happy halloween

My favorite two things about Halloween: carving pumpkins and candy. This year, I was compelled to show my support:


No, I did not grow the pumpkin in my backyard. But next year I will. It's certainly a sustainable endeavor, carving pumpkins that is...and quite time consuming (design thanks to yeswecarve.com). We also couldn't resist baking Halloween cupcakes, with sprinkles and frosting. The contrast between the natural and artificial was striking:


And finally, we made good use of the pumpkin seeds. Just added some oil and salt, and toasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes:

green zebra salsa

Another week has gone by, and another batch of tomatoes are ready for harvesting:


We decided to grill the Green Zebras and then blend them with some hot peppers from the CSA. After chilling in the refrigerator, the green salsa is really, really good!

tomato sauce

The tomatoes are finally ripening. We have some red Early Girls, some Green Zebras and a ton of small, orange Sweet Millions and Wings of Night.





We made a delicious batch of tomato sauce with the cherry tomatoes.


Not sure yet what to do with the Green Zebras...

first ripe tomato

Tonight I harvested the first ripe, red tomato. I had to pull back some branches and dig through the foliage a bit, but there she was. RIPE!


I hope the other tomatoes will follow her lead. I've been soaking the bed once a week. We'll see if that's enough water for the tomato plants.

tomato sacrifice: yellow flowers gotta go

I planted my raised bed on June 11th. That was roughly 103 days ago. The tag on the early girl tomato starts said that it would take about 60 days to bear fruit. So either I completely misread the tag, or something is seriously wrong. Yes, there are tomatoes, lots of tomatoes. Maybe too many tomatoes. But they are not ripe. The plants are still putting out shoots, leaves and lots of new yellow flowers. Why not devote more energy to the existing tomatoes? There are plenty, no need to create more. Let's just grow and ripen the ones that exist now. I'm getting concerned that as we get into the fall, the temperature may drop to the point that the existing tomatoes may never ripen. So I decided to make a sacrifice. For the sake of the existing green tomotoes, I cut off as many yellow flowers as I could find. Here's a bowl full of them. I probably cut twice this many. They smell like tomatoes...


Now hopefully the plants will dedicate their energy to ripen the bounty of tomatoes hanging from their branches! It is really cool to see the developmental process in a single branch. Here you can see the yellow flower, then the mini-green tomato emerging.


One more pic of the green tomatoes...

spectacular spider web

Early this morning I noticed a spectacular spider web that was audaciously woven across the steps to the upstairs neighbor. Surely, the web would last a long time, but it certainly was impressive! (click on the photos to enlarge for more detail):

tomato plants out of control!!!

I've been away for the past several weeks (getting married!) and just returned, eager to see what's new in the backyard. Since I've been gone, the tomato plants have completely overtaken the raised bed. The herb plants and lavender are no longer visible. The tomato plants have stretched across the stairway, toppled the bamboo supports and reached 7+ feet in the air. Dozens of little yellow flowers and many small baby green tomatoes. I was overwhelmed. They are growing sideways into the yard! We'll have a huge tomato harvest soon. Given how many there are, the tomatoes probably won't be too big, but they will still be tasty!