Huge, gorgeous tomato plants, but no tomatoes

Last year, we only had our community garden plot and we we're pulling a wheelbarrel full of tomatoes every week.  This is what our kitchen looked like for months:

This year, we not only had the community garden plot, but now we had a house with a lot of garden space.  We hunted garage sales and collected pressure canners and jars. 

We fertilized the hell out of the soil and really worked the soil with a rototiller.  Save your back, buy a rototiller.  We got ours for $50 at a garage sale and see them all the time at others. 

I ordered a prolific amount of tomator seeds from Pinetree Seeds.  Spent weeknights and weekends trying to find anything that would hold soil.  We had pots of dirt all over the house.  We made a greenhouse out of old windows to germinate seeds.  Somehow I had no success with the green house.  So, I threw up the white flag and took all of those pots of soil filled with seeds and dumped them into our garden.

Then, we contacted Tomato Ty in Huntington Beach.  Him and his partner drive long and far for rare tomato plants and then graft them.  Then they sell them for a whole dollar. 

So, now we have tons of space, super-fertilized soil, 50 planted tomato plants and then those darn seeds that wouldn't do a damn thing in the green house (3 months later) are growing from the soil dumped in the garden. 

Look closely.  What is missing from that picture?  Tomatoes?  Yep.  Apparently, you can over fertilize your soil.  I put too much nitrogen in the ground and so now these huge, gorgeous tomato plants do not think they are going to die.  If they don't think their lives are threatened, they don't produce tomatoes.  The same at the garden plot.  We maybe got one medium-sized bowl a week.

You can add mulch which takes nitrogen out of the soil, but the tomatoes have taken over such that there is no soil exposed to add mulch to.

You can add potassium to try to neutralize the soil, which I did do.  High-potassium supplements promote blooms.  That did help, we did get some blooms, but unfortunately there is still too much nitrogen in the soil.

Our solution: rip them out and plant Siberian tomatoes that can tolerate our mild, California winter.  Pictures and results to follow.

Baseball-bat Zucchinis

If you turn your back to your zucchini plants for a few weeks, they will produce baseball-bat-size zucchinis.  Usually, I like to ding-dong-ditch extra large zucchinis in my co-workers' in-boxes, which is a very professional and adult thing to do, especially as a member of the Bar. 

The issue with such large zucchinis is that they get rather tough.  That is why you see only small zucchinis in your super markets.  Besides leaving a two-feet long zucchini in the inbox of someone in accounting, we have found that if you grind them up, you can make sausage and patties.  Also, as long as you cook them for quite some time (45 minutes), they're great sauteed.

As of late, most of our baseball-bat-size zucchinis have been used in our homemade dog food.  Like everything else in our lives, our dogs get the right of first refusal.  "Honey, Chuie wants to sleep in our bed."  "Where will I sleep?"  "Well, the bed in the camper is awfully comfy."  No wonder they don't bark (let alone lift their heads off of a pillow) when visitors enter our house, take a shower and find a guest bedroom at one in the morning. 

Chuie (one of our tough guard dogs):

Mindy (the second guard dog, so much for pitbulls being aggressive):

Back to the matter at hand.  Dogs can eat zucchinis.  So, we take a zucchini, leftover chicken bones, whatever vegetables are about to perish (except onions - no onions), beans and/or rice, top off with water and let in all cook in a crockpot for a day or two.  Remove the bones and let cool.  Bon dog appetit!  Add a splash of milk so the dogs get calcium.

Because we have two fat dogs to feed:

The Stinking Rose

My favorite crop of all time is garlic.

That lowly thought of item for your garden, purchased in bulk at the local Von's as a California Early or Late is the easiest thing to grow in your garden and is by far the most rewarding.  Growing it opens up a world far beyond the supermarket isles with varied flavors, heat and nuance.

We've found that red hard neck garlics seemingly grow best in Southern California and are the most powerful in flavor and heat.  Heat like chili peppers when you try them raw, powerful in your Caesar salad and your breath afterwards.  Oh so good.

We are fortunate enough to have a community garden plot across town that used to be our primary source of produce for the year.  Sadly, a professional farmer from South Africa moved into the plot next to us and decided that weeds are a cash crop and grows them by the bushel, which blows seed onto our plot.  This has changed our strategy of water thirsty crops to berries, grapes and garlic.  We are heading there today to pull up the last of the tomatoes, till the soil, kill the water timer and prep for garlic.  In the ground in October and out by July, we had great luck with sexy types like Red Janice, Amore and Early Red; each with their own bouquet.  Sexy.

It is as easy as take a good sized head, break off a clove and into the ground butt side down (pointy end up).  Cover with an inch of soil and let it go for the season.  We didn't have to purchase a single head and were into the conversation each night before dinner of, "What type do you think would go well in....?"

Plant garlic, you won't be disappointed.  Filagree Garlic Farm linked at the right. ;)

How to Kill the Christmas Spirit. One Easy Step...

Volunteer.

My wife's crazy grandma who is old as dirt, slightly A type (she was the leader of the Women's Federation of the Republican Party in OC up until a few months ago), cranks out on coffee all day, works until three in the morning on hoos-a-fudge and ran for city council in Villa Park at the age of 80 to regulate where people park their motorhomes, and lost, finally realized that she might be human. She caught a bad case of poopy pants, you know, the time you ventured to Mexico for the weekend and had that last margarita on ice... and it caught up with you two days later. Well, she had some infectious disease like that and realized she isn't teflon any longer (I, however, still am and in my head I'm still 13, though my wife kicks my ass and tells me different. I digress).

Crazy Grandma, now known as as CG, has been the lynch pin of the family for years and was quite a breeder in her younger years with 8 kids and an untold number of grands. The Catholic faith was good to her. Up until now she has hosted the family Christmas of 50 or greater, working herself into a frenzy for weeks. She just can't do it anymore and I have been trying to relieve her of it for years as none of her kids will step up, let alone bring a dish to the event. So I was able to to convince her to let me do the event and she can simply enjoy it.

She agreed.

I was shocked.

After I picked myself off of the floor and guzzle the swill they serve as wine at their house, I went into planning mode. What to grow?

We've already put up enough chard to feed the starving. We are making loaf after loaf from scratch for stuffing and into the deep freeze. Cabbage from spring, check. Green beans on the vine now... got it. Sausage... need to find pork butts on sale to do a grind. Salad greens go in the ground when the weather turns. Turkey and ham on sale after Thanksgiving and then smoked on one of three smokers for the day and one turkey in the oven.

What did I get myself into?

All of the nutty aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews in my house at once. Add booze and I'm sure I will be called the devil again by that one crazy aunt... no, not that one. The other one. Hell, they are all nuts.

Take it from me, as I sit here sipping another American Pride Vodka cocktail and wondering why I make such mistakes, go to Denny's instead.

Tomatoes going nuts?

During the heap of the tomato season, when you've got more tomatoes than you can eat or give away, I keep a small crockpot on my kitchen counter at all times.  In that small crockpot, I constantly keep stewing tomatoes.  I found that if you always have the crock pot out and going, very few tomatoes go to waste.  It forces you to look at your tomatoes every 2-3 days so you can catch those smashed or overly ripe tomatoes before they rot.

8-10 tomatoes can do the trick.  They don't have to be Romas or San Marzanos.  Any tomatoes will do.  Cherry tomatoes work too.  Whatever is about to go bad is best.  Turn the crockpot on low and let them go for a day.  If you want to make the foundation for tomato sauce, I add garlic (amount of garlic depends on the variety) and basil.  If not, just the tomatoes will be perfect.

About halfway through the day, smash the tomatoes.  They'll naturally burst, but this speeds up the process.  At the end of the day, let them cool, throw them in a jar and freeze it.  It's a great and easy way to spend a few minutes each day and ensure you'll have tomatoes all winter long. 

I'm not big on canning, because then it feels like its an all-day production in which you need to do many cans to make it worth your while.  Plus, the one jar every couple of days method semms to be a great purpose for smashed or about to rot tomatoes.

This is also a good back-up in case your winter tomatoes just don't produce.

Whale-shaped napkin rings - success!

Tabatha did quite a number on the old truck.  $30k-worth of repairs later and 5 (probably going to be 6) times back to the shop, we've finally got the truck back, which means it is junkin' time. 

It's been a few months since we've been junkin', so I expected I be out of shape.  In order to train, I started hagglin' with my husband over everything.  On top of being my usual indecisive self (indecisive - I'm an attorney, afterall.  I'm paid to be paranoid.), I've been negotiating with my husband over who gets the last rib, what time we're going to bed, etc.  He's been loving it.

So, we finally went junkin'.  We we're totally prepared (I had a ziploc bag of coins and we both reaked of booze from the night before).  Had the truck all ready to be filed with rusty treasures.

Sadly, we struck out.  I found whale-, squirrel and duck-shaped napkin holders out of monkeypod.  Not bad for 50 cents.

Grant found a huge outdoor light that plugs into your car's cigarette lighter.  Next time we decide to go Jeepin' in the middle of the night after 10 too many, now we can find camp!

So you found a bomb box . . .

            At the same yard sale I found my apple peeler in (see previous blog), I also found a box in which bombs were shipped during WWII.  I tell you, people in Villa Park have crazy stuff in their garage.  If I wasn’t negotiating with my grandma, I would have haggled her down, put I paid the asking price of $10—something my husband still hasn’t forgiven me for yet.

            I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it.  However, with the help of Keystone Light, we ended up with this…

            The mirror next to the buffet we found for $1.  It was too heavy to hang, so it was perfect on the buffet.  To the left of the mirror, is a succulent picture (I’ll blog about how to do that later).  Throw in some insulators with battery-operated light and you’ve got a sexy place to put some grub. 

The bullet casings and shells and dog tags were found at an old WWII airforce practice shooting-range on Clark Dry Lake Bed in Anza Borrego (many stories to tell from there—all involving a red neck Christmas).

Underneath the buffet is the perfect spot for growing lettuce.