When I look back at Summer 2009, this is what I will remember:

Community Garden Plot Harvest

In continuing with our tomato theme of the day, Melissa Byrne over at Sustainable Food tells the heartbreaking story of one farms love affair and ensuing heartbreak endured due to their blighted tomato crop. Melissa painstakingly chronicles the blood, sweat, and tears that Old Path Farm put into their veggies this year only to see it all gone to waste on account of circumstances out of their control.

Gerry over at Organic Authority takes a novel approach to tomato growing - by growing tomatoes in trash.  He swears by this strategy.  I have seen this phenomenon first hand - when I was in Boston visiting my friend James he showed me a tomato plant that started all on its own in his compost bin.  Now its taken over half his backyard.  The tomatoes definitely seem to love it.  And while both Gerry and James’ tomatoes are growing in compostable material - its not composted yet.  In the meantime there is all sorts of weird mold, bacteria and unidentifiable larvae growing in there.  So while it may be great food for the plants, the food from the plants is not something I would try.

photo courtesy of flickr user Aaron M

The Chicago Sun Times has blessed us with 50 sumptuous ways to enjoy our tomato harvest.  While not everyone is knee deep in tomatoes this summer due to the blight (poor Martha), some are reaping the rewards of summer.  And the Times know how to put these red orbs to use.  Some of my faves I want to try, the first one I’m going to test out for lunch:

Turn sliced tomatoes into a gratin, with a topping of bread crumbs and grated Parmesan and a finishing splash of heavy cream.

Shake up the Tomato Mojitonico, a signature of Nacional 27 mixologist Adam Seger. It’s a muddled concoction of chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, a lime wedge, a handful of herbs, rum and tonic water.

Roll out a pizza Margherita with slices of ripe tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil leaves.

Try with peach wedges for another summery combination.

Make Tomatoes Provencal the Julia Child way, from Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom (Knopf, 2000). Fill halved, seeded and juiced tomatoes with a mixture of ½ cup fresh white bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons minced shallots or scallions, 2 minced garlic cloves, 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle with olive oil and bake in a 400-degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes, until lightly browned.

Martha's Blight

The tomato blight got Martha, too, and its not pretty.  In fact, I can say this bit of news actually makes me feel quite better.  If the grande dame of all things domestique caught the fungus, then it can’t be all my fault that the tomatoes at the community garden have taken a turn for the worse. Yes my tomato plants may be naked from the waist down, but the fruit, if not plentiful as they should be, are still going fairly strong. And no blight in my backyard container tomatoes yet!

(via Slashfood)

I had my first serious tomato haul last week.  Picked off eleven beautiful Romas from the vines of my community plot.

Purty, aren’t they? Even with the dreaded tomato blight, of which I am a victim, I’m probably looking at another 50-60 of these beauties in the next few weeks.  Of which I could never possibly hope to eat even a fraction of before they go to mush on me.  This is planned of course - the whole point is to preserve these lushcious rubies for use later in the year.  Here’s the problem.  I was planning on turning most of these ladies into tomato paste to be frozen and then used at my leisure for prime tomato sauce. Except when I converted my supposedly plentiful harvest into said tomato paste, here’s what I ended up with:

Yep, 11 Roma tomatoes yielded me all of about a half a cup worth of tomato paste.  This isn’t looking so good. Searching for a plan B.

One of the cool things about vegetable gardening is I’ve learned how to recognize many plants by their leaves.  I’ve never been much of a botanist, but it’s kinda cool to walk past plant and know what I can pluck it and take a bite out of it.  Hint: never make a salad out of tomato leaves, as they look very similar to other, poisonous members of the Nightshade family, such as Belladonna.  In fact, Americans believed that tomatoes were poisonous until 1820.

Knowing your leaves is not just important for not accidentally poisoning yourself.  It can also be very important to avoiding a crucial misstep on the campaign trail.  Don’t make Obama’s mistake, be sure to avoid the dreaded arugula when running for office.

Wild Arugula

Since one never knows when you may find yourself running for prez, it’s always a good idea to brush up on your leafy greens. Earthbound Greens has put together a nifty salad greens chart for all your leaf identification needs.

(H/T Herbiv.org)

Here’s my take for the week:

green beans - $5 (1 basket, ~1/2 lb)

yellow grape tomatoes - $4 (1 basket, ~1/3 lb)

summer squash - $2 (3 med size)

lettuce - $3 (1 basket, ~1/2 lb)

purslane - $3 (1/2 lb)

carrots - $3 (1 bunch, baby)

nasturium - $1 (1 plant)

rosemary - $2 (1 plant)

total: $23

How about you guys?  What did your bounty look like this week?

Turns out there are some new kids on the block, and I like their style.  Luke and Doug are The New Urban Sharecroppers.  Two midwesterner lads who have begun to take over neighbor’s yards to do some farming of their own. They are definitely not the first to come up with the idea of yard sharing for gardening, but they may be the new game in the district.

Luke, Doug, I feel your pain on the tomato front - I’ve been having the exact same problem with the yellowing of the leaves.  I thought it might be that I put them out too early also, but another one of my fellow community gardners suggested I may not have enough nitrogen in my soil.  The soil was way too heavy on the leaf mulch, so I mixed in 2 bags of composted manure and a small bag of dried blood. Yes, that’s right, dried blood, and it smells horrific, but has a heavy amount of nitrogen.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed that that worked.

You’ll have to stop by the Bancroft Community Garden someime and say hi and talk plants.

flickr image courtesy of Joe Shlabotnik

He recommends that you spray your tomato plants with epsom salt when they flower.  Discuss.

Schematic with dates planted of my community garden plot so far.

Community Garden Plot as of 5.16.09

Two were born, but she was told only one could live.  And the mother had to choose which would live and which would die….

Like Octo-Mom’s fertility doctor, I overly hedged my bets on my first round of seedlings, and double implanted some of my seeds, assuming that in most cases only one would sprout.  Turns out these tomato seeds are hardier than I expected, so in a few cases I had twins.

How does a mother choose?

Sadly, Michelle the Master Gardener came by this week and confirmed what I already feared - in order to ensure the survival of one plant the other must be cut loose, or else it would crowd the roots and both would perish.  Tormented, I weighed my options carefully.  Would it be cruel to pick the taller and stronger of the two because it was likely to produce more fruit?  What about the underdogs of this world?  Maybe Shorty is just a late bloomer.  But like Sophie, I had to make sure one of my progeny lived on.  And so I chose.

Post Op: Still-gasping-for-life body lies on the operating table

In the end, it was all about the tomatoes.  The more, the merrier. So I cut Shorty loose. What can I say?  Life is cruel. We’ll see if I made the right decision.

How bout you?