Creekside Kitchen and Garden
Sustainable Gardening and Creative Food
Love Those Mouthwatering Tomatoes!
The Icon of Summer
Tomatoes and corn — the icons of summer.
I don’t usually grow corn as it takes a lot of room, water and fertilizer but tomatoes are a must have. Over the years I’ve had good luck and not so good. I’ve had volunteer cherry tomatoes come up and produce from early summer until frost. This year is so so, but better that the last two when rabbits ate every single plant!
Even my dog, Rascal, likes tomatoes! I was sitting on the deck overlooking the garden when I noticed him nosing at the tomatoes. Didn’t think he would hurt them. He picked two! And ate them!!
Heirloom Tomatoes
The thing that draws me to summer tomatoes, especially the heirloom varieties, are their juiciness and FLAVOR. Every winter when hothouse tomatoes are all that is to be had, I vow that I’m going to use apples and mandarin oranges on my salads because the winter tomato flavors and textures are so disappointing.
Sungold is usually a prolific and tasty cherry tomato and surprisingly three years ago I had really good luck growing San Marzanos. Since they are so prized for cooking, I thought they would be picky but they were easy to grow and disease free….at least that year.
My favorite variety is Cherokee Purple. This year grasshoppers attacked my Cherokee Purples when they were small and they have been slow to come back. But I have a few! They do pretty well where I live but they are a big plant and need more support than the typical tomato cage.
Who knew? Tomatoes and Sunflowers are a Match!
Not planned — but fortunate — and quite by accident — my tomatoes are growing alongside a huge crop of sunflowers that reseeded from last year’s planting. I worried that the sunflowers would overshadow the tomatoes but instead they seem to be doing well together and the tomatoes are using them as a support.
Tomatoes in the Kitchen
The things that can be done with tomatoes in the kitchen are almost endless. A simple tomato basil salad is wonderful.
Simple Marinara Sauce
I also like to just cut them up and throw them in a pan with some red wine, herbs (my favorites are oregano and rosemary) a little soy sauce and a bit of balsamic.
Cook it down until the tomatoes are soft and then run it through the Vitamix or you can use a food mill. Either way, I always leave the skins on while cooking. One — it’s too much time to peel them and two — the skins bring even more flavor to the sauce!
This particular evening I added some merlot sea salt that my daughter brought me from a shop in San Diego that she visited during a recent trip.
If you want an extra special sauce, roast the tomatoes first. Super easy to throw a head of garlic in the oven with the tomatoes and add it in as well.
The Winter Ahead
My experiment this year is going to be trying to keep some tomatoes growing over the winter. I started three new plants and set the seedlings in the ground to get going before the weather turns cold. I have hoop frames over two of my beds. When I’m ambitious and do winter gardening, I put plastic over the hoops. Kind of creating an in ground greenhouse.
Maybe — just maybe — I’ll have flavorful tomatoes this winter. I’ll let you know.
Easiest Herbs for Kitchen and Garden
While fruit is finicky, (see my last post, Fruit is a Heartbreaker) herbs are easy to grow and incredibly useful in the garden and the kitchen. At least in my neck of the woods, nothing really bothers herbs. As a rule, bugs don’t eat them and deer and rabbits don’t either. Yea!!!
In addition to being easy to grow, they add so much to cooking. They turn a ho-hum dish into something that make my mouth dance!
Rosemary
My rosemary bush has really taken off. It was a tiny thing when I planted it six years ago. In a harsh winter, it can look pretty scraggly come spring. The last two winters have been relatively mild, however, and now it is overgrowing the garden path.
Rosemary is great in tomato based sauces. Here it is in an eggplant/quinoa “meatball.” Served over orzo with a marinara sauce.
Another one of my favorite ways to use it is minced and tossed with potatoes before roasting. I chop the potatoes into whatever size complements the dish. Smaller for breakfast potatoes, larger for dinner. Coat them with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and the rosemary. Bake or air fry until they are done. They are a great and easy side dish.
Dill
Dill grows in my garden. I don’t even have to plant it anymore. It just shows up every spring and again when the weather cools in the fall. Dill is wonderful because it is almost as flavorful dried as it is fresh. In addition to making its appearance in the garden twice each year, it also gives both dill fronds and the dill seeds.
For the fronds, a great way to use them is in a simple orange sauce. I take a cup of orange juice and about a quarter cup of white wine, reduce it by half and about a tablespoon of butter and dill to taste. It can be that simple or for an even richer sauce add about a half a tablespoon of white balsamic vinegar and a half a teaspoon of white miso paste.
This used to be my go to sauce for salmon but as I go towards more of a plant based diet these days, it is also amazing under tofu. If you’re doing it with salmon, put it under the fish and leave the crispy skin side up. No soggy skin! This isn’t the prettiest photo but the sauce was great!
Basil
Basil is a favorite and grows easily and well for me. A tip from a grower at the farmers market — pinch it back hard! It works. By the end of summer, these small plants will be bushes two feet high and as wide.
Is there any better way to eat basil than over heirloom tomatoes with a little balsamic and olive oil? Fresh Mozzarella is optional but soooo good.
Oregano
Oregano goes in everything in my kitchen from tomato sauces to Mexican food to sweet potato hash. My oregano threatens to overrun everything each year. It’s even escaped into the lawn. A member of the mint family it can be invasive but such a useful culinary herb. It’s amazing fresh but also really useful dried. Here it is threatening to overrun the garlic chives.
Chives
The chives are such a joy. They come back every year with their grassy brilliant green and at the end of the season send up flowers that attract tiny bees. They are a nice addition to salads, on top of baked potatoes (how traditional!) and in all kinds of sauces.
I also have a thriving sage bush but to me, sage is for fall. So more on that later. I also have some herbs that are a little more particular. Cilantro and tarragon take some babying but that’s another post.
My dehydrator is busy these days storing up the flavors of summer for this winter when the oregano will be brown and sparse and the basil just a memory of warm summer days. But in the meantime…tomatoes anyone???
Growing Fruit can be a Heartbreaker
When I began to garden with the thought of using what I grew in the kitchen, I read many things. Two in particular made so much sense to me…. Don’t grow what you don’t like to eat and focus on the items that are expensive at the store.
So, with limited space and time, why put a lot of labor into onions which I can buy for $.99 a pound? Instead, I’ll invest in raspberries which are often $4.99 a half-pint.
When I look around the market, some of the most expensive items are fruit. Which are also one of the things I LOVE to eat! My logic led me to plant a dwarf sour cherry tree, a dwarf peach tree and a plum tree. I also planted strawberries under my trees and strung trellis wires in between the cherry and peach trees for multiple types of blackberries and raspberries.
The first year they were planted we didn’t get any fruit. But I didn’t expect any. The second year the peach tree produced one giant, perfect fruit that was mouthwateringly, amazingly wonderful. The cherry tree also produced a few fruit which the birds promptly ate. The berries also began producing.
Sadly, the deer ate the plum tree until I feared it would not recover. I still have hope but….
I got a few strawberries but the birds and the slugs had far more. Then two years ago, the strawberries were still there but the plants were disappearing?? Rabbits!!! They ate all my plants and left the fruit! Strawberries under the trees….done.
The raspberries and blackberries have gained hold and multiplied. I planted about seven varieties and three are still with me. They fruit two or three times a year and picking them makes me see why they are so expensive in the store. But are they good! And I can grow varieties that are too fragile to be picked and packaged.
The fruit tree saga is more difficult. The third year, the cherry and the peach were covered with flowers, buzzing with bees and brought delicious smells to my garden. The essence of spring. As early summer began, the cherry was covered with fruit. Each evening I would look and see a few more red, round balls that I was determined to pluck the next morning. Each morning I would go out, bowl in hand, only to find all my red cherries gone!
I thought the birds were getting them all, but the squirrels were having a feast too. The next year we netted the tree and had so many that I had trouble using them all. This year I put up a deer fence in May (more about that later) which limited the squirrel raids. I had all the cherries I could use and the birds had their fill as well.
Three years after planting the peach tree, like the cherry, it was also loaded with fruit. But wait! I noticed a clear gel oozing out of my fruit. Back to the books and articles on orchards and I learned I had peach tree coddling moth which is very common. It’s less common not to struggle with it.
I have tried hard to keep my garden organic and finally found something called Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Spray that is made from a naturally occurring bacteria called Spinosad. Even though it’s classed as organic, I never spray it when pollinators are around just in case! I read some more and timed my sprayings, but for two years in a row, I couldn’t get it right.
This year my timing was spot on and just three applications of Captain Jack’s did the trick. One application just before the tree leafed out, one after the flowers dropped and one when the peaches were the size of walnuts.
My joy was short lived, however, squirrels ate every single peach off the tree, except three I picked small, young and only light yellow in color.
At first, I said I was going to take out the peach tree. Although it was supposed to be a dwarf, it is not. It is a standard fruit tree and it is beginning to put too much shade into the garden but it is a pretty tree and it is fun watching the squirrels run across the yard, their jaws looking unhinged as they carry away their precious fruit.
The compromise is that I will trim back the tree so it does not throw ever larger portions of the garden into shade. I will quit spraying because the squirrels don’t mind the peach tree coddling moth worms. They probably just consider it a little extra protein. And I will enjoy the beautiful tree that provides for other animals, even if it doesn’t provide food for me — just happiness in the garden.