Bountiful Pantry

Here is our full pantry shelf. We (or rather, Tim) had time to can this fall.
The top shelf has dried cherry tomatoes in the white bin (a bumper crop!) and salsa to the right; just below that is dilly beans and pickles.
Here're all the canned stewed tomatoes. Not sure how we will manage to use all of these, since we also have a few gallons of pasta sauce in the freezer. And the vegetable delivery continues, bi-weekly, until Thanksgiving. Plus two cabbages and lots of arugula still out in the garden, and about 15 winter squash in the attic. We'll have plenty this winter!

Growth and Decay

Here are some lovely photos from August 15:




Hard to believe this is just 5 weeks ago. The garden is a mess now. The tomatoes have something that is making all the leaves turn brown and limp. It looks like they were hit with frost, but it hasn't been at all cold. I need to keep up better. But it was a lovely summer, cool and green, little rain in July, but plenty after that. Too cool for tomatoes. Not many this year, even though we planted a lot.

Tomatoes on the driveway

Here are the tomatoes which line our driveway. There used to be small shrubs all the way along here, which we took out to make room. This is looking east from the driveway.Click here for an earlier view, looking west, about 6 weeks ago.

Full garden views

Here's the garden, freshly weeded, from the west looking east: Here's the lettuce bed:

Here's a close-up of our new little tomatoes starting. They are about the size of grapes, but I think this variety is one that gets to be about the size of a tennis ball.

Garden looking west from the deck. Note fresh straw between the rows:

Tomatoes and Peas, then and now

Progress--After (trellis is about 7 ft high) July 13th Before: May 25

Kid's eye view

Billy had the camera on Sunday while we were weeding, and took these pictures of plants in the tiered garden off the deck. I like his perspective. Tomato plant: Red Cabbage:

Nasturiums:

Lazy gardener

I'm not sure what happened to the last 5 weeks--illness and injury (both minor) have taken up some time, but that's no excuse, really.

The garden is doing pretty well. The tomato plants are huge and starting to flower. We have harvested some small carrots, beets and some bad turnips. I guess planting the turnips and hoping they'll grow isn't going to work. Perhaps I'll read about it before fall planting.

The peas are growing extremely well. Too well, as we are also getting about 2 lbs per week from our CSA.

So we seem to be retaining our title of Tomato Pros. And that is saying something, so I shouldn't complain. Or work too hard on the rest of it.

Making use of space

This is the south side of our driveway... ...and this is the north side:

This otherwise unused space gives us lots of sunny growing areas. The trellises on the side of our house support snow peas (to eat) and sweetpeas and morning glories (for beauty). There are also tomato plants in those cages. They produced wonderfully last year.

Tomato plant count

Here are the tomatoes we planted, and the number of each variety:

Australian Oxheart (3)
Black Cherry (3)
Black Krim (3)
Brandywine Yellow (5)
Cherokee Chocolate (4)
Green Zebra (3)
Kellogg's Breakfast tomato (4)
Principe Borghese (4)
Yellow pear (5)

The only new one is the Black Krim. They all have different uses, which I will chronicle as we harvest them.

A Day of Mothering--plants.

Mother's Day, and I'm busily trying to get plants to produce offspring. We put in the entire garden today, planting:

• Leeks
• Summer squash
• Cucumbers
• popcorn
• sunflowers
• other flowers and herbs
• two avocado pits in pots (since we had guacamole for dinner)

transplanting:

• Fennel
• peppers
• herbs
• tomatoes (34 plants in the ground and in pots)

Also discovered the joy of stewed rhubarb this weekend. SO GOOD.

In comparing notes with other midwesterners, we are lucky to be close to the lake, and west of it. It has a moderating effect on the weather--it is supposed to get to 38 degrees tonight, but it is freezing elesewhere. We've been harvesting kale for two weeks. The Rhubarb is hearty and producing well. The tomatoes we transplanted earlier this week are thriving. Will be interesting to see what this does over the years, if it changes, etc.

At any rate, a good day of gardening.

Tomatoes and snow

Welcome to the inaugural post of LakeMichigardener! it's been a fun first year of gardening here along the Lake Michigan western shoreline. We've learned a lot and need to keep track of what we do so we can get better and better at it.

The most successful part of our garden this year was most definitely the TOMATOES! What you see above it the last of our heirloom tomatoes, which we picked about 3-4 weeks ago before the first hard frost. They are ripening nicely on the windowsill, and although they do not have the same delicious quality as the summer tomatoes, they are still MILES better than the typical tomato you can buy in a supermarket at this time of year.

Although we will not be posting as frequently as with our companion lakemichiblog, we hope that this blog will be a helpful resource for other gardeners and mostly, for us. Enjoy!