More adventures in gardening

The driveway garden has been spitting out tomatoes all summer long. Most of them are beautiful, but they do kind of grow funny. We've started picking them a little earlier, as soon as their shoulder turn pink, because otherwise, critters come and bite into them.

Here's how it has been going with each variety:

Purple Cherokee: By far, the best of the bunch. They look beautiful, they taste delicious. I can't remember how many we had, probably four, but I could easily do more of these.

Black Cherry: The smaller version of the purple cherokee. Folks say that they cook up like big tomatoes, not like cherries. I've discovered that we really don't eat cherry tomatoes. Of course, we also have like four or five different volunteer cherries from last year that sprouted all over the place.

Casteluto Genovese: These were supposed to be really tasty slicing tomatoes but they grow funny, slice funny, and aren't as tasty as I would like them to be. These won't be on the list next year.'

Marglobe: The canning tomato. They turn out pretty well actually. I've canned a few pints of marglobes and we'll see over the window how they taste. Still, it's not enough to can en masse. More on that later.

So something is not happy with my tomato plants. I set up some soaker hoses that we got at Home Depot last year so perhaps it's that the water is getting on them. I want to get better soaker hoses from Gardeners.com. They are having sale right now, so perhaps it will be this weekend.

Despite the poor state of their stems, the plants are still putting out good tomatoes.

We bought tomatoes from McMullan so that we would have enough over the winter. This is 50# of tomatoes, 30# blemished and 20# plum. The blemished and about 5# of the plum went into a big ole sauce pot and simmered down until about half. We have 10 pints of sauce and 23 pints of plum tomatoes.

I also got a little careless when canning and a couple canning lids stuck together with some boiling water and... well, let's just say that a second degree burn on your stomach is really crappy. The outside is just about healed now though so soon I will be able to wear shirts again like a normal person -- as opposed to the gimpy person that I am right now.

These are some of the onions that I planted last year. They and their potato cousins have been sitting in their dirt this whole time. I am not sure if they will all be good to eat or not but these were. I roasted them in the oven in foil and then opened it up to brown a little.

The potatoes started growing plants again after all dying back. I do not know if that means that my potatoes seeded or what but... it will be interesting when I go digging.

Lastly are my Chinese eggplants that I grew from seed. It took a while, and I doubted that they would grow, but they look quite beautiful, if I do say so myself. I took this picture a week ago, so they are probably about to turn super bitter. Better go pick them today.