Tomatoes and Beans and Ground Cherries, Oh My!

Sorry for the lack of posts! I need to get out there and take some pictures of the garden. In the meantime, here's what my harvest looked like late last week:

The things in the blue bowl are ground cherries. At this point we're harvesting that many every 2-3 days.  I *really* want to make jelly out of them, but we keep eating them straight from the bowl before I get a chance to jammify them. Peeling off the paper lanterns around them feels a lot like unwrapping candy before eating it. I need to hide them from the family (and myself!) until I have enough to make a few jars of jelly (or maybe a pie!).

Tomatoes and hot peppers are coming in in dribs and drabs. All of my tomato varieties this year are heirlooms. They taste sooo good, but I'm noticing that neighbors who planted all big-beef type tomatoes have a lot more red fruit on their vines. Next year I'll definitely plant a combo of everyday varieties and rarer types.  My favorite heirloom so far has been Black Krim, but I still have a few plants that are longer season tomatoes and don't have any ripe fruit yet (Aker's West Virginia, Sioux, Eva's Purple Ball and Brandywine), so I'm reserving my final judgement until I try them! Hopefully I'll get at least a couple fruit from each of them before the first frost!

And green beans, we have them coming out of our ears! This has definitely been the largest green bean harvest I've ever had. We've been looking up green bean recipes and having them with dinner a few times a week. We've had salted french fried green beans (our favorite so far), green bean casserole, and barbequed green beans. We gave a gallon zip lock bag of them to my in-laws when we visited, and we *still* have a gallon of them in the fridge. Time to look into freezing methods, me thinks.

We're finally in a bean-picking lull, but they're starting to flower again. The dang bean beetles have nibbled some of them to within an inch of their lives. I've been out there picking them and their eggs off whenever I can spot them. I'm thinking of paying the boys a quarter for every beetle found and smushed, and a dollar for any eggs found and smushed - although at this point the whole family is so beaned out I don't think anyone would be upset if there were no more beans (except maybe me!).

The kids went back to school today, so hopefully I'll have lots of time on my hands for some late season garden blogging, and start updating a lot more often!

Beans! (and a few little tomatoes)

It's finally bean harvest time! This was my second harvest of the week. the first, the day before yesterday, was a little smaller.

I've noticed that most veggie gardeners have a favorite green bean variety, and that's definitely true for me too. I *love* Tenderette bush beans. They're one of the few ever-bearing bush varieties. They're also heavy producers, and once they start, they keep you up to your eyeballs in green beans all summer.

Last year I decided to try pole beans for the first time (Kentucky Wonder), and by this date last year I still had no beans. I did end up with some good harvests a little later in the season, but not as good as the years I'd planted my precious bush beans. Plus pole beans require trellises. and I remember spending a long time building teepees last spring. 

So there you have it. If you're thinking of adding green beans to your garden next year, I highly recommend Tenderette!

Notes to Self

Just a mini entry. The garden's still in the in-between time, with not much to harvest right now. I'm kicking myself for not planting zucchini or cucumbers, and wanted to jot that down for when I'm referring to this year's blog entries at planting time next year. I did have reasons for not planting either of those  - mostly that I have limited space in my garden and zucchini and cukes take up a lot of real estate. Also, the  squash borers get my zucchini every year, and I thought maybe taking a year off would teach them to look elsewhere and save my crop next year. A girl can dream!

One more note-to-self. Next year plant some non-heirloom tomato varieties. I'm still having the problem where the majority of my tomato flowers dry up, fall off and don't become tomatoes. Some plants are worse than others. The Yellow Pear is going crazy (in a good way), and the Black Krim is producing well. But my Aker's West Virginia still doesn't have a single tomato. Grrrr. It was a good learning experience if nothing else. Next year I'll go with a majority of Big Beef, Jet Star and generic grape and cherry tomatoes, and will probably plant at least one Yellow Pear and Black Krim.

For now, here are some pics of my flowering green beans (mini beans are forming... could have first harvest next week!), and my small ground cherry, berry, tomatillo and pepper harvest from Saturday.

Baby Beans a Formin'!

Bean Bed

Jalapenos, Sweet Peppers and Tomatillos, Oh My! (and one yellow pear tomato)

Blueberries, Strawberries and Ground Cherries. I had ground cherry Greek yogurt that afteroon. Yummy!

In-Between Time

My garden's in sort of an in-between stage right now. The spring crops are about done, and the summer crops aren't ripe yet.

I harvested the garlic today, along with the last of the snow peas, a few strawberries, and a lone ground cherry.

I need to clear out the dregs of arugula (all flowering at this point) in the garlic bed, and crackly yellow pea plants in my two pea beds, and quickly figure out what to plant in those spots next. I'm thinking short season pumpkins in the pea beds. I'm not sure what to plant where the garlic was. Beets? Mini carrots? Or is there such a thing as a short season cucumber? Is it too early/hot to plant cabbage or broccoli for a fall harvest? I need to do some research, STAT.

My ever bearing strawberries are in a lull right now, but are flowering again, so it should be strawberry fiesta time again soon!

My warm weather crops are all getting bigger, but aren't quite mature yet.

Summer crop beds

The bush beans on the right are *just* about to flower. The ground cherries (front center) are going crazy. There are already hundreds of green ground cherries all over them, and more flowers coming.

Peeking in on the ground cherries

Tomatillos are doing well too.

My tomato and pepper plants finally have fruit! But nothing's ripe yet.

I'm also having the problem with my tomatoes that I seem to have every year. I have lots of flowers, but many of them just shrivel up and die before becoming fruit. I'm almost positive this is because it's been so insanely humid lately. Tomato flowers are self pollinating. In theory as long as there's a breeze or a bee to jiggle them around they should become tomatoes. When it's extremely humid though the pollen gets sticky and doesn't work its magic. A few days ago I started going out each morning to manually shake my tomato plants. Hoping that will help!

It takes about three weeks for garlic to dry out and cure before it's ready to eat and store. Within three weeks I  might just have ripe tomatoes, tomatillos  and peppers. I think I see salsa in my future!

Catch up!

Quick update! The kids finished up school for the year, my parents came to visit, and then it was the 4th of July - and um, I've kind of been neglecting my blog!


Here's the non-raised bed area of the garden as of 30 minutes ago:

For comparison's sake here's the same view taken on July 1st - just 4 days ago:

We're in the middle of a very humid heat-wave, and apparently the plants are loving it!

What else... I picked 3 1/2 pounds of snow peas last week! We're still eating our way through these. There are more peas to harvest, and they're blooming again.

I tasted my very first ripe ground cherry, and it was sooo yummy - kind of like pineapple. Sweet and mellow. Sam tried one and proclaimed that it tasted like "tropical fruit".

Sam helping out.

The reason they call them ground cherries is that the fruit isn't ripe until it's fallen off the plant and been "on the ground" (in a bowl is fine too) for a few days.  At this point the only ripe ground cherries I've harvested have been from the plant I ended up putting in a pot because I didn't have space for it in the garden. I plucked the flowers off all the other ground cherry seedlings to encourage root growth, so they're a little behind this guy fruit wise (but are *much* huger).

Fallen ground cherries.

As you can see, the cherries grow in little husks, like tomatillos. Inside there's what looks like an orangish/yellowish berry.

Not my pic, but I hope to have a harvest like this soon!

I read that each ground cherry plant can produce up to *300* fruits. so with any luck by the end of summer I'll have ground cherries coming out of my ears. Ground cherry preserves anyone? If you know me there's a good chance you'll get some for Christmas!

I'd also read that ground cherry plants can take over a garden. I'm on the verge of experiencing that.

Ground Cherries 7/1

Ground cherries today (and my feet!)

Looks like we should also have an awesome grape harvest this year - so big batches of Concord grape jam may also be in our future this fall! Here's hoping!

A glimpse of some grapes-to-be

I love gardening season - even if I don't have time to write much about it!

Strawberries and Scapes

It's strawberry season! We've been picking a small bowl every other day for the past two weeks or so.

Saturday's Harvest

Unfortunately there are some critters in our garden that also enjoy the berries.

Critter-chomped Strawberry

I think it's probably mostly birds - but sometimes we find a berry that was dragged to another part of the garden - maybe by chipmunks? We have a lot of robins and blackbirds (not sure if they're *actually* blackbirds or just black birds. I need to consult my birdwatching friend Amy. Either way I get the Beatles song stuck in my head every time I see them in the back yard).  I haven't put up netting because they leave a lot for us, and part of me likes the fact that I'm helping feed the local wildlife. The boys also have fun chucking the bitten berries into the bushes.

My other big garden excitement this past week was discovering scapes on my garlic. This is my first year growing garlic, and until about last year at this time I'd never heard of scapes.

From about.com: Garlic scapes are the "flower stalks" of hardneck garlic plants, although they do not produce flowers. These stalks start to appear a month or so after the first leaves. They are usually cut off of the plant, since leaving them on only diverts the plants strength away from forming a plump bulb. If left on, they eventually form small bulbils that can be planted to grow more garlic, but it takes 2–3 years for them to form large bulbs. Many gardeners simply toss their scapes in the compost, but garlic scapes are both edible and delicious, as are the bulbils.

The curly thing in the middle is a scape.

Scapey goodness

I chopped off some of my scapes on Thursday and made a pesto like sauce that I slathered on salmon before baking it. Woo! Those scapes pack a definite punch! There are still some ready to be harvested so I need to search for some good scape recipes.

In other news, my snow peas are flowering like crazy. The below pic was taken last Wednesday. I just went out and found that there are now lots of little peas. I may have my first harvest by the end of the week!

Yay! Peas!

And here's an overview of my tomato, pepper, tomatillo, ground cherry area. I also just planted bush green beans (Tenderette) in the right third. This was also taken last week. I was out there today and the tomato plants look a little bigger already, and the beans are starting to poke up. Need to get some cages out there for the tomatoes!

I'll leave you with a close up shot of the ground cherry plant that's still in my house because I didn't have room for it in the garden. Lots of little lanterns all over that sucker. I plucked off all the flowers on the plants that went into the garden because they say that helps the plants develop bigger root systems and get larger, but I left them on the plant I didn't have room for in my beds. Now I'm kind of regretting pinching off those flowers in the garden. Those plants are just starting to get flowers again. This one on my windowsill has lots of fruit!

Ground cherries galore!

I planted that guy from seed, and he's all grown up now. I feel like a proud parent.

Tomatoes Have Been Planted!

On Sunday I headed out to Stillman's to buy tomato plants. They're a farm (we were members of their CSA a few years ago), but they also have greenhouses with veggie and flower plants for sale in the spring. Over the winter I noticed that they had an insane number of types of tomatoes available for preorder on their website. I was hoping they'd also have a huge variety on hand for walk in traffic, and I wasn't disappointed! They actually had quite a few that weren't on their order form - and they have 151 varieties listed on the form!

All those plants on the left are tomatoes!

With the help of my first grader, I picked out eleven plants.

I ended up with:

Beauty. Indeterminate, 75 days. While named for its beautiful scalloped appearance, this variety is best known for ts great flavor. Manageable plants produce an abundance of large very sweet fruits.

Black Krim.  Heirloom: Indeterminate, 75 days. Hailing from Russian origins, this tomato is named for the Island of Krim in the Black Sea. Productive plants, yielding slightly flattened fruits of a rich deep purple color with almost black shoulders. Superior full tomato flavor.

Eva Purple Ball. Heirloom: Indeterminate, 70 days. A German selection, plants yield huge quantities of round juicy fruits. A great slicing variety for salads and sandwiches

Fireworks. Indeterminate. 60 days. Known for its combination of earliness, large size and eating quality, this is an exceptional selection. Productive plants.

Reisentraube. Heirloom. Indeterminate. 80 days. A German Heirloom. Reisentraube literally translates to "giant bunch of grapes" for the grape like clusters fruits are borne on. Great large tomato flavor.

Yellow Pear. Yellow pear type: indeterminate, 70 days. Vigorous vines bear loads of small, lemon-yellow pear shaped fruits. Very mild, light flavor.

Aker's West Virginia: These organic tomato seeds produce a vigorous highly productive, regular leaf, heirloom tomato plant that yields an excellent set of large, 10 to 16-ounce, deep-red, slightly flattened tomatoes in clusters of 2. Delicious, robust flavors.

Red Zebra. Plant yields huge amounts of 2-inch, red fruit with light yellow striping (or as some say, yellow fruit with red striping).

Old German. Big regular leaf plant yields 1-2 lb. beautiful fruits. Fruit color is yellow with red mottling and striping on the outside and throughout the flesh. Best color of several strains of this heirloom. 

Bush Champion. Determinate, 65 days. This big and meaty fruit grows on compact (24 in, 60 cm) plants that flower extra early. It resists Gray Leaf Spot and Alternaria well. This slicer produces 9 to 12 oz (255 to 340 g) fruits.

Sioux. Heirloom: Indeterminate 70 days.  Don't be fooled by this tomato!  Extraordinary flavor can exist in a round red tomato.  Originally released by the University of Nebraska in 1944, this variety is still popular today because of its reliable yields and exceptional flavor

Violceum Krypni Roz. 80 days. Prolific pink purple scalloped fruits.

I also had one tomato plant, planted from seed on my own, thrown into the tray with the ground cherries and tomatillos (I had more than one but I trashed them when they were tiny. I'm kind of regretting that now):

Brandywine: Heirloom indeterminate, 78 days. Considered by many to be the "best". Brandywine is the original beefsteak tomato, producing large, pink fruits with a loud tangy sweet taste. One slice covers the whole burger!

Along with the tomatoes, I also planted two hot pepper plants I picked up from Home Depot on Monday, and had one sweet pepper planted started from seed. I also planted one tomatillo plant (I ran out of room or I would have planted more!) and six ground cherries. I still have my mind set on ground cherry pies and jams galore. I had room for only four ground cherry plants in my main bed, but I tucked two more into empty spots in my raised beds, one with the peas and one with the garlic and arugula. It's kind of an experiment. We'll see how they all do in their different spots.

10 tomato plants in the left section, two tomatoes, three peppers, one tomatillo and four ground cherries in the middle. The right area is reserved for green beans. 

Ground Cherry with the peas (in the spot where my failed over-wintered spinach was going to seed)

Ground Cherry (on the left) with garlic and arugula. He's looking a little droopy. Maybe the garlic's too stinky for him.

A Little Greener

I'm long overdue for a garden update. No major news in the past couple weeks. Things have grown a little - that's about it! I am super excited though, because Saturday is our official last frost date! This means I can plant my warm season crops  -like green beans and sunflowers and cucumbers and squash! It's also the very earliest I can add my tomatillo and ground cherry seedlings into the garden, and buy/plant tomato and pepper seedlings (I have a few, but I'll need more). I may wait another week or so to do that though. Ideally overnight temps should be consistently in the 50s before planting tomato/pepper like veggies (tomatillos and ground cherries are in that category too). Looks like we're supposed to get down in the 30s and 40s Memorial Day weekend... so maybe the weekend after that?

Here's what's happening right now:

Garden as of today. Looking a little greener!

New asparagus shoots are still coming up!

Garlic, Arugula and Lettuce. The little arugula/lettuce seedlings are getting bigger!

Grapes... the posts and chicken wire we use to hold them up are a little white-trash- but soon the grapes will totally cover them and nobody will be the wiser. Some day we'll get high class wood posts for these guys.

Can you  see all the grapes-to-be?

My divided baby hostas (and remnants of Sam's chalk drawing behind them)

Baby pears!

And an update on my seedlings: Dudes, I'm so proud of how big some of these guys have gotten! No grow light required!

Tomatillos . A little leggy. I have four of these guys

They're flowering!

And a flowering ground cherry!

Brandywine Tomato.

 The above tomato plant looked like this when I repotted it on May 8th;

What a difference! Poor little guy needed to stretch his legs.  Now I'm bummed that I threw out the rest of my tomato seedlings because they all looked so sickly. Dang.

Yum Yum Gold Pepper

Ground cherry seedlings (below). The larger ones were planted 2-3 weeks before the smaller ones.  It amazes me how fast everything takes off once you put them in larger containers.  I totally learned my lesson about  the importance of potting up plants as soon as they're ready.

I got the idea to use red Solo cups as pots on youtube. My theory is that the red cups act like the red plastic mulch recommended for tomatoes, and  helps the plants grow larger faster. Tomatillos and Ground Cherries are in the tomato family - so I'm assuming they like red too. Next year I'll have to experiment and put a few seedlings in blue cups to see if there's any difference.

And finally Ninja, checking out the garden:

She seems unimpressed. Humph.