Tomatoooooes!

BEHOLD MY LATEST TOMATO HARVEST!

Are they not glorious?


ETA:
Today's Frazz was for me, for meeee!

Garden Post!

How's the summer treating my garden?

The sunflowers are blooming!

Which is making the bees happy.

The zucchini is starting to pump out delicious green squashies...

... so is my favorite chocolate zucchini cake far behind?

The Sungolds are ripening...

... and are ready for pizzas, salads, or just snacking.

The basil is looking good, too!

Which means...

Uhhhh...

 what is that?

Well, it's homemade pesto.

I made it from an easy-peasy recipe found on Autostraddle;

the problem is the bright purple basil

which I THOUGHT would make a cool violet pesto

 instead ground up to a not-so-appetizing greenish-grey paste.

It tastes good, though!

So I'm just calling it an homage to a classic Disney dish.

What Have I Wrought?

Oh, hubris.

I made the mistake a couple of weeks ago of

bragging on the tomatoes I'm still harvesting here in sunny SoCal.

But then!

This week we got a

FROST WARNING!

This happens roughly every, oh, never.

What should I do?

Well, I knew from reading about other folks' experiences

 that I was supposed to keep them warm?  

Protect them somehow?

I started by dragging some into the garage, 

which thankfully had some room, now that my offspring

have emptied it of some of their debris valuables.

But which to save? 

 I have over a dozen tomato plants still producing!

It was like Sophie's Choice out there in my  garden!

(No, you do NOT get a picture of Meryl from Sophie's Choice.

That movie (and book) wrecked me.

I will allow you to see Meryl happily singing and dancing

in Mamma Mia, instead.)

But I had a whopping big piece of plastic from the futon mattress

I just installed in The Boy's room...

... and a ton of towels, and so far, so far,

(fingers crossed)

both my indoor tomatoes and those toughies in the garden

 seem to be surviving.

Good!

Because I'm not that interested in making

tomato popsicles.

Mystery Solved!

'Member when I potted up some mystery tomato seedlings

that had taken root in some of my pots?

Well, the mystery has been solved!

These little tomatoes have the distinctive pumpkin-y shape of a Costoluto.

And these are the bright orange of Sungolds.

These two types of tomatoes are also coincidentally 

the best performers in my garden this year.

And speaking of "best performers"...

These were NOT.

This tomato plant was a "Lincoln,"

and it got munched on by some dang grasshoppers early in the season.

Instead of rallying, like a little punk it just gave up and and died.

So what to do?

How about some FALL tomatoes?

Armstrong Nurseries has taken advantage of California gardeners

just not being ready to give up our tomato harvest,

and has designated some tomato seedlings "fall tomatoes."

This is a bit of a racket:  these aren't specially bred tomatoes or anything.

They're just tough tomatoes.  I know this because one of the tomatoes offered is

my beloved Costoluto, the volunteer tomato already planted and growing in my garden.

But I picked up three new tomatoes last weekend

-- Long Keeper, Oregon Star, and Stupice --

and planted them in the super-duper expensive high-end potting soil that Armstrong offers.

Because I never get tired of fresh tomatoes.

Return Of The Garden

So, my garden?

Not looking so healthy.

That sad, shriveled thing is a zucchini.

A zucchini!

There was a time I was drowning in zucchini!

My tomato plants were also getting sparse;

many had hardly a leaf on the stems.

But I wasn't going to give up, dang it!

I live in Southern California,

 where summer weather stretches far past the supposed start of fall.

I have comfortably accompanied the kids trick-or-treating in shorts, y'all!

So I started fertilizing at all more often,

but then I realized something:

my water nozzle was totally weak-sauce!

I know from experience that grit and debris gradually clogs up a sprayer,

so while I had been watering for the same amount of time,

less actual watering had been going on.

So I bought a lusty, new sprayer...

... and things starting improving!

Zucchinis have once more been swelling,

and shoots have been popping up along my tomato stems.

Yay!

I should get a chocolate zucchini cake or two

 and tomato salad out of my garden yet.

 Though, y'know, not at the same time.

Because that would just taste weird.

Oh, Yeah!

I've done it.

The Holy Grail of tomato growing.

I give you...

The Rainbow Tomato Salad!

I've got Green Zebra, Tangerine, Abe Lincoln, and Super Bush in there,

topped off with some of my own purple basil.

I can't wait to try it!

You Can Be Too Rich Or Too Thin, But You Can Never Have Too Many Tomatoes

Sooo...

how's the garden looking?

Sungolds are coming in...

Tangerines have several nice-sized tomatoes on the vine...

Oooo... that's a hefty Marvel Stripe!

But... what's this?

Hey there, little fella!  What are you doing in a pot with my impatiens?

I planted some annuals using a combination of recycled potting soil

and mostly-broken-down homemade compost,

and some tomato seeds must have been in the mix.

When this little guy popped up, I decided I'd give it a chance.

I had an area where some zucchini plants ("Ronde de Nice", for the record)

just toyed with me before shriveling up and dying.

I figured this tough little tomato plant couldn't do worse.

I added compost, compost, and more compost, and...

Ahh!

That's better!

But what will it be?

A cherry tomato?  An heirloom? A bland supermarket tomato? A new hybrid?

 Only time will tell!

The (Not-So) Incredible Journey of Linguini The Tomato Hornworm

I was building a new raised bed by my Little Free Library...

...(which turned out very well, thankyouverymuch)...

... when THIS GUY suddenly appeared out of nowhere!

AUGH!!!!

Once I was done SCREAMING, I realized that 

a) this was a tomato hornworm,

and 

b) although a pest, they're actually quite pretty.

So I took the little guy into work.

The kids were fascinated, but none more than, uh, 

sedentary-challenged Mr. E.

I had recently started a punch-card reward/break system with Mr. E....

...(idea found on Pinterest, natch),

and he decided he'd like to spend his five minutes of reward time

playing with the newly christened "Linguini."

This turned out to be surprisingly effective;

the promise of five minutes' time playing with a cool-looking caterpillar

kept him on task better than anything else I've tried.

BUT...

I took Linguini home for the weekend, 

and put him on a tomato plant for a few light munches of fresh greens.

I went inside for just a sec to see which branches of a tomato plant were "suckers,"

and therefore good to feed to my pet hornworm,

but when I returned?

He

was 

GONE!


"Luinguiniiiiii!!!!" I called,

but sadly he did not return like some pup at the end of a Disney movie.

I'm not sure what I'm going to tell Mr. E.,

but I'm tying some yellow ribbons around my tomato plants...

...and I'm hoping this sign will help:

****   ***   ***

ETA:

Shameless promotion time!  I just added a new
Harry Potter receiving blanket to my Etsy store.  

Cool, huh?
It's a great addition to a Harry Potter nursery!