I harvested over 2lbs of stupice and cherry roma tomatoes from my garden this morning as well as the last bit of basil. I still have 8oz of stupice from the other day too. I am going to have to graduate from simply throwing them in our salads. I think I am going to try this Tomato Onion Tart for dinner. Doesn’t it look amazing? I’ll let you know how it goes.

The tomatoes have started rolling in. I harvested a bowl of Stupice and Cherry Romas this morning and it looks like my Amish Paste will be the next to start ripening. Keep in mind they are all inderterminate plants though so they will produce until the frost offs them. I am going to have so many Cherry Romas, so it is a good thing they dry well, and taste fantastic too. Michael and I are a little underwhelmed by the flavor of the Stupice though (still better then anything from the supermarket) so I do not think that variety will be making a comeback next year.

I have had to rip out my two hybrid romas and giant valentine. The romas never really flourished and every tomato has blossom end rot, and then all the hybrids got late blight (so much for hybrid resistance.) I am glad that I decided to put them in a different bed. I would cry if my heirlooms succumbed to blight, though I continue to watch them all very carefully. I give no quarter to diseased plants. My garden gave me a pleasant surprise while pulling out my spent bush bean plants this morning though, a flourishing Genovese Basil plant hidden behind them and under one of the tomatoes. Yum! Firms up my decision to grow my basil in a container next year though. I know they are a companion plant to tomatoes but I have been having a hard time getting to them for harvest (and apparently I loose them too!)

Elsewhere in the garden, my ground cherries seem to be doing fantastic. They were right beside my blighted tomatoes but don’t seem effected by it thus far. My pumpkins are… Well, I am dealing with the little pumpkin vine that could, at least it use to be the smallest one, now it is the longest, 12 feet I think? Not that it is doing anything more productive then that, it has not set one fruit. I am actually having a terrible time getting my pumpkins to set fruit. I have one baseball sized pumpkin and three plants. I hand pollinated some of the flowers so we will see if that helps, a few fruit seem to be growing now. Where are all the pollinators this year? Seriously, between my neighbor and I, we have enough flowers to attract them and neither of us have seen much of anything beyond the occasional mason or bumblebee. I haven’t seen any butterflies either. Maybe my eight-foot sunflower will send up a pollen-available flag, the head is starting to develop. Bloom my pretty, bloom!

My Seed Savers Exchange order arrived yesterday. It is about 8 weeks to the first frost date right now and I am starting my Ragged Jack Kale indoors this morning. It will be transplant just before the first frost date as per the instructions (it is hardy to -10°F.) Ragged Jack is more commonly called Russian or Red Russian Kale by the way, I just like Ragged Jack better, reminds me of my Grandpa Jack. He loved the color red and the cold. Not that he liked leafy veggies, I believe he referred to them as rabbit food… He would have found the tribute amusing though.

Seriously sometimes I feel like a cheerleader when it comes to my tomatoes. All my heirlooms are so heavy with fruit, especially my cherry romas, amish paste and stupice. And finally, it is happening, my first stupice is turning red. Of course with this wonderful development mother nature decided to test my tomato protectiveness and we had a random brief but violent hail storm yesterday. To paint you a picture, imagine my expanding 21 week pregnant body zooming out the patio door through the nickle sized pellets of pain to throw a sheet over my tomatoes. That’s insanity dedication for you. Everything is fine, the slant of the hail was mainly coming through our mystery tree (can you identify it?) so just our raspberries, on the other side of our yard, took the worst of the punishment.

(This is what this area looked like before anything was growing!)

Michael and I have begun planning the expansion and repositioning of our beds for next year. We will be repositioning the beds because I kind of forgot to take into account the amount of shade Mystery Tree creates. The two beds nearest the deck receive too much shade to produce well, I’ve pretty much given up on having cucumbers for the year because of it, their empty trellis is a little sad do you think?

The new beds will be positioned along the fence coming eight feet (maybe ten) into the yard. Two of them will be three feet wide and two will be four feet wide. I think I am going to build them out of 2×12 untreated pine. In the far right corner of the yard are several tree stumps that I really do not want to rip out so I will be planting all my herbs around them in an irregular shaped bed. I am considering building a 4×4′ potato bin in front of that bed too. As all those plans develop, I’ll share more though.

For now we are just starting to lay the groundwork. Michael spent a couple hours last weekending laying down black plastic over the area some of the beds will be (thank you sweetie!) We also have two 4×8′ patches in the front yard blocked out too. The plastic will smoother the grass and weeds which will be easier to rip up come cooler weather and theoretically we will be less weeds to worry about. We also have to wait for the beds to be completely harvested since they have to be removed before the new beds. This autumn I may only build one so that I can plant my garlic before winter sets in.

Does anyone grow any heirloom garlic that stores well? (I am not interested in hybrids.) I added a variety to my heirloom wishlist but am open to suggestion for what works well in this area. I have some seeds I can swap for cloves too.