Early September Blooms

Karen planted these Limelight two years ago and it has thrived. This one has been blooming prolifically for two months!

Russian Sage is one of my favorite under appreciated plants. It's gray silver foliage has a great aroma and it blooms forever in the summer with fragrant lavender flowers.

Turtle Head blooms with tons of pink flowers in the late summer. It might be too early to tell, but this year's Turtle Head blooms may be fewer than in past years.

Salvia is just starting to bloom. The light red tint will become a dark red by fall.

We sliced some grass off the mother plant near the water garden last fall. Strangely, this grass is sending up plumes weeks before the mother plant.

As anyone who has planted Morning Glory knows, it will reseed in places you did not intend. We had Morning Glory potted to keep it from spreading, but the seeds sprouted in locations far flung from the original pot.

Eggplant Balls

We've been harvesting a lot of eggplant this year so we've been busy making and freezing Eggplant Balls. Here is a post with a recipe for Eggplant Balls. Like all good recipes, this one changes over time. Somtimes we add onion roasted with garlic and the eggplant. So, here is another recipe for our Eggplant Balls. Eggplant is so plentiful and inexpensive now that we are in full harvest in New England that you should try this staple.

Hurricane Irene

Lots of people have been asking me how we are preparing One Love Farm for Hurricane Irene. With apologies for sounding facetious, the answer is everything and nothing. We are picking everything we can as quickly as possible. We're blanching tomatoes and freezing them, drying peppers and crushing them, roasting eggplant and making eggplant balls. That's the everything part.

The nothing part concerns the plants. As much as I would like to protect the plants outside, there's not a lot to do. Cover them? Surely the winds would blow off the tarp. We just have to get as much harvested as possible and hope for the best. Hopefully everyone in the path of Irene stays safe and dry.

Weeds

Crabgrass

Freshly weeded

Weed block to keep the crabgrass from coming back

This has been an especially bad year for weeds. Crabgrass grows in beds, between beds and even in cracks in the asphalt or in a handful of dust that blew up next to a rock. The roots can go down over a foot making the weeds especially difficult to get out.

But really, all those are just excuses. When harvest comes in, weeding takes a backseat to .picking veggies. And, as you can see from the pictures above, weeding has taken a backseat for a few weeks. Today, I weeded several beds and pulled weeds between some of the beds. Then, I put down some weed block in an attempt to keep the weeds from coming back. It may word to keep weeds from between the beds, but as sure as the sun rises, I'll be out there next week pulling more weeds from veggie beds

Tomato Soup

This is my favorite time of the growing season. Tomatoes, eggplant, onions, peppers, basil and so much more are coming in fast and furious. The question is, what do you do with all this bounty? We freeze tomatoes and pesto, and make eggplant balls and freeze them as well. We process peppers and keep onions and potatoes for the winter. But we also eat lots of this fresh produce during August, September and October.

Last night Karen took our tomatoes, onions, garlic and basil and made an amazing soup topped with olive oil. Then, she put a piece of bread baked by our friend Isis at the bottom of the bowl and labeled soup on top. I love these meals where everything is from the garden (except the bread). Can't wait for Karen's ratatouille with more of our veggies, including our potatoes.

Tomatillo

Looking back at the four years I have been doing this blog, I'm surprised that I have never posted about tomatillos, because we've been growing them for so long and love cooking with them. Also known as husk tomatoes, tomatillos are used in Mexican dishes. Tomatillos are easy to grow. In fact, I have not planted tomatillos in about six years because they reseed easily. I have tomatillos growing 200 feet away from the original bed. Likely a bird carried the seed or I tossed an overripe one and the seeds sprouted the next spring.

I've seen lots of recipes for Tomatillo Salsa. Here is a link to a recipe from the New York Times food section. But, I much prefer roasting the tomatillos. Be sure to wash the tomatillos in warm water first. The tomatillos have a sticky film on them that washes off easily. Then roast them in the oven until they are nice and soft (some of the tomatillos will get brown on the top). Let the tomatillos cool and add onion, garlic, cilantro, salt and a cayenne pepper. Blend in a food processor and serve with chips.

Valencia Tomato

I have heard a lot of people complain that tomatoes are late this year. And, compared to last year, they are right. Everything was early in 2010 and we were harvesting tomatoes in mid July. But, in 2009, we didn't harvest tomatoes until September. 2009 and 2010 are the extremes, and this year is about average; harvesting tomatoes in August.

We have been harvesting lots of heirloom varieties like Black Prince, Matt's Wild Cherry, Green Zebra, German Johnson and Valencia (pictured above). Speaking of Valencia, coming up in a couple of weeks in Valencia, Spain they will be holding the annual tomato fight in Bunyol near Valencia. Please spend the day pelting each other with tomatoes. Check out this link for more sloppy information on this messy festival.