Banking Food For The Off-Season

Today I harvested about 3 quarts of Sungold cherry tomatoes. I washed them, cut them in half and put them into small containers and popped them into the freezer. They are destined to be thawed on dim days and tossed with hot pasta, or stirred into risotto, or spun into salsa.

I also reaped about 2 quarts of blueberries. Washed and frozen too.

And since I have so much garlic this year, and so much of it was harvested a little too late, and was splitting apart, I decided to roast up a big pan full and hopefully freeze it for later use. As a sneak preview we schmeared some onto crusty baguette, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with coarse salt and pepper.

The garlic can be thawed and spread on bread, stirred into soups and sauces. This may turn out to be one of my best ideas ever. It's got to be better that dried out cloves before the new crop is ready to dig up.

And I trimmed all of the excess leaves off the tomato plants, along with any fruit that didn't look mature. I really just want the plants to ripen any exiting fruit.

But what I really need to do is plant some salad greens. I may have left it a little too late, but it's worth a try. Who knows what kind of weather the next few weeks will bring. If the rest of the summer is any indication it should be changeable and unpredictable. At least we can count on that.

Garlic Harvest

Today I harvested the garlic, about 45 heads from a 3 x 3 foot spot in one of the raised beds. Only one head looked a little past it's prime, so I think I caught them at just the right moment. Here are some photos of my lovelies.

Harvesting root vegetables is so much more exciting that plucking something off a vine or shrub, something you have watched form and grow. Although that certainly has its charms.

But harvesting something that has been growing underground, shrouded in mystery until that moment you coax it from it's hiding place into the sunlight, has a special thrill. I don't know, it just feels like a magic trick, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But then, most every aspect of gardening feels like magic or conjuring.

Forgive my obsession with the garlic photos, but the colors just strike me as something so beautiful. I am sure I have drooled over skeins of yarn with these same color ways, greens, ecru, pinks and lavenders.

And now I have some more room for fall/winter crops. I don't have nearly enough onions in the ground, so that will be on my list.