When Your Garden Smiles Back at You! (Harvest time for Jack-be-Littles)

One of 13 adorable pumpkins!

One of my favorite Philadelphia Mummer's Songs to hear on New Year's Day is "When You're Smilin'".  It not only reminds me of my PopPop, but also makes it impossible not to smile!  So as I put my kids on the bus today for the first day of school, I couldn't help but smile.  This same day that is a day of sitting at desks for them, is freedom for Mom's everywhere!  That also meant more time for me to get back to the garden.

 

While I was away doing back-to-school shopping, my Jack-be-Littles all turned orange.  It's harvest day for this gardener!  And don't you just love when your garden smiles back at you!  Sing with me. 

"When you're smilin' keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
And when you're laughin' oh when youre laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through..."

[Shared at: Clever Chicks Blog Hop]

Pico de Gallo Overwhelmed by Cilantro and Stink Bugs

It looks innocent now, but wait till you smell it!

With the overabundance of tomatoes, I decided to get creative and experiment with some recipes.  I'm a huge fan of eating a tomato sliced with salt.  I love them.  I grew up with the deliciousness of the "Jersey Tomato" just over the border.  So when my garden gave me plenty, and some even tasting Jersey-ish, we have eaten our share.  My husband calls it the "no option salad" we get every night with dinner. 

Last year I made at attempt at homemade marinara sauce that was a big fail.  I guess I'm just a store-bought sauce girl.  So this year I decided to try my hand at yummy pico de gallo.

So armed with a knife, cutting board, homegrown tomatoes and red onions, I started chopping.  Then came the other ingredients including the store-bought Cilantro.  Now let me back up a minute to yesterday when I bought this cilantro at Wegmans.  By the time I got to the check out, I asked the cashier what smelled of stink bug.  She didn't smell it.  Hmmmm.  In southeast PA, and many other areas, we're still recovering from the invasion a few years ago.  The bug's name is appropriate, it stinks!  When I got home, the smell was overwhelming coming from the groceries in the back of the car.  I thought for sure a stinkbug had hitchhiked home in my bags.

So what do stink bugs and cilantro have in common? Apparently, a lot!  They both smell alike.  Turns out, cilantro smells (and tastes) like stink bug to some people.  To other people, it somehow tastes very different with almost no smell.  I don't get it.

 



So I chopped it up convinced that when all the yummy ingredients blended together, that I would not taste the cilantro. That's like saying you won't taste the coffee in one of those frou frou Starbucks concoctions.  Oh, it looked so pretty.  And it made my wrap look so healthy.  However, one bite into it and STINK BUG taste!  Yuck!  My lesson from the garden for this week is to leave out the cilantro next time!

Garden Update: A day in the garden in photos

If you live in the Northeast, you'll agree this was a crazy summer of high heat and lots of rain!  If it wasn't a heat wave, it was raining.  Sometimes, we had both!  Apparently, this was great for my garden and the daily harvest is still so much that I have to share.  In fact, sometimes I think my neighbors are tired of me begging them to help me eat all the tomatoes.  That said, here's an August update in pictures.  Enjoy!

Six heirloom tomato plants gone wild!  I've picked over 100 tomatoes already!

 

Cherry Tomatoes almost ready

 

The cucumber outgrew it's trellis so I spread the tomato trellis around the back. 
It came all the way down the other side to make a tent perfectr for a kid.

 

Cucumbers hiding under the trellis

The Jack-be-Littles aren't so little anymore!  The plant has wound around the house!

 

There's at least a dozen of these tiny pumpkins hidden through the two plants. 
Can't wait for them to turn orange!

The 3 zucchini plants have been the under-producers this year.  I've only picked 4 zucchini so far. 
This time last year I had at least 2 dozen!

 

We can't forget the flowers.  Here's the mandevilla I added to the deck this year.

 

The roses are also gorgeous again!

 

After the camera was put down, I found six huge cucumbers waiting to be picked!

In a few weeks, the cucumber vines should be withered and I'll be ready to plant my fall lettuces and other cold-weather crops.  It's been a great season already!

Tomato and Cucumber Update

One day's harvest!

My favorite salad ingredients are the tomatoes and cucumbers.  So when I saw my plants growing like weeds this summer, I got excited.  And now, earlier than ever in my garden, the tomatoes are ripening.  They're ripening really fast! 

Just this morning I gave away almost 10 tomatoes just from yesterday.  So I was suprised when I went out and needed my son's help to carry in the "load".  Just today, we picked 22 tomatoes and 4 cucumbers.  There's still plenty of tomatoes that will be ready tomorrow!  It's so satisfying to grow enough in the garden to share with others.  So if you're local, come help us eat these!

Jack-be-Littles in Little Spaces

Morning in my tiny pumpkin patch next to the dahlias

When the free packet of seeds arrives in the mail, and they always do, I have a hard time throwing them out.  Where these seeds come from is far and wide.  They might arrive from a garden society, or come free with a mail flyer.  The best arrival was after I carefully picked my heirloom seeds from a catalog, they sent a "complimentary" packet of melon seeds that I did not plan to put in my garden.  It wasn't a small veggie they sent but melons!   

My huband says to just throw them away.  They were free.  He says I'm not obligated to use them.  But I must.  The drive to plant is stronger than the urge to purge.  And so I look for spaces to plant these seeds (if I can't find them another home).  This was the case with those adorable tiny pumpkins you see in the fall.  They're called Jack-be-Littles.  They're really more a gourd than a pumpkin but who cares.  They're cute pumpkins to the kids.  And so the seed packet sat on my counter.  I couldn't throw it out but I didn't want to use precious garden space for a plant with vines.  So I thought vertical.  And then I thought of the trellis where the dahlias didn't grow last year.  So I took a chance. 


Going Vertical

Except for the morning, this spot gets 8+ hours of sun a day!  It's perfect.  And unless it wants to grow beyond the small space I've given it, I think these seeds found a great piece of real estate.  So I hope the Great Pumpkin will be pleased this autumn.  It might not be the largest pumpkin patch, but it will most likely be the most creative one.  At least in my neighborhood.

This is what I hope I'll find later in the season!

How to Support the Monster Tomatoes

Huge tomatoes and it's only  July 7th!

My tomato plants are gigantic!  I mean huge.  Bigger than I've ever grown.  Maybe some of you out there grow them this big every year and my photo is nothing new.  However, in my neck of the woods, I'd be lucky to have them this tall by the end of the season, NOT beginning of July.  How tall are they?  Well, look at the picture again.  That's my husband peeking out from behind them.  (He is 5'10".)  This is after I already trimmed the plants back!  That's tall for tomatoes in my book!

How this luck descended upon my garden I'm not sure, however, there were three new variables thrown in the mix this year.  First, I bought heirloom seeds.  The tomatoes in this garden are all heirloom varieties (Cherry, Thessaloniki, and Moneymaker).  Second, it's a new garden bed which means all new soil.  Third, I pruned the tomatoes early on this year.  Apparently, this is basic knowlege, for growing tomatoes, but I had never pruned before.  So add all of those new varaibles together and we have a trifecta for giant tomatoes!  And then the rains came bringing the damaging winds.

A collection of anything that can support these tomatoes!  (cages, plastic, and steel)

This is when I realized that my tomato cages and tomato stakes were not enough.  So I was off to Home Depot for Steel rods.  Then, it hit me, my plants were becoming like Medusa with branches getting so heavy that they needed more support.  And this gardener was done forking out money.  So we improvised.  We had just completed a "cleaning out project" that included purging from the basement, when my husband reminded me that the shelf brackets would be great.  So I bent them, hammered them in the ground, and voila!

Recycling old shelving pieces!

Just to make sure they worked, a new storm blew in last night with plenty of wind.  Every single branch was fine.  No more snapping off like in previous storms.  Now if they would just hurry up and ripen because I can't wait to try them!

Purple Beauties!

Ready to harvest!

My red onions are harvested and they look delicious!  Feeling so proud of these purple beauties right before harvest, I had done a quick Google search to see if there was anything I needed to do other than pull these babies out of the ground.  To my surprise, they grew so well, because onions are simply easy to grow! I had great success with my shallots last year so I decided to try the red onions for all my yummy Greek summer dishes.  One website basically burst my gardening bubble when it said, "if you can poke a hole in the ground, then you can grow an onion."  To tell you the truth, that really is all there is to it!
1. Poke a hole
2. Place the onion bulb in the hole
3. Cover with soil
4. Water and Wait
5. Pull it out when ready and let dry (do not rinse off the dirt!)

This is just half of the harvest!

That's it folks!  It doesn't get easier than that.  Once the green has dried out, just use scissors to snip them off as well as the roots.