23,594 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
If the maters have reached their mature size, and they are unblemished(on the vine or in handling) it is possible to ripen them. Newspaper, shredded paper , ...help prevent rotting.
But the best use that I have found for green tomatoes is pickling and making green salsa, in place of tomatilllo.
I always end up with tons of green cherry tomatoes. I tried pickling them but they weren't that good. This year, I found this green tomato sweet bread recipe online: http://www.food.com/recipe/green-tomato-bread-53325
I tried it last weekend and it was really good. I tweaked the recipe and used half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. I also used coconut oil rather than vegetable oil. Finally, I added a half teaspoon of ginger and another of mace to the cinnamon. I also used half brown sugar rather than all white.
The result was a moist and spicy bread, darker than the one in the photo, with a nice crust. I chopped the green cherry tomatoes in the Cuisinart and they were unnoticeable in the bread, although they smelled horribly bitter and nasty when I chopped them.
I'm not sure if the tomatoes actually help the texture/moistness of the bread but it was quite delicious; I'm going to make more this weekend with my remaining green cherry tomatoes.
PS. Black rot is a tropical disease. It originated in West Africa. It loses fights with the local temperate microfauna (hence the suggestion of more OM), but it can survive in bits of brassica (stems for example) that are in the garden and have not composted yet. Just eat all you can, then clean it well in February or whenever you are ready, then add something fast composting, like good grass clippings and shredded leaves well mixed together. I prefer shredded leaves and shredded kitchen scraps, or semi-fresh manure, but I see you are far neater than I am.
They are definitely easier to clean than if I had hilled them.
Just to be clear, I look back at the picture and though the whites are high on the leek, the flash makes it seem more than it is. I'll try to get some better pictures soon.
-Mark
I grow Bleu de Solaise leeks, a late, enormous leek. I start them in mid Feb in a deep pot, set the pot outside as long as the temp is above freezing (bringing them in at night) and set them in the garden some time in April when I'm sure night time temps won't get too cold. (If you have too many very cold nights, the leeks think they've been through a mediterranean winter and they bolt).
When I set them out, I set them deep, but no deeper than the lowest leaf. As they grow I pack hay around them--hay keeps them clean. Now, as I harvest, they have very long and very thick white portions that have no dirt in them at all.
Sorry, no pictures. I'm a good gardener, but I'm technologically challenged.
Hey Glib, I think you were the one who let me know they needed a lot of water to be right. Thanks!I like them a lot and so does my husband so we're both very glad to be able to enjoy some of those bountiful leaves. I believe, as members of the thistle family they are helpful to the liver. Seems to me they have a bit of an effect on the old blood sugar as well.
I would look at it this way:
What is the diameter of an onion ? 3 inches " then i will grasually thin them so they are about 3" apat.
What is rh e diameter of a carrot? ONE inch : Then thin them one inch apart.
I will let the spinach grow in clumps. Thou you can tin and eat them as thin them. Same goes for things like parsley, coriander, chive. Let them clumpup. That is ok.
SNIPE them with your finger nails. Or just pull after watering.
'Stomping'......using your size 11s to firm the ground where you will plant the brassicas.
Seems they don't like a loose root area and will not grow firm heads or sprouts, prevents plants from falling over.
I do know, since I remembered this my brassicas have improved tremendously.
Give it a try, nothing to lose.
Reviving this thread to do a follow up post........
Still no heads on my cauliflower (Snowball), but some of my broccoli (Pacman) is maturing........ Last fall & this spring's plantings produced main broccoli heads the size of golf balls & the cauliflower produced zip! Can't imagine what could be different.... Oh well, I'll take whatever mother nature gives!
Here's a head from this fall's Pacman.........
If you ate any of this corn, was it still sweet? If it was mostly starchy, perhaps what happened is this field of corn was too close to an incompatible type like popcorn or flint that pollinated at the same time. The sweetness genes are recessive and pollination with any unsweet type wipes out the sweet flavor. If it crossed with something like popcorn, might explain the strange kernels.
Yes you can and many do according to the past discussions over on the Organic Gardening forum. The point often made is that the better the quality of the compost, the more diverse its ingredients, the higher the quality of the tea.
Dave
Make tea for what kind of plants? I would say it is ok for small seedlings.
If you read the ANALYSIS on the bag (if there is one), you will see that bagged composts are very pour on NPK. They are just good soil amenders. So, soaking them in water (further diluting) and giving it to plants is not going to accomplish much. If I wanted to do such a thing, I would use MANUREs that there is some juice to it.
JMO.
In part it is normal for the older bottom leaves to die and fall off. But is usually with much older plants than these appear to be.
Over-watering/overly wet soil is the most common cause of yellowing such as in your picture.
Excess N may cause a similar condition when very high N fertilizers are used but your fertilizer is not high N. Plus with excess N the younger leaves would be very dark green - yours are not - and here would be green veins in the yellow leaves - yours are not.
Too little N would show up most in the new leaves as yellowing.
So consider it a possible over-water issue. Excess rain? How often are you watering?
Dave
They were staying kind of wet with the mulch on there and that's another reason I took the mulch off. I was worried about them staying too wet and not getting enough oxygen.
When the mulch was still there, I was watering maybe 2x a week. I took the mulch off about 2 weeks ago and the combination of that and us finally getting cooler/drier air here in central FL, I've been watering probably every other day when needed (if i stuck my finger in and felt dry).
Very possible they were staying too wet with the mulch but I've been careful not to overwater them since taking the mulch off.
Appproximately one inch apart in the row, rows 10 inches apart. No more than 4 rows at a time so there is a place to walk when harvesting. I use pea plates in a mechanical planter.
Jennie, I can't help with your climate questions, but snap peas are wonderful fresh. Since you've never grown them before, you could always start small and see what you think before committing a large space to them. But if you've got the space available, definitely go for it. (As for the weather, if you're only talking a couple dollars for a packet of seeds, try it and see what you get -- if they don't grow well, save the rest of the pack for late winter/early spring and see if that works better.)
As far as support, I've grown dwarf snap peas in containers with an inexpensive tomato cage (the flimsy WM kind) in the middle to help get them started. They do cling to each other, but they also cling to the wire cage and I think this helps them withstand wind a bit better.
For harvesting, snap peas are eaten whole -- you eat both the pod and the peas inside, all at once. The pods are nice and crunchy when raw. You can also add them to stir-frys or just steam them as a side dish. We tend to mostly eat them raw in our house. They are one of those "pick a handful while out in the garden and eat half of them before you get back to the kitchen" kind of veggies. :)
Good luck!
Kathy