The Last Caprese

Thought it was all over but the green tomato cookery and Pestopalooza (the annual day when I make all of the basil that's left from the garden into pesto for the winter), but the garden had a nice surprise for me when we went surfing weekend before last -- two tomatoes had actually managed to turn red! I brought them home and let them ripen a little more and they were a nice treat for dinner tonight. Didn't make it out to the club this weekend due to a cleaning fit (I don't get those often and the place was such a sty after an insanely busy September and early October that I felt like I'd better run with it) plus maybe a touch of a cold, so no fresh basil, but I had a little dried from the garden & sprinkled that on.

Maybe not as flavorsome as midsummer but not bad for October.

Have to get out to the club this weekend to get the basil, and the green tomatoes and the hot peppers (at least they're supposed to be hot, haven't actually tried one yet) that finally came in just at the end of the season.

I didn't do much garden blogging this year, it was actually a sort of frustrating summer. The cucumber vine shrivelled up and died after about three cukes; the tomatoes went for quality instead of quantity, what did ripen was delicious but there just weren't many. Next year I have to go back to including a cherry tomato, those used to self-seed and I'd let one or two of the volunteers grow. Sandy stopped the natural recurrence and I didn't think of restarting them, but it's so nice to have those to nibble on while you're waiting for the big ones to be ready.

The chard did OK, and I did get the herb bucket restarted. I used to have a huge rosemary bush with thyme and sage that would overwinter, again Sandy killed those, I replanted in 2013 but managed to kill them but this year the little replacements I planted in the spring have made it to fall.

The one success story this year (aside from the onions, which are basically indestructible) was the beets. This was sort of funny -- I love beets and I try to grow them every year. Up until this year, I'd always carefully thinned them, and with maybe 3 square feet of my 4x6 plot that just means not many beets, but last year I was looking at sailing committee co-chair Holly's garden and noticed that she had a beautiful crop of beets and they were all growing right on top of each other! She's a good gardener and I asked her about it and she said she'd just planted and then let them fight it out among themselves, so that's what I did this year, and it worked pretty well. 

I guess they don't read the instructions they come with. Shhhh, don't tell!

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