In My San Diego Garden and Kitchen

At last, tomatoes. Not too many but some for salads and slicing. The black cherry tomatoes, that we call explosion tomatoes, explode with flavor when popped in your mouth.

These are my explosion tomatoes from 2014. I found some saved seed squirreled away and decided to see if it would germinate. I had given seed to Brijette at San Diego Seed Company when I first grew them. She liked the black cherry tomatoes and added them to her organic offerings.

When I grew them again from her seed they were more rounded and larger, not quite like my original explosion tomatoes. Seeds do these things. So when the first tomatoes showed themselves on my plant this summer I was pleased to see their very distinct oval shape and dark coloration—just like my 2014 explosion tomatoes.

I’m pleased with the Rosella Purple dwarf tomatoes from San Diego Seed Company. I wrote earlier about my decision to stake everything on dwarf tomatoes in Dwarf Tomatoes: Rethinking Tomatoes in the Fog Belt (Again). Despite their late planting, a cool, overcast summer and tomato hornworms, they’re giving us some tomatoes. The Chocolate Lightning dwarf plant, a later variety is yet to come.

My husband and I have traipsed to the garden a few nights to hand pick small hornworms identified with a UV flashlight. They glow in the dark adding to their weird mix of wonder and horror.

With the gifts of Sungold tomatoes and homemade sourdough bread I made Tomato Panzanella. I usually serve it over my own arugula, but it’s not the season. I should have used my French sorrel.

We feasted on the last of the Sugar Pearl corn. Though the ears were smaller in the second planting, they were still as sweet and tender as the earlier ones. Despite allowing the Emerite pole beens to set seed a mini harvest continues and most is blanched for the freezer. An updated version of three bean salad escaped photo capture.

This week’s “bouquet” is visible from my dining room window and I see the Japanese anemones dozens of times a day as I pass by. The plants came from my sister’s garden in Ventura many years ago. They were blooming on her birthday, September 9.

Check the What I’m Planting Now page as I begin soon to sow seeds for the cool season garden. Then head today to Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Happy Acres blog and see what garden bloggers around the world harvested last week.

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