In the Victory Garden

The Victory Garden

Lots of delicious tomatoes!

The Victory garden is doing very well this year.  The garden is planted rather close but all the plants are healthy and some growing overnight!  The tomatoes have been the star of the garden.  Even with loosing some plants at first there are close to 30 tomato plants several volunteering from last years seeds!  There are 6 Early and Best Girls, 6 cherry 100's, a Brandywine heirloom, six random heirlooms, some odds and ends tomatoes and of course the volunteers!  They are growing so close together that it is hard to tell which plant the tomato is on!  One of the tomato plants looks like a Black Krim, it just started setting fruit so it will take a while before we know what it is!

Last week we finally had more tomatoes then we could eat so I put them in the oven to dry.  I've had good luck using the pilot light in the gas oven to dry tomatoes and afterward I froze them for the winter.  But I just couldn't wait to eat them so I put them in the oven at 250 degrees.  Then I added a handful of 5 different types of fresh basil leaves, a splash of white wine and a little Balsamic vinegar and lots of olive oil.  It came out great!  Lee spread the tomatoes on a sandwich of Havarti cheese.  So today when I harvested about 5 pounds of ripe tomatoes I cut them up and roasted them and Lee brought home a loaf of French bread!  So he toasted the bread with cheese and olive oil and then put on the tomatoes and sausage.  A wonderful dinner inspired by fresh tomatoes.  Definitely worth all the work in the garden and with organic tomatoes at $3.00 or more a pound helps the budget.