I'm a bad blogger, but a worse gardener

We've had some snow in New England. A lot of snow. It turns out, we set a record for most snowfall in a December this year.

Why do I mention this?

Because my gardening pots are still outside. Buried in snow. I waited too long to clean them up and get them in the house, so now they're in frosty limbo. I'm hoping with one more decent thaw I'll be able to retrieve them.

In the meantime, my brother in law and his wife were kind enough to send me a small kit for an indoor Italian Herb Garden, which I got started a couple of days ago. I eagerly anticipate tiny green plants unfurling in the next week or two. And having fresh basil to last me through winter, because O, How I Crave It.

In other happy news, seed catalogues have started arriving! I think my entire haul will come from Territorial Seed Company this year. I really want to expand into interesting stuff like corn and brussels sprouts, but I'm holding myself back for a couple of reasons. First, we're trying to be nice neighbors and the husband has asked specifically that I not overrun the backyard of our 4-family with more plants. Second, we are planning a move sometime this year, and the earlier the better. So I don't want to go crazy with enormous plants that I then need to figure a way to transport to their new home.

I have a list put together. I've had to pare it down twice, because there is clearly no reason to spend $200 on seeds in the small space I've allotted for gardening. Next year, I can expand. This year will be enough of an experiment, since everything's going in from seed. Last season was all seedlings and mature plants.

The last time I grew herbs from seed, I potted 50 peat pots. One plant made it to maturity. Let's hope this goes a bit better than that year.

Poor, neglected garden

I visited the garden this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks. I am a bad, bad garden momma. We went on vacation for a week, and I was out to pick the unripe tomatoes and whatever else I could find before the risk of heavy frost. My parents were treated to a bounty of green tomatoes.

We've apparently had a light frost in that time, but nothing too terrible, because most of the plants were alive and kicking. The drought had killed off the cucumber plant, and the peas are in bad shape - I moved the latter to our porch in the hope that it'll discourage the squirrels from pulling out the plants. But I saw ripe grape tomatoes, and peppers, and a number of green cherry and grape tomatoes. The garden greens are doing pretty well. The leeks are about as good as they're likely to get, so I'll probably harvest those this weekend. The eggplant is truly mighty, and is still a green giant out there. Not that it's produced anything to show for all the resources it's gotten.

I never got in the second round of carrots, and I didn't bother ordering saffron crocuses. I did get my composter, so one of this weekend's projects will be to start filling that bad boy up. The winter will be about compost, winter greens on the patio, and dreaming and planning for next spring.

My poor garden's looking the worse for wear at this point in the season. It's time to start considering which plants are going into the compost pile this weekend. The traitorous eggplant is a top contender.

I went out this morning to check on things, and harveted an overflowing handful of grape tomatoes. My head swam with plans for when I'd dry this batch to give me more oven dried tomatoey goodness, when a combination of wet wood, clumsiness, and sheer bad luck caused me to take a spill and crush most of them. Sadness! Despair! I managed to salvage a few, and then grabbed some Black Cherries, but I feel robbed of the good stuff.

The rest of the garden is obviously slowing down. None of the Husky Reds has ripened since I picked the last one a week or two ago. My third cucumber apparently offed itself when I failed to water properly last week. There are two smallish banana peppers on the vine. The other hot peppers are still growing like weeds. Only, you know, hotter. And slightly more colorful. The greens need to be thinned, so I'm thinking we'll be having a salad with the trimmings this weekend. My sugar snap peas, once so happy and carefree, have become angry and defensive after being continuously ravaged by some creature, and haven't given me any tasty treats. And of course, I never managed to get another round of carrots and radishes in the "ground," after their unfortunate run-in with the neighbors' dog.

I've started reading "Square Foot Gardening" to see if it would work for me next year. Here come the daydreams about lovely lush lawns punctuated with prim white boxes filled with lucious green.

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.