While the autumn cleaning of our garden is still on my to-do list, I would love to look back at the last summer weeks that surprised us with so many more vegetables than we expected.
My favourite vegetable to grow must be tomatoes. They come in various shapes, many colours and different flavours, and I love to try a few new varieties each year to experiment with them in the kitchen. This year, I planted 11 varieties, and about 35 plants. It might sound like a lot to some of you while others will say that it's not enough, but truth to be told, you never know with tomatoes. If it's a good year, you'll get an abundance out of a few plants, and if it's a bad year, you can have 60 plants and still won't have enough.
It's been a good year for us. I made sauces for pasta, lasagne, and pizza, a few jars of sun-dried tomatoes, tomato salt, and we ate fresh tomatoes almost every day. At some point, I was getting desperate as I didn't have any more jars and didn't feel like eating tomatoes yet again. There are still some green ones and not enough time for them to change colour, so I might be canning green salsa too. Let's see!
This pinkish variety was one of my favourites this year. They are a bit bigger than cherry tomatoes, and perfect for bruschetta. I hope I don't have here any angry Italians though. I know that this is not the right variety for bruschetta, but it's so so good!
Black Opal tomatoes are becoming a tradition in our garden. They are black with deep orange spot at the bottom when they are ripe. They are perfect raw, but I also like them in sauces.
This variety is used for traditional tomato/pepper sauce that we make for winter in Slovakia. I was blessed with many of them this year, so I don't have to take any jars from my mom 😊
This variety is similar to Black Opal, only they turn deep purple instead of black. They are great for sauces because they are meaty, so they don't require long time for cooking.
This variety is called 'Woman's breast', and I only planted it because the tomatoes should have been pink. I don't know why, but mine were orange. They are sweet and I enjoyed them on bread. They don't have many seeds, and reminded me of persimmon in terms of texture.
These golden pears really are golden. I only had 3 plants, and harvested kilos and kilos of those little yellow jewels. I have a few jars of sun-dried golden pears, only because I loved the colour and thought that they would look good on some dishes. I've never seen yellow sun-dried tomatoes before.
Look how cute they are...
When I think about me growing up and hating tomatoes, I do not recognize that person anymore. I couldn't even smell them without gagging and now I can't wait to plant new seeds for the next season.
Cherries this year were a bit smaller, but that made them perfect for a snack.
My orange Woman's breast tomatoes! This was the first plate that I harvested...
Golden pears about to be turned into delicious sauce...
I do love growing tomatoes, but I also enjoy growing cucumbers when it's a good year. It's way too much work when it's a bad year, but when the harvest is good it is so worth it. This year, I had 4 plants and harvested about 30 cucumbers which I consider a great success!
Zucchini on the other hand were not so good. We had enough, but it wasn't like other years when I didn't know what to do with them and had to share plenty with friends. This year we only had enough for the two of us.
Don't mind all those weeds. I did try to keep up with them, but I feel like they grow to the same size just overnight, so I gave up. It's same old, same old every year.
Carrots are my nemesis. In my first year of gardening I managed to grow enough carrots for entire winter, but now I only had about 20 pieces. I think I know what went wrong and will do it differently next year.
My favourite way of eating pepper is on bread with butter and salt. I enjoyed them so much!
I think that I will have calendulas forever. Once you plant them, they will keep reseeding and you will enjoy their shiny blossom almost all year long. A couple of years ago, I brought them home to dry and use them for cremes, but with them I also brought thrips and infested all my interior plants. I will never do this mistake ever again. It took me a year to get rid of them and they managed to destroy many of my plants.
I didn't have time to prune lavender this year, and it doesn't seem to mind as it keeps rewarding my non-action with these pretty little flowers. I made myself a promise that I will take care of it and it is indeed on my to-do list for this week.
My fennel has bolted. All of them. I waited way too long to harvest them, and decided to leave them once they started bolting. The bees and other insects seemed to love those yellow flowers, and I let them enjoy it. I wonder if it will reseed and I will have some fennel volunteers next year.
I left some green manure in one spot to see what would happen and now I have plenty of seeds for this year. Let's see if it will work as I have never tried it this way.
Our garden is still blooming with my favourite perennials.
These daisies start blooming at the end of August. This photo is from the beginning of August...
And this one is from a few weeks later...
They bloom for a long time and are a welcome colourful treat in the garden.
Japanese anemone starts blooming even later. I removed all of the flowers by accident when I started gardening because I thought it was some sort of weed. Luckily, I learned from my mistake and now I have a big corner filled with these white beauties.
This is how it started...
And this is how it's going these days...
I know that I didn't share many posts from our garden this year due to other priorities, but I promise to make it up next year and spam you with regular updates 😊
See you next time...