First off...I have to apologise to all my great friends who've been calling and e-mailing me to find out where the heck I've been all summer that I can only explain with the following visual aid. I believe ALL will be clear by the end.
Let us begin at the beginning. The 2012 Goodwin Library Seed Swap:
The seed companies sent some fantastic seeds. Combined with the seeds I sent away for I had a super variety of tomatoes to grow plus other things...but as you know from my tomato blog a couple of years ago, I am all about growing tomatoes!
Because we don't have a greenhouse, sometimes growing tomatoes from seed on a window ledge can be iffy...so we always buy some plants from Dr. Tomato at Blue Seal Feed.
Maybe it was growing the seed in the shed that John fixed up or the compost or whatever...but the seed all germinated!
This was an incredible year for growing... maybe the BEST SUMMER ever for our garden. Soon it was time to plant everything outside.
I planted all the tomatoes, the ones from seed and the plants. Everything started growing like crazy! It was hard to keep up with all the weeding and watering of the 34 raised beds!
The seed tomatoes started to ripen
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| And ripen and ripen and ripen. ALL the tomatoes were ripening... at the same time! |
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| Now...what to do with all of them? |
I dehydrated some. And turned the rest (we gave away a LOT, too) into sauce and relish and tomato jam...
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| Two kinds of tomato jam
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There were STILL so MANY tomatoes to deal with... day after day, night after night of picking and cooking and freezing and canning. I would see tomatoes in my SLEEP! I had tomato NIGHTMARES:
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WOW. That is so cool. What does tomato jam taste like?
ReplyDeleteLOL Steph...so funny!! And the lesson you learned?
ReplyDeleteHi Ann!
ReplyDeleteThe recipes I found from here:
http://www.foodinjars.com/
One was spicy sort of like a ketchup. The other was made with yellow tomatoes and had basil in it. Both were very good! Though I doubled the batches and they took forever to cook down!
OMG, I've been there! Not this year, and believe it or not, I miss it. Good job in keeping up!
ReplyDeleteThank you,Dee! Lesson? HMMMM? Cats won't eat tomatoes no matter how you disguise them?
ReplyDeleteA roving army of squirrels always assaults anything we grow. I'm so envious, Steph!
ReplyDeleteHi Ted!
ReplyDeleteJohn fenced in the garden with chicken-wire type fencing. You might try that. It's inexpensive and seemed to keep out most things but a chipmunk lived well all summer... and some birds, too. We have battled a groundhog in the past but caught it in a have-a -heart and took it for a ride!
Hi Bernadette!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I know you are a gardener, too. Yes, it was crazy but winding down, now. I know I'll miss all the fresh tomatoes and making gazpachos of all kinds. Oh! I made several kinds of chutney, too. I LOVE summer!!!
You are one talented and very hard workin' woman! Can you ship tomatoes across the country????
ReplyDeleteHi Becky,
ReplyDeleteSo nice to hear from you! I wish! I would have sent a truckload out to you!