In this episode we have a tomato taste and talk about creating the kind of atmosphere in your garden where you love to spend time. The best thing for a garden is the presence of the gardener.
We tasted
- Dwarf Awsome,
- Dwarf Mulatka,
- Dwarf Metallica,
- Apricot Zebra, and
- Jerusalem
Whatever you do to increase your enjoyment when you spend time in your garden is a good thing. Whether it is a place to sit and relax, or flowers, or art, or anything, it will be a benefit.
For Karen it is flowers. "I love to place flowers in and around the garden. While I'm there cutting flowers to take inside my house, I will notice things. Like some weeds that need to be pulled, or suckers that need to be plucked. Being in the midst of the plants helps me attend to the details."
For Sherva it is a chair to relax and have a beverage. "In between sips I'm walking my garden, enjoying the fruits of my labor, noticing this and that."
We also discuss some of the measures we are taking to endure the oppressive heat we are all experiencing this summer.
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Hello, Sherva. Hello, how are you today? I'm fine. I love your shirt.
She's wearing a really lovely, flirty, sherry silk, pretty flowery shirt. Hibiscus flowers. That's why you love it.
Oh yeah, I didn't even realize it was hibiscus. Yeah, it's very pretty. Yes.
Yellow and blue and pink. You can never have enough flowers. Very summery.
In fact, I have flowers like totally overtaking my garden. Yep, you sure do. You saw them.
And I don't have any, well, I have very, very few flowers. I have such limited space, I want to actually use my space for gardening. Yeah.
But I do like, I love how the flowers look in between the vegetables and everything. I love, I've come to love having flowers everywhere because I'm cutting them and bringing them in the house. Yeah, you brought me a lovely flower.
Yeah, yeah. And I even have perennials out there in the midst of everything. And this isn't an original idea.
I saw someone on YouTube who says this. If you put these kinds of things in your garden, you know, put a chair where you can sit down, put flowers and put some art out there, you'll really enjoy being out there. Yeah.
And you know what? It's really true. Except you still haven't put the chairs out there that I've been telling you to. No, but I have some logs you can sit on.
Yes, I love those logs. Yeah, they're growing on me. But I have noticed it's really true.
While I'm out there cutting flowers and I'm deadheading and saving seeds, I happen to look over. Oh, there's a weed. Let me pluck that.
Oh, there's a sucker. Let me pull that off. So it really does.
Oh, that needs some water. It really gets you out in your garden. Oh, yeah.
Once you're out there, you can keep finding things to do. Right. Like I'll go out there with my coffee in the morning and I'll sit down, have a couple of sips of coffee, walk around the garden, check everything out, come back, sit down, get up again.
Like I do that. Like I'm sure my neighbors must think I'm crazy because I walk out there and I look at the same things. They're probably thinking she just looked at that five minutes ago.
But you do. And like you say, you find things, you see things. I see like some dried up leaves or like a dead one that I need to pull out.
Or like I have these viney things that just grows and wraps around and strangles everything. Morning glories. I'm always pulling those out.
They're awful. Yeah. Everywhere.
So yeah, if I sat out there more, I would, you know, you're constantly doing something. And you're seeing things that you wouldn't see. Like if I just have on my mission to go water, you know, or this or that, I'm not like in the middle of it looking like I am when I'm, like you said, just sitting and enjoying.
And yeah, there's something to that. Like I worked in a grocery store for many years. And one of the things you do is you walk your store.
So you, you know, your first thing you come in, you check your email, you check sales and everything, check in with everybody. You walk the whole store and you look and you see what needs to be done in what department, you know, what needs to be refilled and stuff like that. And you don't, that's not, you don't just walk it once for your shift and then you're gone.
You walk it over and over again and you see different things you didn't see before or things change. And that's what, that's how it is with my garden. I'm like, I'm walking my garden.
That's why you use the term walk in your garden. Oh, let's walk your garden. I never thought about that.
It's unique that you say that. I've never heard anybody say that. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
I walk my garden and I walk it over and over again. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you always find something and then I realize, oh my God, like this branch is falling down. This needs to be tied up. The, the amount of things I saw that needed to be tied up are outer string and, and poles.
Actually yesterday I actually put a nail in the fence and then untied a piece of string from one of the tomatoes and tied it around to hold it up. My, they're all falling down. Yeah.
They're so heavy. The other thing about walking your garden is, um, yeah. Last night I was out there and, you know, looked at everything, but then this morning I went out and things had changed like overnight.
That's the thing. And then later on, I went out with you and this, uh, one plant had fallen, that tomato had fallen down. I'm like, am I going to tie that? It's going to break.
Right on the deck this morning. Like I walked, I walked it twice and I didn't notice it. And I'm sitting there and I just look, it's the one called granny throwing.
And I look over there and there's a branch with two tomatoes on it. That's hanging off. Like that pot is on a chair and it's hanging off the chair.
I'm like, Oh my God, I have to run and get something to hold it up. It's like the tomatoes get bigger and bigger. And then finally they reach that tipping point.
They're like, Nope, too heavy. Plop. Everything is just, and the thing is they're not even full size yet.
Right. Yeah. They're not in full size and they're all falling down already.
Yeah. So. Yeah.
The best thing for the garden is the gardener. Yeah. Is the presence of the gardener.
And I didn't say that myself. Somebody else said that, but it's true. So yeah.
Put things in your garden that you really enjoy. And you'll be out there just, just to enjoy them. Sometimes I just walk around out there to look at the flowers, you know? So yeah.
When I come through the door, that's the first thing I have to do is go out there and check, see what's going on. Yeah. When I get up in the morning, even though I was out last night, I get up in the morning.
Oh my God. I wonder if that's ripe. I wonder.
And especially some things like cucumbers. Yeah. Or squash.
Today it's too small. Tomorrow it's too big. Wait till summer gets, you know, once it gets going, that's what happens to the okra.
Oh. Like you could pick okra this morning and then these look too small. And by the evening it's big and you have to pick it before it gets hard.
Yeah. I find my green beans are like that too. I see them in the morning and they're not quite ready, but by evening they'll be ready.
So. Yep. So our taste test today, we have two cherry, did you say you had some varieties that we could try? But the ones we have, the ones we have today, these came from my garden.
We're going to try green bumblebee and one called hundreds and thousands. Now bumblebee has a huge line. I don't know.
There's probably about 10 bumblebees. Could be more. I've grown so far the purple bumblebee.
Last year I did sunrise bumblebee. This year I'm doing green bumblebee. I have seeds for pink bumblebee and I also have seeds for a black bumblebee, which is there.
It's a hybrid. It's not a hybrid. I'm sorry.
It's a F1. So it's not, it's not stable as yet. I seeded three seeds, but I had so many tomatoes and cherry tomatoes just go crazy and go all over the place.
So I gave my three seedlings away because two of them, I gave one to Karen, one to another friend. They live close enough for me where I could get to taste it. You know, I don't have to grow it myself.
And a hundred thousands. One of the things I learned about, I didn't even know about this is, what'd you call them? Tomatoes like cascading tomatoes that you can put in hanging baskets. This one is supposed to cascade.
It hasn't cascaded, but I do have it in a hanging basket. Next year, I'm going to do a lot more. I've got some cascading yellow, cascading red.
I forgot the names of the ones I have. So next year I'm going to probably do about five or six in baskets. And yeah, so right now we're going to try the hundred and thousands and see what Karen just tried it.
What do you think it tastes like? I like it. It's not sweet. I don't particularly care for sweet ones.
Yeah. It's, I prefer the sweet ones. I like it.
That has a little tang. I like the tang. I like the acidic.
Yeah. I'll do like a nice acidic tomato. Yeah.
You can have that of a bit. That's not my favorite. Now I really love the green bumblebee.
And, um, my son was over in the week and I was so excited about this. I wanted him to try it. He came to pick up.
Oh, I cooked him some, one of his favorite dishes. So he came over and I'm like, Oh honey, try the green bumblebee. And I'm like, it's so good.
And he's looking, chewing and he's like, it's okay. I was like, what? You don't like it. And he said, it's okay.
He goes, it doesn't taste ripe. It tastes like a green tomato. I'm like, are you kidding me? So then I gave him the fat frog, which I wasn't in love with.
