A Tale of Tomatoes: From Seed to Salsa in 6+ Months

The day after Thanksgiving I was having kitchen withdrawal symptoms so I decided to spend part of Black Friday making and canning green tomato salsa. The day-long effort was actually the culmination of a six-month experiment in gardening inefficiency. And like a high-school chemistry experiment, I'm writing up the project from memory, about a half-hour before the lab is due.

Tomatoes having the reputation for being fast growers and prolific producers.  Not over a hot Texas summer. Apparently the nighttime temperatures have to get below 75 in order for fruit to set.  Austin seems to have the right combination of heat + humidity to prevent this from happening.  Maybe it's just the type of tomatoes I'm trying to grow.  Perhaps I can try others.  But it's been 2 years of trying and I've gotten bumpkin.

Last year I got disgusted looking at my scrawly tomato plants about September and ripped them out. Then someone told me that if I leave the plants in until it gets cool again (end of September/beginning of October), I'll have tons of tomatoes.  So that what I did this year.

Here's the bounty of tomatoes, all 6.3 pounds of themf

Belated Birthday Addition to the Garden

Even though I have tons of plant/bug stuff to post from this summer's backyard experiments, I'm pre-empting them all to introduce to you our newest member of the garden, Fred.

Fred

Fred is mini-moai.  About 3 feet tall (4 feet including hair).  We set him up in the back right corner of the backyard in the most shade.  He looks a little lonely there now, but eventually we'll find the right combination of plants and rocks to give him company.  Meanwhile, he helps balance the interest in the yard.

I don't know if I can describe how satisfied I am to have him watching over the estate. I've always been a little fascinated by the story of Easter Island. Years ago, when Mom came to visit, I dragged her to the heart of the Texas Hill Country  to visit our version of Easter Island heads.

This Hill Country moai could be Fred's big brother!

Johanna & Mom near Hunt, Texas

Which, for no apparent reason, is also the home of Stonehenge II.

But back to Fred.

So I'd seen him and his compatriots at the Natural Gardener last spring, thought he was cute and told Dan about him in passing.  Unbeknownst to me, while I was at Mom's in Florida, Dan drove down to the nursery to pick him up, but he was gone! Well, when I got home Dan presented me with a beautiful bird bath and told me the sad story.

Unwilling to give up without a good moai because of a missed clearance sale, I drove the 23 miles to the Natural Gardener to see what I could excavate. Despite the fact that these moai pottery did not create the same enthusiasm in the employees as the pottery did in me, I was able to find the stash of leftover moai hidden among the other pots. Huzzah! I got back home to Dan as soon as I could to tell him the news. We packed up the bird bath and traded it in for Fred.

Feel free to stop by and have your picture taken with him.

A Summer of Okra

As you may know, I became a fan of okra a few years ago when I started getting it fresh from the farm and cooking it myself.  Turns out, my fears of the much-touted slime factor were misguided. Same too, my expectations that it had to be deep-fried or nothing. In three years, I've gone from avoiding this vegetable in the kitchen to napping under it's shade in my backyard. Weird. But cool.

In 2008 I got my okra from Johnson's Backyard Garden CSA, and professed my ignorance as to what to do with it. I found out that okra is popular in Indian recipes, and since I wasn't a fan of deep-frying in my kitchen, I gave them a shot. They were freakin' awesome tasting. I made them with each bundle of the lady finger I got form the CSA that summer and fall. The only down side was that the recipes were more involved than I was used to making. Cooking okra took a lot time. Worth it, but not always practical. Sometimes the okra went bad in the fridge before I had a chance to use it. Boo.  I wish I'd thought about pickling then....

So by 2009, I decided okra was a pretty cool vegetable. It also had the distinction of handling our Texas summer heat, so I planted 3 okra plants in my 3x3 foot square-foot garden box. I gave each tiny seedling a whole square foot as was recommended somewhere on the internet. The results: unimpressive, but successful. The plants were plagued by aphids, but the buggers were kept in check by knocking them off daily either with water from the hose or my hand. The little pests didn't seem to hurt the okra that was produced, and we ate it when we could supplement our 'harvest' with the okra from the CSA.  The plants grew about three feet tall eventually and produced maybe 3 okra a week. (Hence, the air-quotes around harvest.) I noticed that the plants, while easily a foot wide, were pretty spindly. I resolved to plant them more densely the next time.

In 2010, I planted 16 okra seeds in my upgraded 4x8 foot square-foot garden. I planted them with corn, squash and peas in a modified, failed three-sisters garden plan. I'd heard that corn needed a lot of fertilizer to be successful, so I began fertilizing weekly with seaweed extract almost immediately. It was my first committed effort to regularly fertilizing since starting my garden experiments. Well, the corn never really produced anything edible and died half-way through the summer.  The okra plants had a different experience, which I'd like show in pictures.

2 feet tall plant, okra next to serrano pepper

4 feet tall plants

about 6 feet tall

I'm guessing 8 feet here

Long story short, I've got some okra plants that are about 8 feet tall now. In the afternoon, I can lay down on my garden storage bench by the fence and daydream through the branches. The one green okra plant has a 'trunk' now that's almost and inch and a half in diameter. The burgundy okra plants are slimmer, as are the fruit the produce, but still impressive (at least to me).

Lessons learned:

• Fertilize your plants often, at least while they're small and not yet setting fruit.
• Aphids only seem like a big problem when the plant is 2 feet tall
• Planting both green and burgundy okra can produce some odd-looking, hybrid fruit. I think I'll stick to just one color next year so I can save seeds
• Okra plants are pretty flexible, even when they're big. If a tropical storm is coming through, I should use stakes to help support them
• Even if a plant bends way over, it can still produce okra
• Plant okra towards the north so that the rest of the box can still get some sun
• Burgundy okra is too long and skinny to be a good pickling okra, as it's too tall to fit in the jars without squishing. Use the green okra from the CSA for that.

Our harvests don't require air-quotes to describe any more. We have to keep picking them every 2-3 days to keep them from getting too big and tough. We've been able to give some to friends and still have enough to enjoy ourselves (we're still getting some from the CSA as well). Our okra recipe repertoire has expanded to included tasty, yet quick side dishes. It's been a summer of okra, and it makes me kinda proud.