Tomato Tastings, Fall Garden Starts, and Getting Ready for Garlic

They usually have the tomato tasting at the edge of the orchard near a row of fig trees laden with ripe fruit, but after a rainy ending to the tasting last year and many 100°F days recently the event was moved to the Woodland Pavilion. Surrounded by shade trees and comfortable chairs in a lovely room with natural light and air conditioning in reserve, I think I like the change. With 30+ participants and over 30 varieties of tomatoes the tasting is a low key version of the tasting at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello, coming up on Sept. 15, 2012. 

Here are some of the varieties we tasted and talked about last week at the Saturdays in the Garden at Monticello:

Varieties from our Southern Exposure Seed Exchange Trial Gardens: 

Amys' Apricot
Old Virginia
Dwarf Rosella Purple
Glacier
Matts' Wild Cherry
Red Cherry
Radiator Charlies' Mortgage Lifter
Roma
Black Cherry
Hungarian Italian paste
Amish Paste
Red Pisa Date
Green Zebra

More varieties from Southern Exposure: 

Cherokee Purple
Georgia Streak
Yellow Brandywine
Persimmon
White Wonder
Paul Robeson

Varieties from Monticello: 

Purple Calabash
Costoluto Genovese
Large Red
Black Krim

Varieties from Ann Eddins, local tomato grower: 

Estonian
Granny Cantrell's German Red/Pink
Mortgage Lifter Halladay's Strain
Rose
Mortgage Lifter Bicolor
Dr. Lyle

Plus last minute additions from participants.

We have another Tasting Scheduled for the Edible Orange Fest and our own on Farm Tasting for local customers later this month. Of course we will have lots of varieties for the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello and the Mother Earth News Fair at Seven Springs in PA. What a great way to share the taste of heirloom tomatoes.
  

I love alliums. We plant garlic, elephant garlic, yellow potato onions, white multiplier onions, several varieties of shallots, and perennial leeks. They are all easy to grow if you prepare a rich well drained bed, mulch them, keep them well weeded and watered. So order your planting stock and start preparing your perennial onion and garlic beds now.
  

We’re trying to use up the last of the produce we have in storage, as we’ll soon be replacing it with our fall plantings of carrots, beets, radishes and other winter roots. One of the things we enjoy is pickled carrots. It is a good recipe for using now or in winter.

Refrigerator Dill Carrots 

1 pound carrots, peeled
1 1/4 cups water
1 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
2 garlic cloves, lightly-crushed
1 1/2 teaspoons dill or 2 tablespoons fresh dill weed
1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
2 bay leaves

1. Cut the carrots into sticks approximately the size of your fourth finger. Bring a medium-sized pot of lightly-salted water to a boil. (Use a non-reactive pot.)

2. When the water boils, drop the carrots in and simmer for one minute. Pour into a colander and rinse under cold water. Drain thoroughly.

3. Using the same pot, bring all the remaining ingredients to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for two minutes.

4. Remove from heat and add the carrot sticks. Cool until room temperature, then put into jars and chill.

Carrot sticks should be made at least one day in advance, and will keep for up to four weeks in the refrigerator.

Thanks for stopping by and we hope you’ll come back often to see what we’re growing and cooking. ___________________________________________________________________

Ira Wallace lives and gardens at Acorn Community Farm, home of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, where she coordinates variety selection and seed growers. Southern Exposure offers 700+ varieties of non-GMO, open pollinated, and organic seeds. Ira is a co-organizer of the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello. She serves on the board of the Organic Seed Alliance and is a frequent presenter at the Mother Earth News Fairs and many other events throughout the Southeast. Her first book the "The Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast" will be available in 2013.