Heirloom Tomatoes

It's been a long wait, but our most anticipated crop for 2009, our heirloom tomatoes, are all ripe! After a busy weekend, we went out to the tomato patch yesterday (Sunday, after we closed) to check how they were doing, and even the late varieties had a couple of ripe fruit waiting to be picked. Needless to say, we had a yummy dinner of bread and cheese and tomatoes (along with a glass of red wine), sampling all the different heirlooms. They all have different flavours and textures, but to sum up, they all are great tomatoes, and it was impossible to choose a favourite.

I'll do a detailed entry on each variety in the days ahead, but here is a quick summary of the varieties in the photo. I took the picture (before we started eating) on our kitchen counter, and the colours are quite accurate (Brandywine Pink is pinker than pictured). There are two of each variety, one stem side up, the other stem side down. Starting at the upper right, Aunt Ruby's German Green is ripe, and tastes just like a red tomato. Green spaghetti anyone? Amana Orange looks almost the same as Brandywine Yellow, hard to tell them apart without knowing where in the field they were picked. Brandywine Pink is the classic heirloom tomato, and it's flavour lived up to its reputation. Cherokee Purple is a dark purple tomato with a solid, yet soft, texture. Brandywine Red and Brandywine Pink came from two different seed companies, each labeled simply as "Brandywine". I had a sneaking suspicion they might be different, and you can see that I was right (yes, it does happen). The three smaller tomatos are all striped, we especially liked the Green Zebra. Carbon is similar to Cherokee Purple, it's slightly oranger, and less "beefsteak" in shape.

World's largest tomatillo?

The summer veggies are starting to come in, including tomatillos! As you can see they are doing great. Usually they are about the size of a plum, maybe as big as a large strawberry, but this one is a handful. The kids are away, so I took this one on the kitchen counter. Same variety as other years, and bigger than anything you'll see in Mexico too, according to our tomatillo guru!

Never heard of a tomatillo? They are not well known in our neck of the woods, but super popular in Mexico and the southern U.S. where they are used to make Salsa Verde. Salsa Verde is a delicious green salsa, if you've never had it, it is a must try. Here's our favourite recipe:

Roasted Salsa Verde

1 quart tomatillos
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic
1 (or more) serrano or jalapeño peppers
¼ cup fresh cilantro
½ fresh juice of a lime

Remove husks from tomatillos, rinse. Place tomatillos, onion, garlic, and chiles on cookie sheet, and place under broiler until skins brown. Cool and puree. Add cilantro and lime juice prior to serving.
Keeps three days in refrigerator, freezes well.


If you're interested in blogging, and love food, Julie & Julia is a film not to be missed. Meryl Streep is absolutely superb as Julia Child. I think I put on a couple of pounds just watching the movie! Bon apitite!

Tomatoes 01 - Black Zebra

I went for a stroll through the tomato patch today, and look what I found! It's one of our new tomato varieties this year, called "Black Zebra". It's a heirloom variety, large cherry sized, dark red with green stripes, and the flavour? Well, we were so busy eating it (there were only two ripe ones), we almost forgot to take it's picture! Full of flavour, sweet, nice and acidic, the way a tomato is supposed to taste. Firm texture.

Tomato Taste Test #1
Since it's early in the season and our tomatoes are not quite ready, we had bought some at market -a few greenhouse tomatoes, and some field grown yellow cherries (both from local farms, of course). The standard greenhouse tomato had a nice flavour, and looked beautiful. The yellow cherry tasted better, it was very sweet, but not acidic enough. Our Black Zebra was the ugliest (it had skin blemishes characteristic of most heirloom varieties), but in terms of flavour, it was the clear winner. Ok, maybe we're biased, but what the heck. Stay tuned for more tomatoes, we've got about two dozen varieties this year! Ahhh, two and a half months of great cheese and tomato sandwiches!

Zucchini Blossoms

Beautiful to look at, and delicious to eat. We use them to make quesadillas. I'll put a detailed recipe up on our website soon, but basically you remove the stem from the blossoms, and fry them up with a bit of onion, then add it to your tortilla with the cheese. Yummy.

They're best picked first thing in the morning -the blooms open, so they look lovely, and it's easy to shake out any bugs! They keep best in water, and should be used the day they are picked.

Views of our Garden

Here are a few highlights from our garden this year. I guess you can say we do a pretty good job of growing flowers in our greenhouses, but I must confess to almost completely ignoring our garden. Here is an assortment of flowers we're growing this year that are doing well, in spite of neglect!


Mini Cascade Red Hanging Baskets: These are simply the best hanging baskets you can possibly grow. Almost all you can see is colour, the pot is completely covered with a profusion of blooms that last from May until October. It's completely maintenance free, with an invisible wire hanger, all you need to do is water (and they like it on the dry side which is great if you're not good at remembering to water!). We even add slow release fertilizer so you don't need to bother with that.




Sparkler Cleome: This tall background flower is another of our maintenance free favourites. Plant it. Ignore it. Extremely drought tolerant.






SuperBells Dreamsicle Calibrachoa: Commonly known as "Million Bells", these flowers bloom and bloom all season. They're easy to look after, all you have to do is water them. In this planter, we've combined them with Horizon Orange Ice Geraniums.














Tidal Wave Petunias: Best flower bang for your buck!

What do farm kids do in the summer?

Ahhh, summer on the farm, endless hours of picking, weeding, chores, chores, and more chores. Work the kids from dawn to dusk, they'll thank you for it when they're older! Well maybe not. It's not our philosophy anyway, and we don't want the kids to grow up hating our farm.

This summer, Rebecca spent a week at sailing camp (at the BS&BC here in Burlington at LaSalle Park), and as you can see from her smile, she had a great time. In the photo she's sailing an "Optomist" (Opti's) back to dock after a morning out on the water.

Our family took up sailing a couple of years ago. It is a great way to escape (mentally and physically) from the stresses of the farm. We go out on our Laser 2 when we have the chance, which isn't nearly as often as we'd like.

Are you my Mother?

A Mother bird sat on her egg. The egg jumped.
“Oh oh!” said the mother bird, "My baby will be here! He will want to eat."
"I must get something for my baby bird to eat!" she said, "I will be back!"
So away she went.
The egg jumped. It jumped, and jumped, and jumped! Out came the baby bird!

The baby bird sat up and looked around.
"Mother!" he said, "What have you done to the tree?"
"This is not a tree, this is a hanging basket!"
"And what are those large, noisy, two legged, flesh coloured, creatures doing in my story?"
"I am not in the right story!" "Help!"

This May was pretty cool, so the kids weren't spending much time out by the swimming pool. A robin decided she found the perfect spot for her nest -quiet, secluded, sheltered. Oops. We had a robin trying to build a nest in a couple of hanging baskets in our greenhouses in early May. It's a bit puzzling as to why there are pieces of string coming out of the hanging basket, but it all makes sense when you have a closer look and find a partially built nest in it! I move those hanging baskets before the mother robin gets settled in, and I guess she gave up on the greenhouse subdivision, and started building on the waterfront property! She chose to build in a Calliope Red Geranium basket -new and trendy indeed !
We're carefully watering the flowers so the leaves continue to provide shelter for the four baby birds, other than that we try to leave them alone. We've had nests in hanging baskets before, and the birds make out just fine.