Fried Green Tomatoes & Trellises

A few years ago I had the pleasure of trying Fried Green Tomatoes for my first time in a little town in Kentucky, they were wonderful but anything dipped in a batter and fried is usually pretty yummy, how can you go wrong? These are my Heirloom Sweet Horizon tomatoes that are such the luscious green right now, I am so tempted to pick them now and try this recipe from Simply Recipes, once these ripen they will be a deep persimmon-orange, like the color of sunshine. Should I wait?



Every year in the past I have used the cheap wire cages to house my tomatoes, they never worked well for me, often leaving my tomatoes flopping over in the dirt with the stalks bending and just out of control. So this year, I planted 5 tomatoes in the ground when they were young, once they started getting some height I used wooden stakes to build a teepee like structure around them. These tomatoes have really been nurtured, every time they grow a little taller, I use plant tape to attach each individual stalk to a stake of the teepee. So far it has worked great and they are growing super tall and have the strength to hold the weight of all the tomatoes. Two of our tomato plants are about 7 feet tall right now! It looks much nicer then the wire cages and it was completely economical, a few long stakes of wood, fishing wire and a little planters tape. Not sure how well you can see in the images but here are some of our "tomato teepee's".

Eight Ball Squash & a Field of Corn

It seemed only a week ago the flowers just started blooming on our squash and now all of sudden there is squash! This is known as Eight Ball Squash, there are three eight-balls right now with more on the way. Hoping to come up with a great recipe and stuff these this week. I am tempted to also pick some of the flowers and stuff them as well, yum! Another surprise this week was what I call our field of corn, there is now corn ! I wasn't expecting anything until at least late July...not sure which variety we have but now thinking maybe they are the "early" corn. They are not quite ready for harvesting but I am thinking in about a week as long as I can get to them before the squirrels realize they are ready for chomping.

French Baby Carrots

Today, we went to thin our carrots and were pleased to find some quite large ones ready to eat. This is a variety of seeds we planted of yellow and orange Babette carrots back in April over any area of about 3' x 4'. There is something really yummy about the smell of a carrot still covered with dirt, cant get fresher then that - we will have these with dinner tonight and many more to come!

Our Baby Romaine lettuce is in full bloom and after carrot thinning, we decided to harvest some for dinner. Dante had the fantastic idea of using his dump truck to carry the lettuce as he picked it so it could easily be transported from farm to kitchen. After picking the lettuce, he used his toy garbage truck to carry weeds away. Such a good helper!

Where did May go?

Believe it or not May was quite a busy month on the farm and nothing was neglected except my blog! We spent much of the time watering, staking and installing a brand new drip system to take care of our edibles while we went on vacation. Hoping it will also save some water by dripping the plants efficiently this summer since we are again in a drought. I also claimed some new dirt along the side of the fence that now houses 3 tomato plants, 2 basil plants and some sunflowers in between. Dante is always helping on the farm and so proud to do a walk thru for visitors, he now has converted our old office in to a playroom for himself. The room has a very old window that actually opens up on to the farm...his new spot to look and see whats growing.

Everything is blooming mostly green and yellow flowers, there are blossoms on the "eight ball" zucchini, green tomatoes on most of the tomato plants, pumpkin and cantaloupe flowers, yellow tomatillo flowers, corn, lots of new basil seedlings and lots of lettuce. The strawberries are just starting to fruit and we now have a handful of Purple Peruvian Peppers...I hope to try those in a salsa soon. We are looking forward to everything being edible soon and blogging again soon ;-)

Our New $10 Fence

In our little plot of land, I have been juggling the last few months putting up temporary fences around newly planted seeds to deter our lovely dog Diego from interfering with the dirt and seeds. It has been an obstacle course and I am constantly tripping over one of the little fences or the hose is getting stuck in one of them. Recently I found an old picket fence gate we had and a couple of extra pickets, so I thought it would be a great idea to build a proper gate fence. My husband had just returned from a two week long business trip, so on Saturday morning I gave him his first project on my "honey to do" list...to build the gate and fence. Fortunately we had extra wood, all I needed to buy was 4 extra pickets and gate hardware. Here is a shot of our new gate, much thanks to hubbie! Just painted it white a few days ago and officially put our homemade sign on the gate. All of the temporary fences have come down, no more Diego in the farm (poor Diego, this was initially going to be his dog run), lots more space to plant new crops now and I cant wait to get started.

Yummy Beetroot Salad

Our little farm still has some beets growing that we planted last Winter...Bulls Blood Beetroot is the type we used, very deep red with beautiful dark red and green leaves. Yesterday I harvested some baby Bib lettuce and one big beetroot from the garden. This turned in to last nights dinner, just baby lettuce, smaller red leaves from the beetroot, goat cheese and of course the main course the beet! Goat Cheese and beets are such a nice pair, if I only I could make my own cheese...time to get a goat?

Little Sprouts...

We have had some really baking hot weather here the last few days and lots of new seeds are sprouting…carrots, pumpkins, artichokes and of course our little lady bugs are sprouting around to find their new home in the garden – so fun to watch! Busy watering everything and putting new seeds for corn and melons. Over the weekend we prepped our soil for some new tomato plantings, this year I am really anxious to get some beautiful tomatoes so decided to follow some wonderful advice from Love Apple Farm which has the most delightful tomatoes I have ever seen. This is the farm I spent a few months volunteering and harvesting, hopefully I learned something! I was fortunate enough to pick up some tomato plants from Cynthia at the farm a couple of weeks ago. Over the weekend we planted a White Cherry, Rose and Sweet Horizon…cant wait to see the results!