Vegetable Garden-May 18 (Week 9)

The garden looks great! I planted the peas on March 16, planted most of the tomatoes, hot peppers, and eggplants (with Wall O Waters to keep them warm), the cucumbers and zucchinis form seeds, and the lettuce, transplanted, on April 20. I hadn't been out in a few weekends and everything is looking happy.

Even though there have been some cold nights, the Wall O Waters seem to have kept the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers happy, the snap peas are almost 2 feet high, the zucchini and cucumbers have come up and look healthy, and the lettuce is already huge. My parsley also survived the winter from last summer and is enormous.

Week 17

When I got out to Southampton last Friday, I was happy to see my garden had exploded! I guess all that hot weather really helped. The tomatoes are like 6 1/2 feet high! It's like a forest. Everything is looking healthy and happy, and we even had our first tomatoes! The black cherries, mini orange, and striped tigerella had a few that were ready. So delicious.

Here it is from the side. See how tall those tomatoes are? It's crazy!

This is one of the big Japanese Trifeles. There are like 10 more on the bush.

Veggie Garden Week 13

Everything is looking good!

I pulled out a couple more beets that were too close to others so that the others can grow. Aren't they pretty/cool looking?

Garden Week 12

Everything looks awesome, and we had tons of peas! (I also yanked another carrot with overcrowding as my excuse. It's just too fun to pull them out.)

Those on the left are the Organic Pea Wando and on the right are the Sugar Snap (both Burpee). The Wando are not as tall and a little flatter and the Snap Peas are like 7 feet tall.

Vegetable Garden Week 5

The vegetable garden is really starting to look like a garden! (Though a little goofy with the wall o waters.) It's so great. We packed up the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants that had been living in our apartment and headed out to Long Island Saturday morning.

The wall o waters are up, and they will really be tested this week with the temperatures suddenly plummeting! I planted all of my tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. I was able to squeeze a few of the little ones together in one wall o water, so that was nice.

Tomatoes from Union Square

My 4 Big Boys and 4 Super Sweet 100s are growing bigger every day on my windowsill, but I needed some funky heirlooms to round them out (my garden has space for 13 tomato plants! isn't it amazing??). On a Wednesday trip to Union Square I came back with 5 very cool tomato plants - 2 cherry tomato and 3 bigger. I can't wait to see the tomatoes they have because they all look so funky and cool. I didn't get any heirloom beefsteaks because I think we'll have enough with the 4 Big Boy plants. We'll certainly have tons of cherry tomatoes! Those are so great for salads and are always prolific, so I don't mind. I can make salsa, too!

Here are the cool heirlooms I bought today! (Info from rareseeds.com) I hope to have a very colorful garden!

Big:

Japanese Black Trifele - "80-90 days. Attractive tomatoes are the shape and size of a Bartlett pear with a beautiful purplish-brick color; the fruit are perfect and smooth with no cracks. The flavor is absolutely sublime, having all the richness of fine chocolate. This was our heaviest producer for 2004. The plants produced loads of fruit all summer long. It has become a favorite with many seed savers and we are glad to be able to offer such a colorful variety. It is believed to have come from Russia, so don't ask me about the name! "

Plum Lemon - "80 days. Bright canary-yellow 3” fruit looks just like a fresh lemon. The perfect tomato for marketing (along with Green Zebra, Orange Banana, and Black Prince) to chefs and other gourmets. This variety was collected by Kent Whealy, of Seed Savers Exchange, from an elderly seedsman at the Bird Market in Moscow. Delicious, sweet-taste. "

Vegetable Garden Week 19

Although the deer have been chewing on some parts of my garden (the green grapes got crushed and one of the Better Boy plants got chewed on a fair amount), there were some amazing tomatoes!


This was the first of the yellow brandywine. Look how pretty and orange it is! I should have held it in the picture to show scale - it was huge and probably weighed almost 2 pounds.


Look how gorgeous the slices look - so meaty! We made the most amazing BLTs with these. Crispy bacon, good baby lettuces, and a thick slice of tomato that took up the whole width of the sandwich. It was sweet and tart and juicy. I could have eaten 5 of them.


Here are some other goodies from the garden. Some amazingly pungent basil, a delicious red tomato, and some zucchini blossoms just begging to be fried.


Here is the better boy tomato all sliced up. We ate it with some heirlooms and beef steaks from the farm stand and we were happy to know that the homegrown tomato definitely tastes better and is worth all the work! (The farmstand tomatoes were good too, just not quite as sweet or flavorful.)

Vegetable Garden Week 15

After my hiatus in Greece, my garden was booming! The peas were finished and turning brown and the Swiss Chard were taken over by zucchini, but everything else was super happy. The yellow brandywine tomato plant is about 6 ft tall with a few big, green tomatoes. The thing is like a tree! It got so heavy I had to go buy steaks to position on either side of the garden and tie the cage to them with twine - hopefully soon those green tomatoes will turn yellow so we can eat them! The three better boy tomato plants were covered in green tomatoes (I've learned with heirlooms the plants tend to get pretty big but you get less fruit, so the yellow brandywine is huge but just has two tomatoes on it while the better boys are smaller but each had about 6-10 tomatoes already) and the green grape tomato plant has tons of little green tomatoes, some of them already edible and sweet ad delicious.

There were 4 eggplants on the eggplant plant - 1 ready to eat - so sweet and tasty. I was surprised. I've never grown eggplant before and I was kind of expecting to just get one eggplant all summer. This little plant seems to be pumping them out, plus it has really pretty, light purple flowers. Watch out for little purple thorns on the flowers and eggplant stems!

Vegetable Garden Week 12

First, please excuse the truck and portapotty in the background - the house is under construction. My garden is doing so well! The zucchinis are huge and I got 5 little ones that grew from last weekend to this. (I picked them all since I'll be gone the next 2 weekends in Greece! Recipes to follow, of course.) I grilled them up and fried the blossoms. Sooo tasty.

Vegetable Garden Week 11

Everything in the garden is growing so well. There was lots of rain this week and it seems to have made a huge difference. The pea vines were covered in peas.

The zucchini plants were full of blossoms and there was one little zucchini ready to eat and a couple babies that will be ready next weekend. The zucchinis I planted from seed are striped and those I planted from seedlings are regular green, so there'll be a little variety.

Vegetable Garden Week 10

I don't know if it was least week's heat wave, but the garden is growing like crazy! The zucchini are enormous, the yellow brandywine tomato has grown up to about 3 feet, the green grape tomato is bushy and thick, and the three Better Boy tomatoes are starting really grow (about a foot high now). The Swiss Chard is growing and I was actually able to harvest some - dinner recipe will follow soon.

The peas are getting a little too tall for their trellis, but there are finally peas to be had!

The basil is also growing like crazy, and one of the peppers has its first flower. I can't wait til next weekend when I can start pulling off peas. The mulch (and all the rain) has helped keep the garden moist, and the new marigolds and nasturtium give it a little more color. The zucchinis are starting to have little blossoms, so that'll add some nice yellow/orange flowers. And fried zucchini blossoms are out of this world (recipe will follow). The eggplant is also finally growing, yay!

Jamie behind the peas

 Beautiful healthy garden

 Me with my basil and Swiss Chard - first harvest from the garden

 My pretty rainbow Swiss Chard

Vegetable Garden - Week 3

My garden is starting to look like a real garden! I went to the Union Square Green Market last week and was pleased to find that all of the vegetable plant vendors are back! I browsed several of them to find the plants I was looking to use. I found a pretty big green grape tomato plant (produces bright, almost neon green cherry tomatoes that are tart and sweet and look beautiful in salads) and a small yellow brandywine tomato plant which is supposed to make big, yellow beef steak tomatoes. I want to plant a few big beef tomatoes as well. The heirlooms are definitely pretty and tasty, but the big beef tomatoes straight from the garden are equally as tasty and they're much hardier and produce more tomatoes. To hedge my bets, I want a few heirloom and a few big beef for a good mix. I also bought an eggplant plant - first time planting them and very excited.