Fall Tomatoes

As I was returning home yesterday I noticed ripe tomatoes down in the raised beds. So, this morning I took a market basket down and filled it with 30 tomatoes. I had to pitch about 8 of them into the woods as they were split from all of the recent rain and the bugs had gotten into them. Of the 30 I brought up some had blemishes and some splits but I considered them salvageable . I decided to call my neighbor and see if she would like some of the basil in my garden. Her husband said they had a big harvest of it themselves. He was interested in some tomatoes so I took them over. He showed me his new plantings and they all did look very pretty. Since he had a landscaper do his new property it was picture perfect.

He asked me what had happened to my leg. It was all bandaged up. I showed him the bottom of the car door and explained that I had shut the door on my leg. He said "Well, that was stupid".
I did not take umbrage to his remark but agreed with him. This was the third time I had ripped my leg open by closing the door when I exited too quickly. The first time it happened it was a deep cut. My son-in-law was here so he took me to the Quick Care office and it required some stitches. That time I did not have on long pants to give my leg some protection. This time I was wearing blue jeans and the cut was superficial I doctored it myself. My son-in-law had put yellow caution tape inside the car to remind me to exit slowly and carefully. That worked for about a year. Today I moved the tape to a different place near the handle of the door. I do not think I am accident prone, but I do need to slow down and I do when I am using the staircase, or rounding corners, or handling knives !!

I was not always so careful with knives. Many years ago, I was living in Decatur and had just come home from the lake. I was hungry and so was my son. I went to the freezer and removed some hamburgers. That was the day I learned to separate items to be frozen. That day I had not separated these patties of beef. I was holding a set of patties in my left hand and I took a knife in my right hand to separate them. Well, disaster struck and blood went everywhere. Fortunately my son was driving then and he took me to the ER at a hospital two blocks away. The doctor I saw knew how to diffuse a tense situation. He looked at my bleeding and slit hand, looked intently at me and said "was this a clumsy suicide attempt". I burst out laughing and then it all seemed funny to me. But I always make sure when I freeze anything it is separated from other items in the package by wax paper.

When I got home from my neighbors house today I started working on the basket of tomatoes, cutting out the blemishes and cooking them in a pot for cooling and later freezing. As I worked I was thinking about the garden at this time of year. The asparagus will need cutting at the ground and some good organic material spread over the bed and turned in. Perhaps I will have the soil tested to be sure it is the right ph balance for a good crop next year.

In thinking of tomatoes to plant next year, I do not think I will plant plum tomatoes again. They did taste okay but for the space they took up a larger tomato would be more useful. I would like to plant the Goliath again and the Parks whopper also. The treatment for the nematodes in the two lower beds should put them in good shape for green beans next year. I like the blue lake snap beans for freezing. Perhaps the best tasting bean is the white half runner, but it also has more prominent strings and if all are not removed it is unpleasant to eat. I would like to try to find a good bean to use for leather britches next year. The one time I made them they were absolutely the best tasting beans I had ever eaten. It has to be a bean without strings for sure. It may be that the drying of the beans as they hang on the strings causes them to have a more intense flavor. That is the only explanation I can think of for such a wonderful flavor.

For this time of year however, I am having a lot of tomatoes still coming from these three plants. I hope we have a long fall and the frost does not come until December. That would be ideal as I could save a lot more of the green tomatoes and enjoy them into winter. In times past when I have wrapped them in newspaper and stored in a box I had fresh tomatoes at Thanksgiving. As I was cutting up the nice red tomatoes today I kept thinking of how I would love to have them in the dead of winter. The closest thing to compare to that is the "vine tomatoes" which are grown in Canada. As a child growing up I could not have dreamed of having fresh tomatoes from Canada in the winter. We are indeed living in a remarkable time when we can enjoy fresh grapes from Chili, blood oranges from Israel and all of the wonderful fruit from the western coast. Yet, nothing can compare with growing your own tomatoes and harvesting them far into the autumn.