End of Season - Tomato Stress, Potato Flavour

   It has been a busy few days.  Temperatures are supposed to drop to -5 at the end of the week, with rain and freezing rain or flurries.  I picked the rest of the tomatoes on the 23rd and 24th and brought them inside.  I think this is the latest the tomatoes have been harvested since I began gardening.  Even so, a good number of the tomatoes are not only green but "white-green" and hard.  I don't know if they will ripen, but I boxed them along with the others and will hope for the best.

    Yesterday afternoon, I had to roll my eyes...and grumble...and laugh at myself.  I am in the "What the hell was I thinking?" phase of the gardening season.  I spend hours online in late winter and early spring, researching different heirloom varieties, finding out their characteristics, writing and revising wish-lists of what I want to grow, keen to see what everything looks and tastes like in the end.  Each year, I grow a bit more than the year before because there are so many intriguing varieties, and basically, to see if I can.  

   Flash forward to this point in September, which never feels as serene.  There are dry beans hanging in the plant room, their leaves falling on the floor as the plants dry.  I bump my head on the garlic (untrimmed, so still muddy) that hangs in the laundry room every time I do a wash or go into the freezer.  Saucers of drying pods and jars of fermenting tomato seeds are on every available surface in the living room, plant room, and kitchen.

   Dealing with the tomatoes tends to be the most overwhelming.  When I begin boxing them, the boxes are carefully lined with newspaper. I put the nicest specimens of each variety in them in case I want to save their seeds later, and label each box with the variety name.  By hour 3, when there is dirt all over me, dirt on the kitchen floor, newspaper strewn everywhere, aching knees and neck from crouching, and I am running out of room to stack boxes, the tomatoes are tossed around pretty haphazardly and I am well past caring what  variety they are or how cool they might look once ripe!  By that point, I am making mental notes for next year (Focus on varieties with large fruit...stick with mostly determinates...narrow it down to fewer varieties...) which I then write down but will probably not heed.  This has been the pattern!

   This is first batch of tomatoes picked, along with a few purple fingerling potatoes.  I need to look up the name of these from past notes.  This variety has a fantastic flavour.

   (Update: they are AmaRosa fingerlings.  It will be tempting to order some from Eagle Creek next year.)

   Second batch picked.  Many of the tomatoes have splitting and/or cat facing due to the poor weather conditions this summer.  It's going to make processing them for sauce more time consuming than usual.

    On the 23rd, R. dug up the row of Kennebec potatoes in the East garden.  These did better (larger, dryer, more plentiful) than the Norlands that were planted in the raised bed.

   R. also cleaned out the small shed.  At the back, he found this.  Neat! He figures it must have been in there when he bought the property 25+ years ago.  (It's clear I'd was pulling out tomato plants that morning.  My fingers are black from it.)

   The small carrots in the South garden (Red Chantenays) were dug up and will be given to some of R's friends.  I brought in the winter squash and have been picking tiny zucchini where I find them (what a poor year for zucchini - so much rot!).  The kale and cabbage can stay put for a while longer.  

   The last batch of sliced carrots is in the dehydrator as I type.  Hours to process, but so nice to have for soups and stews in the winter.

If the weather cooperates, garlic will be planted early next week.

The kitties (and the bees) are going to miss the cosmos when they're gone.

These dahlias were the last to bloom, but worth the wait.

Lavatera