Tag Archives: posted by Caroline

Yesterday morning, I went outside and picked 30 lbs of tomatoes.

Remember the last time we picked 30 lbs of tomatoes? Less than a week ago?

Just like last time, I brought them in to Zac. He ran them through all the food mill, made a sauce, let it reduce all day– I can’t even tell you how wonderful the house smells right now– and he’s canning it as I write.

Our tentative total for canned sauce is, thus far, 3 flats of 12 quart jars. That is to say, we have canned NINE GALLONS of tomato sauce.

Luckily, we’ve got some serious cookware:

And here is the grisly aftermath:

While Zac was boiling away, I was pruning the vines. Since all the heirloom varieties we’re growing are indeterminate– the few store-bought commercial plants were determinate, and have already crisped up and passed on to tomato-heaven– they require a little management every now and then.

Since indeterminate plants grow continually, throughout the season, we can expect to have tomatoes until mid-October (although, with as many as we’re getting, we might not want them in mid-October!). The vines will continue to grow taller, so all we have to do to keep them fruiting part at a manageable height is is lower the vine down to the ground. This ingenious method, used by commercial tomato growers, I learned about this past January during my marathon dreaming sessions with The New Organic Grower.

The two main objects of pruning are to maximize tomato production by giving each leaf enough room to photosynthesize as efficiently as possible, and to prevent disease by keeping leaves and fruit off the ground.

I honestly thought the job would take a few hours– the rest of the morning, at most. Friends, I was hauling mulch, ripping back and composting dead vines, and tying up all the stragglers until the sun went down. And although I am usually very prone to wax rhapsodic about that fantastic tomato-leaf smell– I’m always asking Zac if he couldn’t make me a Cream of Tomato-Leaf Soup– I was a little disgusted by it by the end.

I’m quite proud (I also woke up a little sore, and am in serious denial of the fact that there’s a whole other bed of tomatoes that needs the same treatment, and that I’d better get it done while the weather’s this cool).

Anyway, I bet you’ll never guess what inspired our sock club’s July installment.

ETA: I just realized that the title of this blog post (unintentionally, I promise!) refers to this book about the dark side of Tomatoes. In case you were wondering.

Speaking of hot, dry weather– a few days ago, we harvested our onions. They’re Tropeana Lungas from Baker Creek, and they are wonderful.

While cooking with them the other day, Zac remarked that, in the same way homegrown garlic is fresher, stronger, and plain-old more than the store-bought kind, these onions are more pungent, sharper, and, when cooked, melt into a more powerful sweetness than others do.

I just love them because they’re beautiful. They bulbed up quite nicely over midsummer– it’s hard to believe that they were this small a month ago!– and, as soon as the really hot weather came and their tops started to fall over, we waited a few more weeks, until the outer layers of their skin began to dry out. That’s when we pulled them and set them out to cure.

 Curing onions– or any food, for that matter– is a process that ensures that the onions are thoroughly dried out, that they develop a tough, protective outer layer, and that they’re all ready to go into dry storage for the season ahead, and not rot.

Onions are partially cured in the field. After they’re harvested, they’re left out in the open sun for a day or two. After that, they’re left in a dry, sheltered place– we’re keeping them in our garage. We leave the tops on, both so that we can braid them later, but also to help wick extra moisture out of the onion, preventing rot.

They’ll hang out in the garage for at least two weeks, if not longer. Once the tops wither completely, we’ll braid the onions and hang them up next to our braids of garlic. These onions are so tasty– and we use so many aliums in the kitchen– that I’m certain they won’t even make it to winter. We’ll definitely grow more of this variety next year, and I’m certain a few others, too.

The past few days have been terribly hot and dry. It’s taken quite a toll on even the heat-loving plants in our garden– we’re making sure to give the corn, beans, and melons enough water to ensure that they can still stand up and set fruit.

The early-spring vegetables– the ones that are even less heat-tolerant, such as lettuce, peas, radishes, and arugula– gave up the ghost long ago. They turned bitter, sent up flower stalks, went to seed, and dried up to crispy brown husks and stems.

While cleaning out the garden beds and making room for more summer-loving plants, Zac wondered if he might be able to save the seeds from a few varieties (and, in so doing, save us a bit of money next spring).

When saving seed, it’s important to make sure that your seeds breed pure and true-to-type– that is, that they haven’t cross-pollinated with any other varieties. Vegetables that are in the same family often cross with one another– squashes with pumpkins, for example– as well as with wild varieties– like carrots do with Queen Anne’s Lace. A great place to look for more information on saving seeds is this website, or Seed to Seed, which is considered the definitive work on the subject.

Luckily, we only planted one variety of arugula.

The seed pods on the plant were so dry that they had already begun to shatter:

After cutting the plants off at the root, we threshed them– separated the seed from its husk, and from the rest of the plant. Since arugula lets go of its seeds rather easily, this step was pretty simple: bang the dried-out ends of the plants back and forth in a hard-walled bucket. We were left with a mixture of seeds and chaff in the bottom of the bucket.

 That all got put through a sieve:

  All that was left were thousands of the yellowish, peppery seeds (of course we tasted a few!):

We set them on a baking sheet to dry a little further– some of them still felt a bit green and tacky, and we want to make sure they’re all well-cured before we store them. We’ll definitely plant a patch of arugula this fall, once the weather cools down, and we’ll plant the other half of this seed this next spring.

Are you already thinking about next year’s garden? Do you save any seed from year to year?