I moved my son back to college yesterday, and we made one of his favorite dinners the night before – crispy pork noodle bowl with Thai basil pesto. I had made the Thai basil pesto a few days before (using a different recipe), covered it with sesame oil and stored it in the fridge. So, so good!
I made one batch earlier this month and froze it for use in the future. I had experimented with freezing it last year and found it to freeze very well.
I harvested the first tomatoes (Stupice) on July 23 and then a few more Stupice, Scotia and Ailsa Craig the following weeks. Things started to really get rolling by August 10. On August 17, I picked my first Green Zebra and Dr. Wyche’s Yellow (two of my favorite varieties). Since then, I have been harvesting about two to three pounds every other day.
There have been a lot of Caprese (and other tomato) sandwiches and tomato salads on lunch and dinner rotation, like this tomato and peach salad with whipped goat cheese, for which I like to use Dr. Wyche’s Yellow.
I also made two batches of slow-roasted tomatoes, which I packed in olive oil and froze. For this, I used mainly smaller red tomatoes.
My daughter made an amazing tomato galette the other day (using red tomatoes only), with home-grown garlic and basil. It has been an exceptional tomato season so far!
Notes for next year: The Ailsa Craig tomatoes were prone to cracking; Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, Ananas Noire and Black Krim to catfacing (not a big problem and also unavoidable with the strange weather earlier this summer); and Ananas Noire and Black Krim were prone to rotten spots. Brimmer was a bit crowded out by the other tomatoes and stayed small as a plant (but did produce a few very tasty tomatoes, like the large pink-red one in the picture of August 31). Same growth issue for Stupice, which was crowded out by the calendula flowers.
Produce has started rolling in from the garden plot. Yesterday, I made quick refrigerator pickles with my first harvested pickling cucumbers. I also made a batch of Thai basil pesto (no pictures), which I froze. I will have enough Thai basil to make two or more batches in the coming weeks. Yum!
This morning, I cleaned my garlic and prepared it for storage. As usual, I made a braid from the Transylvania softneck garlic, but this time, I added strawflowers for decoration.
It is my first time growing strawflowers in my garden plot, and I am growing them specifically for this purpose. They just started to bloom, so there will be many more flowers in the next weeks and months. I suspect the final garlic braid will look much more colorful than this first version as I will be adding more flowers.
I also cleaned the Red Russian hardneck garlic. I will leave the stems a bit longer for another couple of weeks before I cut them short. I just want to be sure they are completely dry. Those will then be stored in an open crock in the pantry and will be used up first as they do not keep as well as the softneck garlic. As usual, I saved the largest heads as seed garlic for fall planting – two heads for each type.
Overall, I put 2 lbs. 3 oz. of softneck garlic (17 heads) and 1 lb. 15 oz. of hardneck garlic (15 heads) into storage. One of the hardnecks may have been a softneck, but to be sure, I placed it with the hardnecks to be used up first. 36 heads were harvested overall, from 35 planted.
Today, I harvested my garlic. A little later than in previous years, but it had just not been ready for harvest a week or so ago. I harvested 16 hardnecks (Red Russian) and 20 softnecks (Transylvania). I had originally planted 15 and 20, respectively, but one of the hardnecks split and produced two heads.
I will air-dry them on the porch (away from the sun) for a couple of days and then hang them in my back hallway to cure until the leaves are completely dry and the hardneck stalks very firm. This typically takes about two weeks for the softnecks and three weeks for the hardnecks. I will then clean them, remove all dirt and the very outer papery layer, trim the stalks of the hardnecks and braid the softnecks. But not before I put the largest heads aside as seed garlic for the fall.
I also planted shallots this spring, but only three of the many I planted grew. Not sure what went wrong.
Last week, my daughter brought tons of garlic scapes back from work and made two cups of pesto – one for the freezer and one that we have been using up all week. There were still quite a few scapes left (around 20), and I decided to turn them into garlic scape powder. I have never done this before, so it was an exciting new project.
First, I washed and dried the scapes. I then cut off the flower buds and chopped the stems into 1 cm long (about 1/2 inch) pieces. I placed them in a single layer on a baking sheet and dried them in the oven at 150F. I checked every 45 minutes to an hour and turned them. After quite some time (4 hours and 45 minutes, the last 45 minutes at 170F), they were completely dry and brittle. I then let them cool and blitzed them in a mini food processor. Those 20 scapes yielded around 3 tablespoons. Not a whole lot, but it smells divine, so I think it is very potent.
I harvested my garlic scapes today. 15 total, from just as many hardnecks as I had put in the ground in the fall (I have 20 softnecks as well, so 35 heads total). I made garlic scape pesto, but this time, I followed the recipe to the end and included cheese and lemon juice, which I normally omit and add later. It is really delicious. We shall see how well it freezes.
This morning, I spent a couple of hours in the garden weeding, spreading compost and replacing the hay in my plot. It is now ready for planting. For the first time in years, I have not been planting peas, which I would have done mid to late March. The last couple of years were just demoralizing with the birds getting all the peas in the end. And I don’t feel like dealing with bird netting. I might transplant my lettuce seedlings tomorrow (they have been hardening on the porch for a few days), which would be a good time as rain is in the forecast for the day after. So, currently, I have garlic, rhubarb and strawberries coming in, and a lot of calendulas, which self-sowed from last year (they can be seen right behind the timber border to the left). I will thin them once they are a little bigger and plant them in different spots around the plot and also outside the community garden.
