It wasn't a fluke!

I made another batch of gorgeous oven dried tomatoes yesterday. This one's even darker than the last - I'm a little afraid I didn't let the first batch go long enough, and I'd really like to have some last through the winter. Actually, that's a bit laughable, as there's really not enough to keep me happy for more than a few dishes - less, if I share. But having the option to find them in my cupboard in 3 months would be nice.

I'm thrilled to still be pulling things off the vines, and I'm hoping the current string of hot days will help ripen more of those shiny beautiful tomatoes. There should be enough grape tomatoes on the vine to get at least 1 more batch done.

I am already daydreaming about growing grapes next year, and 80 trillion tomato vines.

Oven dried goodness

I plucked a bunch of the Principe Borghese over the past week, and decided to try drying them. So yesterday, when I had several hours where someone would be in the house at all times, I set the oven to 200 degrees, cut my tomatoes all in half, and set them to shrivelling up. While I was at it, I sliced up a couple of sweet banana peppers that were on the counter and slightly past their prime.

I'm calling the results an unqualified success. The peppers dried to an almost papery consistency, and have turned brown. I tasted one, and immediately wanted to add it to dark chocolate. I'm seriously considering drying the rest of the peppers solely for this reason now.

The tomatoes are tiny, dark, and very tart. I fed one to my husband, who shook his head around and blinked several times after swallowing. I do believe the rest of the grape tomatoes will be reserved for this purpose as well, because I'd really like to have enough for sharing.

I dreamed last night that I showed the garden to my mother, and everything was warped and mutated and ruined. The cucumbers in particular were blackened and diseased on the vine - one of them half some sort of stalk growing out of it. I may be a little preoccupied with the state of the plants.

I'm a bad tomato mom

We were supposed to get the season's first frost last night. I left my tomato plants outside, where frost will surely kill them. I've yet to inspect them to be sure they survived the night, though it looked like it wasn't much of a frost when I left the house this morning. I do need a long term plan, because it's mid-September, and winter in New England is inevitable.

We had a condo association meeting last night, and toward the end, our neighbors complimented me on how much the garden was producing now. Really, nothing but the tomatoes has done much, but I've learned not to underestimate the power of red spheres in an expanse of green. (Or in the case of our lawn, brown and dirt.)

We are getting a second cucumber. Huzzah!

My three types of tomatoes this year! The top picture is Principe Borghese, hopefully destined for some sun-drying. The middle is Black Cherry, which has a great texture & consistency, without a lot of tomato goop. The last is Husky Red, which has been slow to produce, but is now going pretty nutso. The remaining tomatoes on it won't ripen before the first frost, but that plant has remained less than two feet tall, so I'm pretty comfortable trying to winter it for a while. It's tempting to try to winter the Black Cherry too.

Sadly, the Principe Borghese is a bit too ungainly to bring indoors. I will definitely be growing that one again next year. It yielded a whole lot of fruit for a short growing season - I didn't get them in until mid-July. I learned a lot from these plants...next year I will not be afraid to hack them back to prevent legginess. I will also give them better sunlight; the one thing that truly gave me agita was the powdery mildew that built up incessantly on the grape tomato.

I can't believe the growing season is nearly over.

Pepper post

I harvested some tiny little peppers this weekend. So exciting! These started out creamy white, and they recently darkened to orange, and then red. Very bright, and it makes me happy just to look at them. Of course, I haven't -tasted- them yet. They're marked as "edible ornamentals," so I'm not convinced they'll be all that yummy. Still, they don't take up much room, and they're very cheery.

Here are my other "edible ornamental," Pretty in Purple. These are taking a very long time to fully ripen. They start off purple, but they're supposed to ripen red. So far, I've got purple, and purple fading to white, and something that may darken to red. Maybe. I wish I'd taken before and afters of the entire plant. It started out as a wee little bitty thing, and now it's easily as big as my banana pepper plants. Except it's growing horizontal instead of vertical. I think I'll try to use this one again next year, but to prune it back so it looks nicer.

The banana peppers are edible, and not ornamental. This one got very fancy, though! I'm not sure what made it curl up on itself like that, but I bet it'll taste just as good as its straight and narrow colleagues.

I need to go out and take some new pictures of the garden. The tomatoes are still going a little crazy right now, and I fed them more milk this weekend to encourage more out of them. The lone cucumber is ready to pluck this weekend, and I think there was a second starting to develop. Designs for next year's garden are starting to occupy my thoughts in the early mornings as I wake up. Things to do this winter: Borrow "Square Foot Gardening" from the library, work on building some raised boxes if we figure out what our next home's yard looks like, and figure out some dedicated space to start seedlings indoors.

I still can't eat the hot peppers in the garden in their raw state, but I cooked dinner for the whole family and significant others yesterday, and snuck a couple in to the enormous pot of beef. It was pretty great to be able to use them, just like that after picking them. I have visions of preserving leftover veggies, but this year's garden isn't going to produce enough for that. Next year's crop will be a little more ambitious.