Eat it! The Soup Edition

Made some soup with our tomato crop this season. We made 5 quarts total which is plenty for just the two of us. I typically over-do it with items like this and then it sits around for YEARS because we are just too tired of eating it.  But the quantity seems perfect this time around. A very simple soup but great tasting and even better with a cheesy melty sandi. Yumm.  I found the recipe here.  Next time I'll go a little lighter on the celery though.

Instead of busting out the water bath canner, we just froze it.  Canning can add a layer of fussiness and work to a project so I was happy to avoid it. Most of the things that I can would do well in the freezer so I'll have to keep it in mind.  

Last Days

Disease and a couple of frosty days here and there means the tomatoes are seeing heir last days in the garden.  Can't complain about the crop this season, got a good amount and used it wisely.  We had 1 regular tomato and 2 cherry tomatoes which was nearly perfect for our consumption.  The only concern is...what happens if your only plant kicks the bucket early?  You have no back up and you're paying $3.99 a pound for organic vine ripened 'maters.   Gardening is gambling!

Harvest Time!

Unprepared For Success

With the utter failure of our very first Florida veggie garden and the doom and gloom stories of how hard it is to grow down here, I had slim hopes that we would be able to grow much of anything at all. To my amazement, the plants grew! And grew and grew. And grew some more. Before I knew it, the tomatoes had overgrown their cages. At the time, I thought it was no big deal. The plants would just be tall, no biggie. Right? Then the tomatoes came in and they grew too! And grew and grew. And grew some more.  The weight of those green globes along with a lack of support resulted in the bent and cracked stems in these pictures.

Some of the branches couldn't be saved, like the one that turned brown here. Some had just started to crack so I put some flexi garden tape around the damaged area in hopes that it would heal over like in the picture below. Effective but not too pretty.

Here is a shot of the towering tomato plant with some repair work:

The hot mess below was an attempt on my part to support the cherry tomato that was growing out of control. I just started to wrap it around the neighboring tomato plant. In hind site, not one of my finer ideas. Since I really didn't expect anything to grow very well or for very long, it seeded like a gem of an idea at the time. Well, it just grew into a big tangle.

Here's a closer look.  That long skinny branch at the bottom of the picture is the cherry tomato beginning to wrap around another caged tomato.

This here is a big old floppy branch that I'm holding up. I ended up draping it over some nearby trellis. It's still going strong.

After a few more weeks, I couldn't stand letting the tomato plants fend for themselves so I tried to separate the hot mess I mentioned above. Boy was that an adventure, and not in a good way! I had the Hubby holding up one part of the plant while I had the other, all while trying not to break anything and thread it through an extra upside down tomato cage.  Here 's how it looked afterwards:

That is indeed an upside down heavy duty tomato cage that is zip-tied to the top of another heavy duty cage.  You can very clearly see this over our 6 foot privacy fence, the neighbors must think we've lost it.

Garden Update

Grow baby grow! This is a picture of the garden from early December. The marigolds are going crazy and you can see the tomatoes staring to blush. The marigolds were planted to bring in the pollinators and keep out the buggers. Not so good at either one. I've only seen a bee here and there, but things are getting pollinated and the fruit is setting so maybe we just keep missing each other.  I actually read that ants are a primary pollinator in Florida. Add that to the list of things I never heard of. The tomatoes have been having a go 'round with some type of fungus. Small brown spots on the leaves, the leaves then turn yellow. The damage starts on the older leaves at the bottom and works its way up the plant. That's why the tomatoes have naked legs in these pics.   I think it's either septoria leaf spot or gray leaf spot. I thought it might be early blight but there are no concentric rings in the brown spots.  I swear  you need a masters in vegetable science to decipher the difference in some of these fungal diseases. Regardless, a fungus is a fungus and they all  seem to be treated the same way, so no need to nit pick about it, right?

In an organic garden, copper spray is used to control the fungus. So I go out and spray each plant in all directions, all over. I soon find out that copper spray is a rain magnet. You need rain? Go tediously spray copper on the top and bottom of tomato leaves, and BAM, rain within 24 hours. Guess what the directions say? You got it, spray again after it rains. Ahhhhh!  So I gave up on it. I see that the plants are not going to immediately expire, so I figure it's strong enough and no longer needs my help.