Gardening, flowers and veggies: 2015

[Queen K]

For those who believe they've grown too many tomatoes: NOPE!

Give them to Meeeeeeeeeeeeee, because you're going to love what I do with them. My new favourite recipe arrived on my screen today and I thought, hmmmm. Well here it is.

Core and cut tomatoes in half, arrange on the cookies sheet. Drizzle with a few tablespoons of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Top with freshly diced garlic or dust with garlic powder, diced oregano and summer savory.

Some of you will use black pepper, cayenne pepper or sea salt. Any combo of any of the above will do. Next time I'm trying my home grown basil. Next time is Wednesday.

SLOW roast in an oven of not over 300C, I'm using 250C on Wednesday and letting them go for an hour and half, maybe 2 hours.

We used 1 and half hours today but only because the fresh garlic was browning to black.

Once you all try this recipe, you'll never complain about "too many tomatoes" for the rest of your life.

[zookeeper]

Do you eat them as a side dish?

[Queen K]

We had them on toast with cheese for supper. Mostly because I ate too much at lunch time and just wasn't hungry by suppertime.

Today may be tomato canning day if we get some romas.

[I Think]

Queenie, come and get some, if I eat another tomato..............

[Queen K]

Roast them I Think! Roast slow in the oven, seriously, the taste difference is amazing. So much so we are doing another batch as I type. This time a slower oven, less heat more time, less browning of the garlic early. We used a tad less garlic and a tad more herbs.

I threw a carrot on the pan to see how it roasts up.

Edited to add: Three varieties of garlic were planted today. Every year we get a bit earlier for earlier harvest and larger bulbs.

[Queen K]

Canned 7 quarts of roma tomatoes.

Skinned them as per usual method.

What to do with the skins? Make Tomato chips! Spread them out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Roast in oven for 50 minutes, turning over at the 25 minute mark.

Delicous! So good they are addictive. Add garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, cayenne powder, or go naked, they are addictive.

Next time I will have two cookie sheets ready for when the oven is freed up from the jars. Not one sheet. Another two cookie sheets will be loaded up and flavoured slightly differently. When the hour is up for the first two batches, in go the second batch, and voila! Four sheets of tomato chips done as your romas are sealing up.

First batch I used olive oil as per directions. Not next time. Next three batches did not get the oil, and they are better for it. I re-used the parchment paper for each batch, but will be doing two sheets at a time next go around.


A good day indeed.

[flamingfingers]

^^You can your lovely tomato harvest in the OVEN??!!

[Queen K]

No we use a lovely waterbath for the romas we bought in Oliver. I've never had luck growing romas here.

What you read was that we skin them first but then I have tomato skins left over. I googled what to do with them and came up with a tomato powder recipe. Only I used too much olive oil and the skins came out like chips. Delicious chips.

[Bpeep]

What kind of problems growing romas?
This is ideal tamater growin country.

[Queen K]

I got tiny tiny ones and most had blossom end rot. I'd rather buy them.

[Queen K]

WANTED: unsprayed tree leaves. We use them to cover the garden bed during the Winter. They break down at the dirt level, feeding the soil until we rake them all off and put them in the compost bin to finish down.

This year I hope to avoid using chestanut tree leaves as they are full of stuff I don't want to deal with.

Anyone got leaves?

[Lady tehMa]

My neighbourhood has a number of trees that drop a ton of leaves - they're the ones whose seed pod looks like a spiked ball, and comes apart into strand seeds. I'll let you know when they do a mass dump, but you'll have limited time before the strata they belong to call the landscapers.

[Queen K]

Umm, I'd rather not deal with seed pods from trees. I'm looking for leaf matter without them.

But thanks for the offer!

[Bpeep]

I cover my vegetable garden with leaves from the fruit trees and leave it over winter and turn them in when I turn the garden in the spring. No need to take them off and put them in the compost.

[Queen K]

We've covered many garden areas with leaves today and anchored them down with wire fencing.

Tomatoes and peppers are all pulled up. Potatoes dug.
Sunflowers are slowly being pulled down and cut down.

I have a stand of sunflowers I wanted to leave up for Winter cover for the birds, however, I see a tree of some sort is growing in the roots of the stand. I believe it's a part of the neighbour's plum tree he cut down. The problem is that it's too close to the fence to be permanent. I'm grappling between clearing every sunflower out now or taking a chance and digging the tree out in the Spring.