Summertime Tomato Sauce

Here's a recipe my family would use to make tomato sauce to go over pasta when the garden was full of tomatoes. My garden's nowhere near full of ripe tomatoes. My tomato count so far is 4 paste tomatoes. Three of them went into this sauce, and the rest of the tomatoes were from my CSA. Roma and paste tomatoes are good, but any kind will do.

Fresh Tomato Sauce

Drizzle some olive oil in the bottom of a large sauce pan. Chop an onion and saute in the olive oil until transparent. Meanwhile core and quarter your tomatoes, at least two pounds but more if you have them. Add the tomatoes to the pot and bring to a simmer.
Add a handful of fresh chopped basil, salt, pepper, and 1 teaspoon of sugar (to cut the acidity). Simmer until the tomatoes have lost their shape, stirring occasionally. At this point some of the skins separate from the tomatoes. Sometimes I fish them out, other time I don't.
Using a blender, puree the sauce. The sauce becomes a beautiful shade of orange at this point. Taste and add more salt or pepper as needed. Serve over pasta.
We made some for dinner on Saturday night and it was so good that we decided to make more for lasagna for Monday night. We bought 5 lbs of tomatoes ( the 2nds) at a farm stand today and used a large onion. The 5 lbs made two quarts of sauce.

August Bloom Day

Here's what's blooming around the garden and yard today. It is mostly wildflowers. The bee balm is still blooming but looks pitiful after all the rain.

Wild Aster

Goldenrod

Jewel Weed

Wild Cucumber

In the vegetable garden:

Broccoli ( I'm going to try to save seeds)

Dill

Nasturtium

Marigold

Elsewhere in the yard:

Petunia

Dalia

Pollinators

Yesterday was our second day in a row without rain. I'm hoping the streak will continue today. I caught these pollinators out in the late afternoon sun. I was glad to see both the fly and bumble bee on my broccoli. I've decided that since it is too late to pull it and plant anything else, I'll try to save it's seeds. The only trouble is I have no idea what variety it is since I got the seedling from a colleague. If I do end up with seeds I might have to ask her to go back and look at her records.

Syrphid Fly on Broccoli Flower
Wasp on Goldenrod
Bumble Bee on MarigoldYellow Jacket on Goldenrod

Oven Roasted Vegetables

Tonight we made a favorite recipe, Oven Roasted Potatoes, except we added golden beets and onions and a few carrot thinnings so it became Oven Roasted Vegetables. These are a great alternative to french fries and we make them often in the fall. The potatoes and beets were from our CSA, the carrots, garlic, and onions from our garden. We only had one pound of new red potatoes and one pound of golden beets and we could have done with some more, there was just one serving left over from the two of us. You don't have to use new potatoes and root vegetables would do well here based on your preference.

Oven Roasted Vegetables

Ingredients

2 lbs. potatoes, rinsed and cut into 1 inch pieces
1 lb. golden beets, peeled and cubed into 1 inch pieces
3-5 very small onions, peeled and quartered
2 garlic cloves, chopped or pressed
olive oil
salt & pepper
dried rosemary
dried thyme

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Prepare the vegetables.
Combine chopped potatoes, beets, onions, and garlic in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil. Season with salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme (and red cayenne pepper if desired). Toss to coat all the vegetables. Spread on baking stone or baking sheet.
Bake for 45- 60 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so. Bake until all vegetables are tender and crisp on some sides.

Serves 2

First Tomato!

Today I finally picked the first tomato. It's off one of the two paste tomato plants. There are two more that look like the will soon follow on these plants, but no where enough to make a sauce. Still no sign of ripening on my heirloom and beefsteak type plants.

I took advantage of a break from yesterday's rain and the time before this afternoon's thunderstorms to examine the plants. I found more tomato hornworm caterpillars and saw their damage. The small ones got squished, the larger one I tossed into the hedge. Another variety of caterpillar was also making a snack of my green plants. I took care of him. There were also a handful of slugs around near the lettuce plants.

I also noticed a fair amount of yellowing of my tomato leaves and this weird bulls-eye type rotting happening from the center of the leaves. I know it's probably due to all the rain we've had. Yesterday was rain pretty much all day and the forecast for the rest of the week includes showers or thunderstorms every day.

Also my buttercup squash is doing well but I don't know how I'll know when to pick it. Any ideas?

Tomato Haircuts

After comparing my tomatoes lacking maturity to those of bloggers in the region, and the peeks I get into neighborhood gardens as I drive, I decided I needed to act. I did some research about the proper pruning of tomatoes and found a article on taunton.com.
I had to wait for the tomato plant to dry, which has been a difficult task this week, but finally Saturday we had some partly sunny weather and the plants dried off. I took a knife to them, chopping off all the tops of the growth and pruning back any suckers that did not already have fruit on them. The picture above is after the haircut. I hope this will cause the plants to ripen the fruit a little faster. They are still quite large plants. In observing others' tomato plants on a walk afterward, I noticed many have a lot less foliage than mine. Currently there are 3 paste tomatoes that are beginning to ripen, and this one is the farthest along. Maybe by the end of the week we'll have our first tomato.
While pruning, I found this guy hanging out. I know it's a tomato hornworm caterpillar but I didn't have the heart to crush him. I really couldn't see any evidince of his damage. Cabage moth caterpillars are another story. I don't have any trouble getting rid of them.
Also, as a result of the very wet weather I found that my last bunch of garlic was molding on the outer layer rather than drying. The leaves were molding too so I decided it was best not to braid them. I stripped the outer layers and chopped the stems, and the most convenient place I could find for them to continue curing was this blue vase. I think they look quite nice.