the garden: tomatoes in a bag

It is December, and we are eating tomatoes from my garden.

A couple of weeks ago, when the temperature was supposed to hit freezing overnight, I covered my cool-weather vegetables (lettuce, spinach and celery) with towels, and they all survived just fine and are still going. But I thought a frost would be too much for my tomatoes, so I picked all of the green tomatoes and brought them inside.

To help them ripen, I put them inside a brown paper bag and folded it closed. I keep it in my kitchen, and every couple of days when I open it, there will be a couple more red tomatoes ready to come out. It's like magic.

Behold, my windowsill on Dec. 1:

I love this climate.

the garden: tomatoes of late

The tomatoes I've been picking lately -- since the heat mercifully disappeared -- are so darn pretty. They're uniform in shape, size, and color. I feel like I should call Bonnie Plants and invite them over for a photo shoot -- that's how pretty my tomatoes are. It wasn't that way all summer. I picked a TON of tomatoes this summer, even during the hottest weeks, but they weren't consistently good-looking. I'm thinking the extreme heat stressed my tomato plants and made them produce smaller fruit that was misshapen at times.

That said, I enjoyed my misshapen tomatoes, and I enjoy them now. They just look better lately.

<3

So here we are, in late September, and which of my summer crops are still growing? I have one eggplant growing on my plant. I've picked four so far, so that'll give me five for the year, which is about what you can expect from one plant. And the tomatoes and peppers are still going strong. I'm really getting my money out of those plants.

the garden: bird feeder

I put up a cute bird feeder in my backyard last weekend, and at first I was kind of sad because I wasn't getting any customers. But then a sparrow started coming around. Here she is, viewed from inside the house: 

And pretty soon she told all of her sparrow friends because by Saturday afternoon it was like I was running a sparrow nightclub. In related news, this is how Victor is now spending 100 percent of his free time: 

I mentioned previously about Tony's first-place award for chicken showmanship. He busted out some more of his avian knowledge as we were watching the birds, identifying the male and female sparrows, grackles, mourning doves and cardinals. The things you learn about your spouse.

So the birds have pretty much decimated the supply of sunflower seeds that I put in the bird feeder. And I'm not sure whether I'm going to refill it because those little bastards ate all of my strawberries while they were here. And squirrels were all over my backyard. Whom I blame for this crime, which I came home to last night:

Bah humbug.

the garden: harvest update

The veggies are finally here! Cherry tomatoes. Early Girl tomato. Cucumber. Hot banana pepper. All in my belly. Now we can say summer officially has arrived.

Let's talk cherry tomatoes. Of everything I've eaten out of my garden so far this year, the cherry tomatoes have been the best tasting, hands down. It's like all of the flavor of a big tomato got concentrated into a bite-sized tomato. Next year I've got to figure out how to get, like, 10 cherry tomato plants into my backyard.

But that's not to say the Early Girl tomato wasn't good because it was very good. The main appeal of the Early Girl is that it's the first tomato of the season.

I also picked my first cucumber this week, and it just happens to be my very favorite vegetable. I don't think we could ever have too many cucumbers in the fridge.

And we had our first hot banana pepper, which arrived June 23, ahead of schedule. The label said to expect maturity 75 days after planting, which would've put us at July 12. Bonus!

the garden: the calm before the storm

Radishes. Lettuce. Herbs. Strawberries. Yeah, yeah, that's all been nice. But I'm ready for some substantial VEGETABLES from my garden. I was scoping things out last night, and I think this 100-degree weather has been good to my plants. It looks like it's only a matter of days now before we really start getting the summer harvest. 

My backyard is tiny. We'll call it "cozy." Which means I have to be creative about growing big vegetables that tend to spread, like cucumbers. I planted the cukes in pots, and they're growing up trellises. And it's working wonderfully. I'm about to pick the first one. 

And I have one cherry tomato that's about to turn. 

Oh, and I'm so close to picking these hot banana peppers.

Stay tuned in the next few days because it looks like I'll have some harvesting updates on my adventures in urban gardening.