Truly a Gold Medal Winner
This is my first summer growing ‘Gold Medal’ tomatoes and it won’t be my last. In fact, I’ll never not have them growing in the garden. After trying this lovely tomato out, I know exactly how it received its name. For starters, this huge beefsteak tomato produced a ripe tomato around the same time that my cherry tomatoes were first ripening in the garden. If you’re a fan of heirloom beefsteaks, you know the patience required to wait for what seems like forever for one to finally ripen. Not this beauty, even with it’s gigantic size, it still ripened quicker than anything but the cherry tomatoes.
Not only does this delicious tomato ripen super early, it produces loads of tomatoes and it just keeps on producing. This photo was taken yesterday in my garden, yesterday. It’s mid October in Maine. My ‘Brandywine’ and ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomatoes quit producing tomatoes long ago, not this baby, it’s still flowering and setting fruit. If you live in a northern climate, especially one with cold spring and fall temperatures I’d highly recommend adding ‘Gold Medal’ to your list of must grow tomatoes. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed, in fact I’m guessing you’ll be singing its praises and will grow it every year.
What’s your favorite no fail tomato?
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Making Cidah
Cider (or cidah here in Maine) is one of Mr Chiot’s favorite fall treats. In Ohio, we had a local press we purchased gallons and gallons of cider from each year. We have yet to find cider as good as there’s here in Maine, so we usually get 8-10 gallons for our freezer when we’re back in Ohio for Thanksgiving. Lucky for our, our neighbor was given a cider press and we had an abundance of apples.
We have lots of different varieties of apples here, probably around 15, of which 8 are ready to be used right now. We have no idea what varieties they are, some over 120 years old. We’re hoping to figure out what they are here one of these days. We picked two of each variety and I made juice, which we tasted to see what flavor profiles they each had. It was amazing to taste the difference between them all, some where sweet, some were intense, others were watery, and still other were astringent.
After tasting the various juices, we started picking apples into big totes. Each tote holds around 2 bushels of apples, we picked three totes and a bushel. We picked for an hour or two and then loaded them up in the car to head down to our neighbor’s.
He was ready to roll, the cider press was fixed up nicely and on the front porch. After a little tweaking we were in business putting the apples through the crusher and making our first batch.
After a few hours we had all of our containers filled and tons of apple mash. Some went to his chickens, some went to our chickens, some went to a local farmer for their pigs.
Overall it was a really fun day, ending up with a lot of cider wasn’t so bad. The cider ended up being delicious, next year we might tweak our recipe a bit, but it’s still better than any of the cidah I’ve purchased from any of the local orchards. We were pleasantly surprised by how quick and easy the process was.
Have you ever been a part of a cider pressing day? Do you like apple cider?
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Planting for Next Year
I love garlic because you plant it in the fall and harvest the following summer. It’s in the ground for quite a while, but it’s nice to know it’s there in the deepest part of winter. As soon as spring arrives it pops out of the ground and gives you hope that the garden will flourish for another year.
The past couple years I’ve been able to save my own seed garlic, which can really save you a bundle! Out of the 10 or so varieties I used to grow, I’ve narrowed it down to five of my favorites. ‘Music’ is a real winner in my garden, I keep thinking of only planting that variety. It produces HUGE heads with giant cloves. I like that you only have to peel one instead of a few when you’re cooking.
Yesterday, I planted about 100 garlic cloves and a small amount of potato onions. My garlic is planted 6 inches apart in a big row with 12 inches between the individual rows. I plant four rows wide with walkways on either side. I have found this to be perfect spacing for garlic, they produce very well and I have less area to weed.
Do you grow garlic in your garden? Do you have a favorite variety?
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Friday Favorite: Preserving the Harvest
Our apple trees are loaded with fruit this year, there are so many we could never eat/use/preserve them all. Luckily, we have friends that can use some and they have been. We’ve been eating them out of hand and I’ve been making applesauce and dried apple slices. We’re hoping to make cider next weekend as well.
One of the things I love about dried apples is that they store in the pantry, there’s not much work involved in prepping them. I simply core and slice each apple into 8 sections, yes I leave the peels on. They are layered onto racks in my oven and set to dry at 150 degrees until dry and leather, usually 6-8 hours depending on how full the oven is.
I love using my oven as to dry things because it fits so much more than a dehydrator. A few years ago, I purchased extra racks so I could fill it completely. This batch produced 3 half gallon jars filled with dried apple slices. Mr Chiots will certainly appreciate them for delicious and healthy treats during the winter. I’m not a huge fan of dried apples, well of apples in general. I do love dried pears however, which reminds me I need to read up on pears this winter because I’ll be planting pear trees in the spring.
Do you dehydrate any fruit? What’s your favorite.
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Second Flush
Around the beginning or middle of July, I often seed a second flush of peas, beans, and zucchini. These plants often exhaust themselves and don’t fruit for a long period of time. I really like them, so I find planting a second batch gives me a long season. It also allows me to easily pull out the exhausted plants to replace them with fall crops when they begin to languish.
The great thing about a second planting is that the seeds germinate quickly and the plants grow like gangbusters with the heat and long days. I’m always amazed at how quickly they grow and fruit. Zucchini that I seed in May often takes 6-8 weeks to start fruiting. This zucchini started fruiting only four weeks after being seeded.
Succession planting is something that I’m getting better and better at the longer I garden. It really is amazing how much you can grow in a small space when you do it. I find that it also makes it much easier for me to pull up exhausted veggies that I used to let hang on in the garden even with meager harvest (broccoli offshoots ring a bell?). These aren’t the only vegetables I plant in succession, I have lettuce, broccoli, fennel, carrots, beets, and a few others that were seeded throughout the summer as space became available in the garden.
Are you in the habit of planting in succession to lengthen the harvest and maximize your garden space?
