Tomatoes!
Tomatoes are here, baby. I don't know what it is, but I completely love this fruit. I love everything about it. I love the way the plant looks, smells, feels… I love the variety- it's endless! Everything. Even the blight that I seem to get every year, it merely presents a challenge. I always seem to beat it and end the summer just dripping in tomato goodness. 
Fall gardening! Many of you seemed to be interested in what I was going to be doing and so I thought I'd keep you all in the loop- not just to share what I'm doing but to get suggestions and feedback and also to keep me accountable and doing it. Today I was pretty productive, list-making and formulating my thoughts.
For anyone who is interested in cooler-weather gardening, check out Eliot Coleman's books. He's a well known farmer in Maine who has done a lot of work to beat the seasons using very clever methods. I am learning, though, that I retain the most knowledge through just doing and experiencing in my own back yard using my own two hands. I could read all I wanted to about blight, harvest, pests, etc., but when I actually saw those things in reality, that's when I really got it. So, here in Michigan, I try.
I cleared out a bed formerly filled with lettuces, radish, and arugula from the spring. Well, and lots of grass… what's awesome is that my chickens completely go nuts over grass. It's like candy to them, they get so excited! It makes me less frustrated with the aggressive stuff- transforming it from pernicious weed into chicken treats! I grew it just for them, you see… 
After, amended with compost and ready for planting. I only had time to plant a third of the bed, but today I did parsnip and french breakfast radish, alternating between the rows. Parsnip is a very long season veggie, and I really should have planted it in the spring. But, it does well all winter and into the spring, so I thought I would experiment with it and see how well it delivers by March. The radishes I'm just going to be planting every week or so to get a continuous harvest for market and fresh use, but mostly for pickling. They make amazing pickles.
One thing I learned this year is that the young seed pod of the radish plant is edible. It's not only edible, it's completely delicious. It is juicy and crunchy, and it is radishy but a little milder in flavor. I love them! I will always let a few bolt now that I know this. You'll know when they are right, if they are too old then they get woody and hard to chew. 
Our first big basket of tomatoes demanded something summery and delicious. Vera wanted to make tomato soup, but seeing that it was close to 100 degrees today I asked her if it could be cold soup. She didn't even flinch, so we made a fresh gazpacho, with tomato, cucumber, garlic, onion, cilantro, pepper, and a zucchini. A little salt, pepper, cumin, and paprika, and it was perfect.
More fall garden to come tomorrow. I'm trying to do something every day, and afterwards do an update, no matter how brief.
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i prefer fall/winter gardening to spring/summer. no bugs! no overgrown weeds! plus, i get such a kick going out there in a foot of snow, peel back a corner of a hoop house, and pick fresh awesome greens.
Ohhh tomatoes, and tomato plants. There is almost nothing more comforting or refreshing to me than the smell of tomato plants- and this morning I bought a pint of wonderful orange cherry tomatoes from a local farm, and ate almost the whole thing as I did housework, which tells you just a bit about how I love the fruit 🙂
Do you guys have any peaches nearby? We made a tomato and peach salad recently, with a mild vinaigrette and a lot of mint, and oh my goodness. I can’t express in words how good it was.
That sounds amazing! I’ll have to hunt down some peaches. We do have a lot around us, but this year has been bad for farmers because of the warm start and then frost.
You and I sound the same when it comes to tomatoes. I remember starting my tomato seedlings and doing a little thinning and getting a whiff of that smell… oh I just love it so much.
i make a tomato and peach salsa that’s awesome. peaches and tomatoes work so well together!
oh yes, tomatoes and peaches, yum!
I’m such a newbie when it comes to winter gardening, but I can’t wait! What are you doing for your winter garden? I’ve always harvested kale into the winter, and just this past winter I was able to work with a hoop out at my job and was able to harvest salad greens and mustards into March, but that’s about the gist of my experience.
we cover the bed with the simplest of hoop houses. pvc in an arch, cover in plastic, and clip it down with basic grips on each corner and in the middle. a 6 ft long bed generally has 3 hoops over it, with a piece of string down the middle for extra support. i get the clear plastic from lowes, 4 mil. any stronger than that, the light doesn’t get through. you can get proper greenhouse plastic, but it’s too expensive for me, so i go with the thinner, cheaper stuff. it still works! i cover the beds when it’s super cold, but uncover them on warm, sunny days. it’s a bit of work, but it’s so worth it. i grow cold hardy stuff in there; collards, spinach, kale, lettuce mixes, chard. i’m a real lazy gardener, but we still eat out of our garden somewhat most of the year. last winter, i stopped picking from our beds in, i think, february to let them bulk back up. i hadn’t planted that much, though, so could see that, had i planted more, we could have kept picking the whole season. i generally start some stuff early, so taht it grows big before the cold sets in, and start some stuff late, so that it over-winters in baby form, and then shoots up real good come spring.