In Minnesota, the tomatoes don’t really start to ripen until late July. This year, we had a lot of rain in July and I think that made the fruits take even longer to ripen. But once there are fresh tomatoes… nothing else in the world matters.

Our tomatoes are overrun with early tomato blight once again this year. It is at the point now where there are very few green leaves left on the vines; they are nearly all brown. Fortunately the fruit hasn’t been affected, but I’ve done as much as I can to try and manage it this year. I have some ideas for next summer – and I’m hoping to spend some time learning more about blight this winter.

That’s a giant bowl of assorted cherry tomatoes: Amish Mayberry, Prize of the Trials, and Yellow Pear. I’ve been working on our tomato varieties page, compiling a list of varieties we’ve grown over the years, seed sources, and a few notes. I’d like to put a bit more time into this, and also put together the Peppers section in a similar way. Maybe some day…

Today’s pick:

Our eggplants are loaded with beautiful white and purple fruits. The white eggplant is a variety from Monticello – apparently one that Jefferson grew, and has been passed down through the generations. They are good sized, long fruits – nearly 12″ long, and each plant has at least 8 fruits on it. What a great find!

Temperatures have been consistently reaching the 90s this month, with a few streaks in the 100s. Pair that with 2″+ of rain each week, and you have the perfect weather for eggplants and peppers.

For some reason, though, our tomatoes are not ripening. We’ve picked a few small cherry tomatoes, and today I picked a couple of nearly-ripe orange tomatoes (Amana Orange). They both have pretty big cracks in them though, and look like they could start to go bad soon. Torrential rain is not great for heirloom tomatoes; it causes them to grow too quickly, and then they crack and are prone to insects and rotting.

In other news, I picked a Hungarian Carrot Pepper and, not thinking, took a bite out of it. The description on the seed packet just said “Great for frying.” No mention of heat. FYI – hungarian carrot peppers are HOT. Right up there with cayenne peppers, but it’s a different kind of heat. I’m sure they are terrific for frying… and I’m curious to see if they are more tolerable when cooked!

Last night, we had 70 mile per hour winds (according to some storm reports from our county), which delivered half of a tree onto a section of my sunflowers and zucchini.

The sunflowers, sadly, did not survive. Zucchini, on the other hand, is impossible to destroy. Puck managed to pick a bag full of it.

Of course, I didn’t take a picture of the mess in the garden before I started cleaning it up. Maybe I’ll get a shot of the branches piled up later.

Puck loves zucchini season, because we never get around to eating it all… and that means that he gets zucchini with his breakfast nearly every day!

My niece and nephew spent the night at our house last Thursday, and while they were here, we watched the Disney/Pixar movie “Ratatouille.” There was a two-year-old and a three-year-old, and Puck and two cats… And so I missed about half of the movie, but the dish has been in my mind.

Coincidentally, I picked one ripe eggplant and a half dozen little courgettes from the garden the other day. Since it was fairly warm out, I didn’t want to start up the oven… So I decided to hang out on the deck and try making a “grilled rattatoulie.”

Step 1: cut and grill zucchini, eggplants, onions, and peppers.

Step 2: layer vegetables in a disposable pie tin. Add garlic, basil, and thyme; drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper, and top with about 1/2 jar of tomato sauce.

Step 3: Cover with tinfoil, and grill at medium-high heat for 20 minutes.

… Serve with other items that have been wrapped in tinfoil and grilled. For example, buttery garlic bread. It was really good!

We spent much of the day out in the sun, and went for a nice bike ride. Beautiful weather this weekend, and rain possible tonight. I always hope for rain over night.

The daisies are in full bloom! I also picked our first small zucchini, one eggplant and a pepper, a head of broccoli, a bunch of chard, rosemary, sage, thyme, and basil this afternoon. Tonight for dinner, I think we’re going to try making ratatouille in mini bread loaves… on the grill, with garlic bread. Curios to see how that works!

Kallie says, “Happy 4th of July!”

These pictures are from last week, but we still have a few heads out there that need to be picked today. I also planted romanesco italia broccoli, which is a neat looking variety – but so far no heads. AND no cauliflower yet – what’s up with that? Last year I think our cauliflower was ready before the broccoli.

I put in a few kohlrabi too; that’s one of the least exciting vegetables (Puck likes it though!), but I have a box of seeds from 2007 that need to be used up, and found these this spring so figured I’d give it a try.

Temperatures have been in the upper 90s the last three days, and we got 1/2 and inch of rain last night, so things should start to produce very quickly now. There is zucchini ready to be picked!

I picked up a package of white eggplant seeds at Monticello this winter, and I’m really excited about these! I wasn’t sure what shape to expect from the fruits, and I’m glad these are long and skinny.

I’ve never successfully saved eggplant seeds before, but this fruit came out early for the season, so I’m hoping it’s a good northern variety that we can keep growing. The rest of the eggplants are loaded with flowers. I put in standard black eggplant as well. Looking forward to seeing the garden explode after this heat wave!

We’re just about to enter the best time of the year for gardeners… time to eat!

There is a lot of space left in the garden for sunflowers. We cleared out a good section in Chris’s half of the garden (not pictured….) for sunflowers as well, so assuming my planting schedule is fairly accurate, we’ll be set for the wedding this September.

The perennial beds have filled in quite a bit! I put basil in the holes in the front, and just weeded/thinned that out this weekend. I had originally planned on strawberries, but I decided that I like my concrete beds so much that I’m going to build another one, twice the size of each of these, along the south side of the garden (starting where this one ends, heading in the opposite direction). I’ll use part of that for strawberries next year.

In the back of the perennial beds are second year onions, planted for their really neat flower heads. Those are just now starting to bloom.

I picked a few heads of broccoli this afternoon (one was just about to flower, oops!). The temperatures are going to rise this week so I hope some of the smaller heads will hold out for a few days. I started these in early March, and they are just now producing, nearly 120 days later. They’re supposed to be “55 days” – not sure if this is an indication that our soil could use some more work, or if this is normal for Minnesota gardening. Any cole crop growers want to chime in? We’ve *never* had Brussels sprouts mature before October, and we also start those the first week in March.

Also above (click on the picture for a better view), there are daisies and a volunteer sunflower in front of the broccoli; tomatoes behind. In the next row is another sunflower and radishes, and more tomatoes.

Carrots and chard above. Last year my carrots were a lot thicker; we had really strong rainfall (3″ in a day or two) a few days after I seeded these, so I’m guessing a lot of the seeds washed away.

Another shot of the garden, from the back. Lots of room for fall crops and more sunflowers!

That’s what we pulled today!

I’m hosting a baby shower tomorrow, so the dill went in the potato salad and the radishes are cleaned and ready to eat!

I planted four different varieties of radish. Even with the hot weather earlier this month they aren’t very spicy. A few are a bit too large, and there are a lot more where these came from!

Broccoli and zucchini are next, within the week!

Why do the herbs always need to be picked when there is no other food in the garden to season with them?

I have more chives and catnip than we will ever use, so if you’d like some… please let me know. Of course, last week I also planted catnip seeds that I bought at Monticello. Because one can never have enough catnip. (Maybe this is why we have a grey cat who visits our back yard now…)