Our Happy Acres

Tomatoes are without a doubt the most popular vegetable grown by backyard gardeners in the U.S. And it’s easy to see why: they are reasonably easy to grow, yield well, and taste so much better than any tomato you can buy in a grocery store. They also come in a mind-boggling array of colors, sizes [...]

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This salsa is quick and easy to make and a nice change from more traditional tomato salsas. We like a little garlic in our salsa but if you don’t, leave it out.

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The big harvest item for the week was garlic, though it isn’t reflected in the totals. I won’t weigh it until it has cured and I can get it trimmed up for storage. All of the garlic is harvested now except for a silverskin variety called Silver White that is still not quite ready. I [...]

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I’m using two different systems of supporting tomatoes here this year. For the majority of the plants I’m using cages I made from 5ft tall concrete reinforcing wire. The cages are all either 22 or 24 inches wide (72 inch or 78 inch diameter). The cost per cage in 2008 was about $5, and they [...]

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There’s only one way to describe the weather here lately, and that’s HOT-T-T! High temps are supposed to be in the mid 90s all week, hitting 96F today. That has meant gardening chores have to be done as early as possible in the day. It has to be bad on tomato pollination, but only time [...]

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Our church garden is coming along nicely now, producing our first harvests last week. We took squash and cukes to two different organizations. The harvests are still small, but they will grow in size as the plants get bigger. All of the produce from this garden will go to food pantries and meal programs in [...]

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