homemade salsa

Our latest harvest... (not too shabby)

I've heard cherry tomatoes don't make the best salsa, but after experimenting I'd have to disagree. Unfortunately all of the ingredients are not from our garden. We didn't grow onion, garlic or cilantro....or the squeeze of lime juice I squirted in, but the tomatoes, jalapeno, serrano, and white pepper are all ours.

Homemade salsa with Pop's Rum/Tonic

All I have to say is this is what makes the garden worth it....that and YUM!!

Jalapeno peppers and cherry tomatoes

At the beginning of the season I planted more seeds than I can fit in the garden. My thinking is that if any of them don't take, I'll still have plenty to put in the ground.  However, I don't have the heart to just throw away/kill a healthy plant. So when they all "took" and were growing healthy, I squeezed them into the garden.  I've learned in past years that I can't go crazy and plant too many because the garden will just grow out of control and the plants will grow into each other and just make a mess.  So while our garden is bigger this year and the plants are spaced out better, I still have the problem of overcrowding and too many of certain veggies...namely jalapeno peppers and cherry tomatoes.

All of this is complicated by the life-sucking weeds that grew underneath my weed barrier.  They then rallied forces with mother nature and destroyed the weed barrier altogether.  I have since weeded out most of them and the veggie plants are doing well and yielding some yummy food.

I have so many jalapeno peppers I don't know what to do with them. I'm the only one in the house that eats them or likes spicy food.  I want to make salsa, but that won't use up all of my jalapenos.  So I've been experimenting.... slicing up the peppers and putting them on and in everything. They are not particularly hot this year, so I can almost eat them by themselves.  I had some last month on a burrito from a place called Tijuana Flats that were so hot I couldn't eat them. It's interesting that there could be so much variety within the same family of pepper.  In any case, I sliced mine up and ate them on a cracker with a slice of cherry tomato.  It wasn't bad, but there's only so much I want to eat.  Recently I chopped it up and threw it in my mac n cheese. It was surprisingly yummy and I'd do it again.

Weed-be-gone

The garden has been overwhelmed with weeds. As you can see, my sub-title of "daily write-up" is no longer accurate due to the fact that I've been weeding and harvesting and trying to keep the plants healthy.  We had a tremendous storm/wind come through last week.  Most of my tomato cages have been pulled out of the ground due to the growth of the plants and the storm knocked them all over.  I'm thinking the cages are not the best solution for keeping my tomatoes off the ground, so I'll try stakes next year and see how that goes.

I just did a google search for lettuce plants. Mine appears to be alien since there were no other images like mine.  I'm not sure what type of lettuce I planted as I ripped the entire top of the package off.  However, looking at it, it says "Crisp & Colorful" on the bottom. Going to Burpee's website I couldn't really find one that looked like mine.

Having been gone for 10 days or so, I've missed the opportunity to update the blog. But more importantly I've missed the opportunity to weed.  The garden obviously went through a growth spurt.  I like the layout I have here. There's a place for me to get into the garden and the big tomatoes are off to the sides. Unfortunately once I get in there the various squash plants make it difficult to move around.

Our yummy spaghetti squash escaped the fence, but it looks none the worse.  Reading around some sites, it doesn't seem to matter when I pull this off the vine, but some suggest waiting for the vine to turn brown or the shell of the squash turns hard.  Doubt I'll wait that long because just thinking about it makes me hungry.

Here's another view from the other side.  You can see the pepper plants and squash mixed in there, but mostly all you see are those nasty nutrient-sucking garden killers known as weeds.  The poor excuse of a weed barrier has all but disintegrated.  Each step I take tears a new hole, but it doesn't matter anyway because the weeds grew up under the barrier, and pushed it up high enough to find enough light to grow sideways. And now that it's being destroyed, I'm wondering why I even put it down in the first place.  Now I know they say weed barrier is used under a layer of mulch and whatnot, so I guess I can't totally blame it for disintegrating, but I've had success with it in the past.  I will recruit my family and start pulling up weeds the old fashioned way, but I think I'll have a chat with some fellow bloggers about what they do. Taking a look at Skippy's post-vacation garden is a lot different then mine. I don't see any weeds in her garden.

This is about our 2nd harvest from the garden this year. The squash are a big too large for my tastes, but I gave 2 away in the hopes that someone will enjoy them.  The lettuce plants grew up instead of out and look all weird now. I'll have a pic of that next time.  Our first cucumber and jalapeno peppers went to the family that watered our garden while I was away and peas got gobbled up when I turned my back.

Veggies-a-plenty

Here's an example of why tomato cages are the pits. I can't do a thing about this without hurting the plant or removing the cage.  Hopefully the cage can still support the rest of the plant because I'm looking forward to eating some yummy cherry tomatoes.

Here's one of the branches splitting off of the plant. I could just rip it off and be done with it, but I won't willingly rip off a part that's still growing and contains enough of a lifeline to produce those aforementioned yummy cherry tomatoes.

I believe we have our first spaghetti squash. These are my favorite. I've never let them grow up the fence before and I can only imagine the stress it will put on the vine as they get bigger, but you gain the benefit of my (soon-to-be) 1st hand experience to determine this method.

The butternut squash are also coming in. My wife's favorite. She makes fries out of them. Yummm!

And finally my first cucumber ever. It looks a bit puny, but I have high hopes for it and will nurse it along to the delicious veggies it is.

We haven't had much rain in CT lately. While I have been neglecting the lawn... or as I like to call it, the hay field, I've been pretty good about keeping the gardens watered.  Unfortunately, I did not consider our tree that's only been in the ground for 2 years. The neighbors trees seem to be doing well, but ours has dried up and the leaves are brown and wilted. I know this is bad, but I'm hoping it can survive with daily watering.  If anyone has any insight into this, please share.  I looked around a little online, but can't really find an answer. It was mentioned here, but I'm not sure how long "prolonged" means.

The garden is doing well and thriving. We've already eaten some lettuce and squash and the tomatoes are starting to show up. I've done my best trying to guide the tomato plants and keep them in their cages, but inevitably a branch will sprout out undetected and then grow so it pushes the cage up and out of the ground.  I'm not sure there's a fix for this other than to use a different method. This one looks cool, but I'm kind of lost at how the whole plant would stay up. I'm noticing mine have heavy branches that fall down and rip themselves off the main stalk. I've read they will form new root systems and survive and I know I have to keep them off the ground, so I'll probably start tying them off to stakes.

Good Eats!

Well, it's like I said... watching water boil and watching your garden grow is the same thing. I turned my attention to other things for a little bit and when I turned around, VOILA!! the garden is growing fast.  I thought I might be behind on the CT time table, but seeing as how we just had some lettuce and our first summer squash last night, I'd say we're doing pretty good.  I can see baby tomatoes on the cherry plants, but the big boys are still a bit small.

We didn't do anything fancy...just washed it and cut it up and tossed it in with our lettuce. Cutting the squash off the plant while it's still somewhat small was definitely a good choice... it tastes better and the seeds aren't all big and gross in my mouth. YUMMY!! 

This was the first time I've ever had fresh from the garden lettuce. It was the best lettuce ever. I have no idea what variety it is (so if you recognize it, lay it on me), but it tasted great and the whole "fresh" thing beats the grocery store any day. Oh and Yeah for no pesticides!!!!  My wife (via Grace-thank you) had the great idea to just tear off what we need for dinner and not rip the whole head up. I totally would have lopped the poor plants head off, but fortunately my wife is smarter than that.