Bruce Monroe Community Garden is Filling Up

As of last count, 46 of the 55 plots planned at Bruce Monroe Community Garden are reserved. So hurry up and lay your $30 down.

Food porn -- Gazpacho

Soak it in...Yeah. Hells yeah.

  

Per Jose Andres (actually his wife's) recipe in Tapas. Usual deal -- tomatoes, cucumber, peppers. garlic -- but with lots more olive oil, some sherry vinegar, and all whacked in the blender before chilled. I used some home-grown poblano peppers rather than bell, and Persian cukes that I got at the DuPont Circle farmers' market because they are awesome. It's yellow because of (1) the olive oil (2) a few yellow cherry tomatoes I threw in and (3) the stupice, when blended, are a weak pink color.

The 100 Dollar Tomato

When we were breaking ground for the garden, a family friend jokingly suggested that our yield may not keep up with our start-up cost and that we'd be enjoying the "100 dollar tomato" come summer. We still might be over what we would have paid at the farmer's market in terms of cost-per-unit, but I think we've had a pretty good result for our first season. Here's the peak of our haul, with about a quarter to a half of the red stupice tomatoes unaccounted for because they were already cooked.

If anything, we've learned the lesson of planting too many cherry varieties, because of their culinary limitations. I'm tempted to go all roma varietals next time around for pure sauce potential. Like these guys -- the only canned tomatoes I buy (unless I'm making chili.)

We have five plants producing the tomatoes seen above. The lesson here really is, if you can figure out the space for one or two plants that are your absolute favorite varieties, it's worth it. In an urban setting, be choosy about what you plant, rely on farmers' markets for the spectrum of tomato choices, and be confident you'll have more than enough of your personal bread-and-butter variety to last a few months. Even if they catch the death fungus.

The Tomato Plants Aren't Looking So Good

Our wait for a garden-related calamity may be over: it seems many of our tomato plants have been afflicted with some kind of illness. The plants started to yellow from the bottom and middles-up. Clipping the dying portions didn't do too much to stem the problem. Now, fruit on some of the cherry tomato plants is starting to wither, suggesting not enough water is getting through the plant's vascular system.

At this point in the season, it's actually not that big a deal to lose some plants. We're overflowing an entire colander with tomatoes right now, and there's at least a dozen more stupice and many cherry ripening out there today. The tops of the plants also remain healthy, so more fruit may be possible. And three cherry tomato plants are relatively if not completely unscathed. How much fucking tomato salad can one couple eat? We're about to find out. And I don't love tomatoes, either.

Google tomato disease and try to self-diagnose a problem. Good luck with that. I think what we've got is this, or maybe this, or this. One is caused by a virus spread by aphids; the other two by fungus. It doesn't really matter the cause because the only treatment is not to grow tomatoes the next season or even two seasons. So I suppose our experiments with this version of container gardening will start next year if we want tomatoes. Or do it in Bruce Monroe's community garden.

Speaking of Tomatoes Being Pollinated

Fruit abounds on the tomato plants. The stupice are ripening now and I can harvest two or three a day. They are roughly the size of a golf ball so it takes a few days to have enough for a salad. Flavor, however, has been outstanding. I made a variant on a caprese salad earlier this week that came out very well.

• 8-10 stupice tomatoes, or similarly sweet, red variety, sliced.
• about a cup of basil leaves, roughly julienned 
• 8oz of mozzarella -- I used small balls I cut in half so it didn't all fall apart
• a generous coating of olive oil
• half as much balsamic vinegar
• S&P

This will make about three cereal-bowl servings. Eat it immediately -- I took the leftovers to work and it wasn't very good.

What Happens When You're too Lazy to Trellis Tomatoes

They get all sprawly.

Probably too late to disentangle these guys now.

No Shortage of Bees Now

In my last post I mentioned concern about the flowers on the tomato plants not being pollinated adequately because of a lack of bees. I'm concerned no longer thanks to the passiflora. With a half-dozen flowers at least opening daily now, the bees have found the backyard in droves. The passiflora flowers make a buffet line for the bees given how large they are -- the bees can just walk around the whole thing.

 
I've seen as many as three honeybees on a flower at a time. If you need a bee attractant and can trellis the plants, here's one good solution.

The other variety of passiflora (Lady Margaret) is blooming now, too:

Perdy!

Too many plants

When I transplanted the young tomato plants outside, I tried to follow the guideline of leaving a foot of space between plants. Planting the tomatoes in staggered rows, two plants to a row, I accounted for this space on the diagonal between plants. In this pattern, I had two rows of plants that started closer to the back of the garden and one row started closer to the front in the center of the box. In between the spaces, I planted the basil to help ward off pests.

This pattern had the advantage of allowing me to zig-zag trellises through the tomato plants and avoid having to use cages around all the plants. It is easier to access the plants with their metal support closer to their center.

Well, at least it was while the plants were relatively small. To my imagination, the plants were not going to grow nearly as much as they have turned out to have. I spent the better part of Sunday morning disentangling the plants and trying to free the basil from being taken over completely. We have four basil plants, but one is totally subsumed in the tomato forest now. Essentially, the wire fence makes the raised bed look like a big green box.

It's dense in there, but the air flow should be enough to keep mold at bay. Finding the tomatoes in there, though, is another story. I almost missed two very ripe ones at the bottom of the box. We've harvested five in all so far, but many, many more are on their way. Not a bad thing.

Of course, the box isn't the limit of our tomato crop. We have a similarly-sized plant in the other box. I though we had lost it during a nasty storm this weekend, but it bounced back up and seems no worse for wear. There are also three smaller (thankfully) cherry tomato plants in the front of that box that are flowering. The plants we potted, though, are not doing nearly as well. Some have fruit, but not nearly the number of healthy leaves the ones in the raised beds have (deep or shallow). Clearly, the pots we used were just too small. Lesson learned.


I roasted the tomatoes above along with half a red onion on the grill last night. Everything then got chopped and added to about 2T of red wine vinegar and a bit more olive oil than that, plus salt and pepper, a teaspoon of sugar and chopped chives. I whisked everything together until it emulsified into a rough relish and used it on grilled flat iron steak. It was a nice complement to the smoky, chipotle powder and cumin-based rub I used on the grilled meat.