined. At that point I added the Vitamin E and essential oils, poured it into the half pint jar and let it sit overnight. Now in the morning after my shower I scrape out a pea sized amount with the back of my thumbnail and smear on. It has a nice texture so I don’t mind using my hand to rub it in, then if I have extra left on my hand I just rub it into my hand like lotion, which it basically is, right?

Mine kept on the bathroom counter for 5 months before I noticed that it wasn’t smelling as fresh as it used to. I only had a tiny bit left so I felt okay dumping that out and making another batch. Amy suggests making the recipe and pouring half into a container to use and keeping the other half in the fridge, which is a good idea. I found that I got three full recipes out of the shea butter container, which has a shelf life of a year. So you might want to consider making a batch for a loved one while you are at it. Also you’ll find yourself with some left over cocoa butter after making three batches of this, and I’ve found if you add a tablespoon to the lotion recipe it turns out divine! This homemade deodorant, paired with some handmade lotion along with some jars of whatever you’ve canned would make a fantastic, loving and frugal gift!