The Garden Part 14 -- Aug 23, 2009

The garden is going very strong, and we're finally enjoying the fruits of our labor. (Literally!) This was an exciting weekend, as we decided to dig up the potatoes. I followed my potato growing guide all summer long, with the mounding of the potatoes every few weeks, waited for the foliage to die off, then wait a few weeks before digging them up. For some reason I thought that potatoes grew out from the roots that you plant – kind of like long arms extending away from the plant. So when it was time to start diggin, I started a foot or 2 outside the plants.

Digging too far away. Note the UnprofessionalFoul.com T-shirt -- I get a kickback on product placement.

I couldn’t find anything, so I kept going deeper, still nothing.

Dig deeper, young man!

Finally, as I got right up to the plant itself, I found potatoes! Not huge, but not too small either.

Potato found in the soil.

Cleaning off the tuber.

That first plant, however, only had 3 potatoes under it. Maybe that’s normal, but I was expecting 6-10 per plant. (Not based on anything but my own hunch, mind you, so it’s not surprising that I was wrong.) So we kept at it, and kept finding various sizes of potatoes, some pretty far below the soil surface. We ended up with about 40 total, some pretty big, some very small, but a nice harvest if you ask me. I’m definitely happy with it.

Working my way down the row.

The final harvest.

As we were digging up the potatoes, I asked Sage, “How will we know if we got them all or not?” She said, “That’s always the problem. You’ll lie awake at night thinking, ‘Are there still potatoes out there that I missed?’” And knowing me, I probably will. The potatoes need a few days to “dry out”, which I’m told gives them a hard exterior to allow them to survive for a while. Hopefully we’ll be making some breakfast spuds and other potato meals next weekend.

The rest of the garden is going great as well. The tomatoes are really going nuts, and we had plenty to make some homemade salsa with this past weekend (see below).

Tomatoes coming in nicely.

The cages are great for controlling the plants and making them grow up, but they're not so great for reaching in to get the harvest. Therefore I have to use wire cutters to make holes in the cages to pull out the tomatoes.

Tomatoes and Pepper picked.

The peppers keep going strong, and my red bell peppers are finally starting to grow as well. The only problem with the bell peppers, it seems, is that the plants never want to have more than 2 peppers growing at a time. Once they have those, all the rest of the blossoms just die off. Also, a few of the volcano peppers are finally starting to turn orange as well, so those should be ready soon. Another problem with the peppers is that the plants keep falling over. I've had to tie almost all of them up, which is kind of annoying.

Tying up the peppers.

Finally, the summer squash is still going strong. Sage has a couple ready to eat in the house, and there seems to be about 4-5 a week per plant. (Photo not available.)

So on to the salsa. So we have all these tomatoes, and figured we should use them this past weekend. We went to the Natick farmer’s market on Saturday morning and picked up some corn, chili peppers, green onions, and peaches. I love homemade salsa, and it’s so easy. Well, depending on how well you want to make it, actually. Here's my recipe.

Normally I can’t stand tomato skins in my salsa, and I go about peeling all the tomatoes. This is a pain, and one that normally requires me to drop them all in boiling water for about a minute, then soaking them in ice water, then ripping the peels off. It’s kind of time consuming, and especially with a mix of regular and roma tomatoes, can take a while. (I also got a tomato peeler from my friends at Swiss Army, which is kind of like a potato peeler but is more flexible and has a thinner blade. This works well too, but it’s also a pain as holding a half-peeled tomato in your hand as you’re peeling the other side is a slippery task.) This time I decided to leave the peels on and just chop them up and see how they go. Of course I still had to seed the tomatoes, which is easy – just cut them into quarters and squeeze out all the seeds/water. (Too much water is great way to ruin a salsa. So even after seeding them, I usually let them sit in a colander to make sure as much water as possible gets drained out.) After seeding them, just chop them up roughly and throw them in a bowl. Salt them liberally at this stage, before putting the rest of the ingredients in.

Speaking of the rest of the ingredients, that’s what’s great about salsa – you can add anything you want! This time I put in the following: 3 green onions, chopped (these were HUGE, I almost thought they were leeks; if you have regular sized green onions, then 5-6 would make sense); 2 red cherry peppers, minced; 1 shallot, minced; 1 jalapeno, minced; 1 banana pepper, chopped; 1 anaheim pepper, chopped; some squirts of hot sauce; juice of 1 lime; and a splash of white vinegar. Mix it all up, add more salt to taste, and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours to let the vinegar work into the tomatoes. And that’s my trick. (Oh, and absolutely, positively NO CILANTRO.)

"Salsa is the number one condiment in America."
"You know why? Because people like saying 'salsa'".

So with fresh salsa on hand, we decided to make some homemade burritos. We made a small batch of rice, and added in some lime juice and ground cayenne pepper. We fried up some green bell pepper (from the garden); red bell pepper; yellow onion; green onion; and cherry peppers.

Doug chopping up the peppers.

Frying up the veggies. That's Sage's arm in motion.

We then threw the fried veggies on a tortilla; (And if you’re looking for good supermarket tortillas, Chi-Chi's brand is the way to go. I know you’re probably thinking I’m crazy, but we’ve tried all the “authentic latin” brands, and they ALWAYS fall apart as soon as you try to fold/roll them. But Chi-Chi's brands are great and always stay together.) Add some cheese, some salsa, avocado and rice; wrap them up tightly and put them in a 450 degree oven for about 5 minutes just to let them come together. Spoon the salsa on top, and BAM. Better than Chipotle.

A pretty good dinner.

It’s great to finally be getting some productive food out of the garden after some duds in the first part of the summer. (See: lettuce, radishes, peas.) The tomatoes keep coming, so hopefully later this week/next weekend we will have enough for a nice marinara sauce.

The next part of the garden will be garlic – to be planted next month or early October. I went to our old stomping grounds in Wayland and stopped by Russell’s Garden Center to find out some more information on garlic. The bulbs should be coming in to them in September, and they suggest planting a few weeks before the first frost. The ground shouldn’t be really hot, but obviously it needs to be sown before it freezes. They didn’t seem 100% sure about exactly when I should plant them, however, so I’ll have to do some more research on that. I thought that onions should be planted in the fall too, as I read on OrganicGardening.com, but Russell’s said no, up here in New England they can’t survive the winter and should be planted in the spring. So I guess I screwed that one up. Also while at Russell’s I got some shaded grass seed and some organic/natural fertilizer. The front lawn, under the big maple tree, is the worst part of our yard. It’s either totally dirt or covered in moss. Next week I’m going to do some work out there, and try to get some seed down this fall. We’ll see how that goes.

Finally, before signing off the blog, I need tell the story of last Friday night. Our friends Graham & Carrie were up from Virginia for a wedding, and we were able to meet up with them on Friday night in Boston for a relaxing dinner. The flatlanders wanted seafood, which is understandable, and I got a recommendation from work to hit the Summer Shack, right around the corner from their hotel in Copley. So we were all sitting down, reviewing the specials and daily catches, and at one point I went to the men’s room as one is wont to do after drinking a few beers. On my way back to our table I noticed a table next to ours with 4 middle-aged men sitting at it – including none other than Larry David!

"The food at the Summer Shack was pretty, pretty good."

For those who don’t know who Larry David is, he co-created Seinfeld (with Jerry, of course), and also created, writes and stars in Curb Your Enthusiasm. The man’s a comic genius, and as Graham will be more than happy to tell you, I let my excitement get the better of me, and kind of let out a squeal when I got back to the table. Not my proudest moment, but what can I say? I get excited whenever I have a brush with greatness. (I also once saw Jerry Seinfeld at a restaurant in New York City. He was sitting at a corner table which had glass windows all around him from floor to ceiling. So I was able to go outside on the sidewalk and call Sage as I stood only a few feet from him. Well, a few feet and a couple inches of glass from him.) We decided not to bother him, and when they were done eating he sauntered around the restaurant exactly the way he acts on CYE. He even was picking his teeth with a toothpick. Around this time Carrie went outside to make a call home, and when she came back, she said, “So guess how Larry David left the restaurant? In a bicycle rickshaw!” There were plenty of these folks out around Copley, taking folks to the Sox/Yankees game that night, and I guess that’s where he was heading as well. Next time I’ll try to sneak a photo of him. (Right, next time.)