Asian Caprese

Sometimes when using ingredients from your garden you have to improvise. I had a big variety of tomato (Celebrity) but it only produced one tomato and it still is not ripe yet. The Celebrity tomatoes skin is also split due to a slight drought and then excess watering. Given all that I have abandoned my one Celebrity tomato. Today I wanted to make a salad but didn't have any lettuce or spinach ready in the garden. I did have plenty of.....


Thai Basil,

Yellow Pear Tomatoes,
and a block of Mozzarella cheese, I would have rather used the fresh mozzarella....but this works.
I de-stemmed the basil, cut the mozzarella into cubes, and sliced the tomatoes down the long ways to keep there artistic shape.

After plating the salad I sprinkled some rock salt over it, and poured some olive oil and balsimic vinegar. YUM!

Yesterday I also bought a pressure canner so that I could can my tomatoes and peppers. At first I was just going to make salsa but I decided that I really don't eat that much salsa and there are so many recipes that I want to try with my peppers and tomatoes so I decided to just can them so that I could use them as I see fit throughout the winter.

My compost pile is starting to get pretty big and hopefully I will have enough compost for my garden next year. I also plan on buying some chicken manure at the local nursery.

In a couple of weeks I am going to dig up yet another part of my yard and create my pumpkin patch for next year. It is going to be in the front yard so I am a bit worried about dogs and kids but pumpkins are tough so I'm not that worried. I also think the neighborhood kids would love to watch the pumpkins grow because I think they are by far the most fascinating fruit to watch develop!

Here is today's harvest. I have slowly been collecting the yellow pear tomatoes and I have a couple of Roma as well but not nearly as many as hoped for. Next year I am going to double the amount of Roma plants and hopefully have enough to make a couple of sauces and can them. My carrots are doing great though. I have been able to pull about five a week and leave the rest in the ground. I will probably pull the rest of my harvest withing the next couple of weeks. These carrots must be eaten raw because if I cook them at all I wouldn't be able to enjoy their intense flavor.


This is a green zebra striped tomato. This plant had a hard time and I am happy that I have the three tomatoes I have on this plant. They are supposed to get a bit bigger so hopefully the are able to ripen completely. I may pick them earlier and let them finish to ripe on my window sill. I planted this plant in a pot that turned out to be way to small for it. I just didn't realize how big it was going to get! Lesson learned for next year.

Besides the small yield from my tomato plants I have been very successful with my peppers! Each plant has multiple peppers on it and all of my varieties are doing very well.

Chocolate Beauty sweet pepper

Jalapeno

Mariachi pepper

I also have three Habanero plants, and a yellow sweet pepper plant that are all doing nicely but I haven't taken pictures of them yet. I have already tried a Mariachi pepper and it was delicious!

I also have about four pumpkins ripening on the vine. I'm happy to have that many considering the difficult time I had with pollination. Here is a picture of my biggest one thus far.....