First Cherry Tomatoes of the Season!

It almost feels like Christmas in July! I finally have been able to pick some ripe cherry tomatoes! These small, yet beautiful orange spheres are from my Sun Sugar tomato plants. I was able to pick two ripe tomatoes from both of my plants this morning and there are plenty more to come in the next few weeks! 

Cherry tomatoes have always done really well in my garden. Usually, I grow the Husky Red Cherry Tomato and end up with a constant flow of cherry tomatoes from mid-July through September. Although I'm not growing them this year, I am growing three cherry tomatoes plants, which will hopefully give me even more tomatoes! 

We have also finally gotten some summer heat here in the northeast, so I'm hoping this will give my cherry tomato plants some added boost. I've been waiting to eat fresh cherry tomatoes for months! I'm glad it's finally that time of year! 

Sun Gold Cherry Tomato on the vine. 

Small morning harvest of raspberries and cherry tomatoes. 

First Harvest of 2015: Kale

I'm happy to announce that on the afternoon of May 13th 2015 I was able to harvest the first crop out of my vegetable garden! This crop being a few (6) Kale leaves! 

Kale is a cool weather crop and can handle colder temperatures, so I planted them in early April this year to try it out. Even after such a terribly cold winter, April and May have turned out to be pretty mild, allowing my garden to take off! 

Radishes, kale, Swiss chard and turnip are all growing in my garden right now! 

I planted some kale by seed and a few kale plants I bought at the garden center. The larger kale plants are from the garden center and are the ones I harvested from. 

In all, I cut six kale leaves from four plants. I didn't want to cut too many because I would like to try sustainable harvesting, which means I cut a few leaves here and there to prolong the harvest and increase the yield! 

I ended up putting the kale leaves in a bean salad like dish! It's delicious! 

Today's Harvest! 7-21-13

Today was the first day I can say I really harvested anything from my garden because there was actually a variety if stuff to grab! I picked blueberries from two blueberry bushes, I picked a couple of  blackberries, a few Juliet tomatoes an a few cherry tomatoes! 

Totals: 

6 Blackberries 

3 Juliet Tomatoes 

2 cherry Tomatoes 

8 Blueberries 

It's not much but with a very rainy June and now a very hot July  I'm lucky most o my plants are still alive! 

Hurricane Preparation! 10/27/12

Hurricane Sandy is on her way to pound south western CT with hurricane force wind gusts, rain, storm surge and power outages. The storm is arriving on Monday October 29, one year to the day of "snowtober" (an early and destructive freak snow storm, where trees still had leaves!).

Saturday the 27th I spent some time prepping my garden stuff. Since we had an early frost this year most of the preps were cleaning up and winterizing. Here's what I did:

-Put all pots away in the shed
-Picked basil seed pods for drying and gathering seeds
-moved potted blueberry bushes into basement
-moved potted rosemary plant into basement
-moved new, and yet to be planted blackberry bush into basement
-I was surprised to pick some hot peppers 7 to be exact!
- put all bamboo stakes in garage

Eve of a Crop Killing Freeze: final harvest? 10/12/12

Harvest on the eve of the first freeze:
(Many tomatoes are not ripe yet!)
7 green Heirloom tomatoes
2 Hot Cherry Peppers
3 Green Marion Tomatoes
1 tiny Japanese eggplant
1 small sweet pepper
18 cherry tomatoes (green)
29 Juliet Tomatoes

Harvest 10/10/12 Last of the hot peppers!

Today's harvest:
5 Hot Peppers
2 Juliet Tomatoes
2 Cherry Tomatoes
1 Marion tomato
1 Big Boy tomato

Harvest before cold front 10/6/12

Today's Harvest:
3 cherry tomatoes
2 Juliet tomatoes
1 Japanese Eggplant
1 Sweet Pepper

Handful of Tomatoes! 10/3/12

Today's Harvest:
2 Cherry Tomatoes
4 Juliet Tomatoes

Harvest 9/30/12

It's the last day of September and my garden is still producing! This year's garden has gone beyond my expectations!

Today's harvest:
1 Green Sweet Pepper
1 Red Hot Cherry Pepper
1 Juliet Tomato

Harvest 9/27/12

Today's Harvest:
2 Japanese Eggplants
2 Juliet Tomatoes
1 Cherry Tomato
1 Big Boy Tomato

Harvest 9/25/12

Today's harvest was small but diverse!

1 Japanese Eggplant
1 Red Hot Cherry Pepper
1 Heirloom Tomato

More Tomatoes! Harvest 9/24/12

The tomato plants are still spitting out tomatoes but they're starting to look ragged, probably due to the chilly nights lately. The low temperature has been consistently in the lower 50's and upper 40's the last two weeks

Today's Harvest:
7 cherry tomatoes
4 Juliet tomatoes
1 Big Boy Tomato

Small harvest 9/20/12

Today's Harvest:
9 Cherry Tomatoes
3 Hot Peppers
1 Juliet Tomato

Windy Tomato Harvest 9/18/12

A tornado watch in effect with a wind advisory I decided to grab some tomatoes before the wind did!

Today's harvest:
2 Juliet tomatoes
13 cherry tomatoes

Tomato Harvest 9/17/12

Today's Harvest
1 Juliet tomato
1 Marion tomato
9 cherry tomatoes

Ripe tomatoes off my windowsill

These are just the tomatoes that we're ripe on my windowsill! If I add in the ones in the fridge and the ones I just picked I might even have enough to make tomato sauce!!!

Harvest 9/15/12

Today's Harvest:
1 Heirloom tomato
1 cucumber
3 Juliet tomatoes
4 cherry tomatoes
5 Hot Peppers

Harvest 9/11/12 still getting Tomatoes!

Today's harvest:
5 Juliet tomatoes
4 cherry tomatoes
2 heirloom tomatoes
1 big boy tomato
1 hot pepper
1 cucumber

Premature Harvest before the storm! 9/8/12

With a tornado watch currently in effect I wanted to harvest some tomatoes from the garden even though they're not completely ripe yet! One tomato, the Marion one, is actually a weird shape and split a little.

Today's harvest:
1 cucumber
1 heirloom tomato
1 Marion tomato
6 Juliet tomatoes
3 cherry tomatoes

Frozen Hot Peppers!!

I've harvested over 100 hot peppers this summer and because I was expecting cayenne peppers but got what I think is habanero, I've had a hard time figuring out what to do with them! It doesn't help that friends and family won't take more then a handful because they really are hot!

So to not let them go to waste and hopefully be able to make some spicy soups this winter I froze some! This is my first time freezing my own vegetable harvest! I've never had an over abundance of anything till this year!