My Darwinian Garden

by Kelley Lindberg


I planted my garden last week, and now I get to sit back and hope it all lives. People have different approaches to gardening. Some view it as a lifestyle and spend a little time every day out there, lovingly weeding or fertilizing. Some view it as a hobby, reading up on the latest pruning techniques and inventing new recipes for their harvest.

I view it as Darwin’s theory of evolution in action. In my garden, it’s definitely a case of “survival of the fittest.”

Okay, sure, I select the plants with care at the nursery. I loosen up the dirt in my garden and maybe even add some new garden soil to it. I water the tender roots with a root-starter solution.

Then I plunk those babies in the ground, and that’s it. They’re on their own from that point on. No weeding. No extra fertilizing. No special treatment whatsoever. They’re just lucky the sprinkler system is set on a timer.

Only the strongest survive in my garden.

Does it work? Yep. This has been my fool-proof technique for years, and every year I have a pretty decent crop of fresh, low-maintenance veggies to enjoy all summer.

This year, I planted four types of tomatoes, some Anaheim chile peppers, onions, zucchini, yellow squash, basil, radishes, carrots, Swiss chard, and – for the first time ever – potatoes. The potatoes are an experiment: I had a couple of potatoes growing happily by themselves in the dark corner of my pantry, so I cut them up, stuck them in the ground, and now have some surprisingly healthy-looking plants growing from them. Who knew? (Well, I guess all those potato farmers knew. But it was a surprise for me.)

I also have a strawberry patch, but guess what I’ve learned? In my survival-of-the-fittest garden, birds are faster at harvesting strawberries than I am. So apparently I’m growing a great crop of bird treats in my strawberry patch, because I didn’t get a single berry last year. This year my husband says he’ll build some kind of net contraption thingy to cover the strawberries, but that sounds like a lot of work for a Darwinian garden. So we’ll see. Besides, for some reason the birds mostly leave my raspberries alone, so I get plenty of those each year.

For now, I’m happy that my day of digging up dirt and planting baby veggies is done. In a few weeks, I should be able to start adding fresh radishes to my salad. After that, maybe some Swiss chard. Then after a few more weeks, the rest of my garden will starting ripening, and I’ll begin whipping up homemade salsa and marinara sauce, or just adding a handful of sun-sweet cherry tomatoes to our dinner plates every night.

And for any plants that don’t survive my measly gardening skills… well, that’s what farmers’ markets are for, right?

Tomatoes, Tomatoes Everywhere – Drying Them

I love the taste of sun-dried tomatoes with pasta or on salads, so last year, when I was overwhelmed with cherry tomatoes, I researched how to make sun-dried tomatoes. I was a little dismayed to learn that sun-drying tomatoes requires setting them outside in hot, dry weather for 2 or 3 weeks, covered in screens to keep the bugs and other critters out, and bringing them in and out if it rains. Ack. That’s way too much work for me.

Then I discovered it’s much easier to dry them in the oven, and it only takes a day. And, what’s even better is I don’t have to chase bugs or birds away from them when I use my oven! That works for me!

You can oven-dry any sort of tomatoes. My mom dries her Roma tomatoes and then snacks on them like healthy potato chips during the day. I like to dry my cherry tomatoes because they are about the size of raisins – perfect for tossing into salads or into an alfredo sauce for pasta.

Drying tomatoes is really easy, but it’s a little time-consuming, so don’t start when it’s nearly bedtime (which seems to be when so many of us mothers start projects, doesn’t it?).

1. Use a cookie sheet with raised edges (so the tomatoes don’t slide off the tray when you’re taking them out of the oven – voice of experience here!), and line it with parchment paper. (Tomatoes react with aluminum, so you really don’t want to use aluminum pans.)

2. Slice your tomatoes thin (if you’re using cherry tomatoes, cut them in half), put them on a paper towel to drain for a couple of minutes, then place them on the parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. (Drain cherry tomatoes on the paper towel cut side down, then place them cut side up on the parchment paper-lined cookie sheet).

3. Sprinkle the tomatoes very lightly with sea salt, seasoned salt, garlic salt, or other seasoning, depending on your taste. It’s easy to over-salt them, so go easy.

4. Turn your oven to its lowest setting (200 degrees is ideal), put the cookie sheet in the oven, and let the tomatoes dry at 200 degrees for 8 – 10 hours for regular sized tomatoes, or 5 – 7 hours for cherry tomatoes. The time will vary depending on the thickness of your tomato slices, and how hot your oven is, so check them after a few hours and keeping checking them every hour after that. If your oven only goes down to 250 degrees, that’s fine. Just don’t cook them as long.

5. The tomatoes are done when you think they’re done – I like mine the consistency of raisins (a little chewy). My mom likes her Romas crispy. Some tomatoes will be done earlier than others, so take them off the tray as they get done, and let the others stay in the oven a little longer if necessary. When you’re finished, they’ll stay in a container at room temperature or in the fridge for a few days, or you can store them in zippered plastic bags in the freezer for months.

Enjoy!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes Everywhere – Freezing Them

I spent all yesterday in my kitchen again, trying to stay ahead of the mound of tomatoes and peppers that keep rolling in from my little garden. I’m probably not the only one – the media keeps reporting that many more people planted gardens this year in an effort to save money. If you didn’t plant a garden, you probably noticed that farmer’s markets have been springing up in many more towns this year, so your opportunity to get fresh produce is still better than usual!

So, just in case you or someone you know has a garden this year and are wondering what to do with all those tomatoes, I thought I’d share a couple of ways I save them for use during the winter. This week I’ll explain how easy it is to freeze them. Next week I’ll show how I oven-dry them (which is so much easier than sun-drying them, and just as tasty!).

To freeze tomatoes, you simply skin them, chop them into chunks, and put them in a quart-sized zippered freezer-style plastic bag, then toss them in the freezer. Really, that’s all there is to it. To skin them easily, drop them in boiling water for one minute, then plunge them into ice water. The skins will peel right off. Then I cut out the core near the stem, chop the tomatoes into bite-sized chunks, and put them in a colander to drain a little. Then I put 2 cups of the tomatoes into a quart-sized bag. Two cups is about equivalent to a can of tomatoes, so when I use a recipe calling for a can of tomatoes, I can just use a bag of my frozen tomatoes. Here’s a photo of several pints of my yellow-colored Lemon Boy tomatoes ready for the freezer.

In case you’re wondering, freezing peppers is even easier. (No skinning necessary!) Simply wash them and pat them dry, cut off the stem end, then slice them open and remove the seeds. Then dice them up and put them in a zippered freezer-style plastic bag. When I freeze them, I lay the bag flat so that the diced peppers don’t all freeze in a big clump. If they’re spread out flat when they freeze, it’s easier to shake out just a few when I need them later for a recipe. I plant Anaheims and Jalapeños each year, and I freeze both of them the same way.

Got any great allergy-friendly recipes for using up some of those garden veggies? Share them with us by posting them in a Comment!

Happy harvesting!

Garden-Fresh and Kitchen-Bound

I was a slave to my garden this weekend.

I love having a garden. I love the taste of a fresh tomato still warm from the sunshine. I love thinking “this recipe would be great with a little fresh Anaheim pepper and oregano,” then walking outside to pick some. I love watching veggies ripen day after day until they’re just perfect.

I also enjoy planting different kinds of tomatoes – varieties you don’t get at the grocery store – just to see what they look and taste like. This year, in addition to my usual Sweet 100s (cherry tomatoes) and Early Girls, I planted a Yellow Boy (big, sweet, gorgeous yellow globes) and a Pink Girl (pale red beauties).

The only downside to having a garden is that it all seems to come ready to pick at once, and then I actually have to DO something with all that great produce. It seems like overnight I go from waiting impatiently for a few tomatoes to finally ripen so I can make a batch of salsa, to suddenly having piles of tomatoes that overwhelm my countertop – enough to make a dozen batches of salsa!

That happened this weekend. My peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, and yellow squash all got harvest-ready at once, and a neighbor’s apricot tree was being ravaged by birds, so I ended up with a couple of mixing bowls of them, too (the apricots, not the birds). So I spent the last two days in the kitchen. I made salsa, chocolate zucchini bread, and apricot pie. For breakfast, I made a baked apricot pancake, and omelets stuffed with cherry tomatoes, peppers, onions, basil, and oregano. We had zucchini casserole, apricots with whipped cream, and fresh tomatoes and mozzarella sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and garnished with fresh basil.

My husband accused me of turning into Martha Stewart. We don’t usually eat this well, because I don’t usually have so much fresh produce that I have to try to think up new ways to prepare.

I still have bowls of tomatoes and peppers left on my counter, and tons of them still on the vine, so I’ll be making more salsa and marinara sauce as the days of August and September go by. And maybe I’ll try making gumbo or jambalaya with my tomatoes, okra, and onions. I’ll be freezing tomatoes and peppers so I can make more during the winter, when the store-bought veggies taste something like a hybrid between tennis balls and cardboard. And sun-dried tomatoes (okay, they’re really oven-dried) are great on salads and in pasta sauces during the winter. I may even try to oven-dry some herbs this year.

So if anyone needs me in the next few weeks, I’ll be buried under a big pile of tomatoes in my kitchen. If you’ve got a great recipe or two for me to try, send it along. I’ll be running out of ideas sometime around Wednesday, I’m sure!