Now it feels like November. Cold, rainy and dreary. Gone are the Indian Summer days. Summer’s garden seems long past.
But with a little bit of effort a few weeks ago, I am able to make a pot of chili today using fresh tomatoes!
The day before we had that really cold night (not just the first frost when we covered our tomatoes, but this time it was going to get below freezing so we knew the covering up wouldn’t do much good) it went to 28 degrees where my garden was. I had picked all the tomatoes I could. This was just a few days after that total day long rain that made the tomatoes start cracking , they swelled up so much. I picked the red ones with a little cracking and all the green larger ones, some with a tinge of red and some that were totally green but otherwise perfect with no blemishes.
My goal has been for many years to have fresh tomato salad for Thanksgiving dinner. Some years a few tomatoes make it, some years they don’t . So the perfect green tomatoes are wrapped carefully in newspaper and put gently in a cardboard box, then placed in a cool dark place. They need to be checked every week or so. Take out any that show mold or black spots. Put them on a sunny window sill and they will redden up after a few days. Cut out the bad parts of the tomato and use the good .
So, today I sorted the tomatoes I kept in the garage and made a pot of chili with them. This is the second time this fall that we have sorted through them . There’s still 1/4 to1/3 of them left for Thanksgiving.
Well, the tomatoes are simmering nicely. I’d better get back to my chili making… it smells delicious!
bye now, Judy
We have about ten or twelve stalks of leak still in the garden. I pulled one tonight for a stir fry and it was as fresh as the summer. We are really starting to think about the stages of the garden for next year. Maybe we can plant radishes, onions and potatoes for late season vegetables along with the leak.
Comment by Mike Ingels — November 9, 2008 @ 7:29 pm
Oh yes, keeping your garden producing in the late fall is really taking it to another level. Very challenging and rewarding. Leaks do sound delicious.
A number of crops do quite well later in the season. Cabbage, kale, brussel sprouts, spinach and some lettuces would grow well then. Plus the ones you mentioned. Most need to be started in August by seed or transplants. It takes them longer to mature in the shortening days and the cooler temperatures. and they’ll taste so good ‘out of season’.
You’d probably like reading Eliot Coleman’s book “Four Season Harvest”.
bye now, Judy
Comment by Judy — November 11, 2008 @ 9:28 pm