Hey, Mom

I can always tell when spring is here. I buy seeds and plan my garden layout. This year I am also going to buy a small electric tiller. My garden is fairly small, so it should do a good job. I tossed a lot of nice compost into the garden last fall, and it needs to be tilled in before I plant. I am also going to add two or three new grape plants this year. I bought seeds for peas, pole beans, spinach, and baby romaine lettuce. I saved seeds from my butternut squash, so I’m curious to see if I can start new plants from those. I previously had no luck with that and had to buy plants.

As always, I will start my tomato plants indoors. I save some seeds from my favorite pink beefsteak tomatoes and they are good producers year after year. I also bought some heirloom seeds that will be fun to try. I love garden tomatoes. Nothing I can buy in a store comes close to their taste. Tomatoes take time, energy, and patience, but they’re worth the effort. We’re still enjoying the tomatoes I canned last summer.

Over the winter, I discovered a tip for keeping the blight off my tomatoes. When I plant my tomatoes, I need to plant them deep, up to the leaves, but then prune off any leaves that touch the ground. Also I need to mulch well to keep the soil and the plant from becoming too close. Blight spores live on in the soil. Continued pruning should help.

Of course, I know that I should rotate my crops by planting the tomatoes in a different spot than I did the year before. Tomato blight is a huge frustration. I do not like to put chemicals on my garden, so finding organic ways to deal with pests, both critter and otherwise is my choice.

As for the rabbit problem we had last winter (they nibbled nearly all of our raspberry canes to the top of the snow), our new fence seems to be very successful. While our poor, fenceless neighbor’s garden was a salad bar for the neighborhood rabbits, ours was not. We should have a lot of wonderful raspberries this year.

By the way, the best rabbit repellent is a roaming cat or two.

Fresh from the garden tomatoes are one of the simple joys of life. I always overplant just to make sure I will have enough tomatoes. We are just about to start getting ripe tomatoes and I know that once they start ripening, I will have more than I can handle.

I try to use as many of them as I can fresh. But if they start to go bad, the idea of tossing them out is simply abhorrent.

One of the cardinal sins of tomatoes is putting them in the refrigerator. You may think that you’re preserving them, but what you’re really doing is robbing them of all flavor. Just keep tomatoes out on the counter or in a decorative bowl on a table or in a basket.

Give extras away before you put them in the fridge. Or preserve them for later use.

I do not can. Instead, I freeze. It’s very simple. I wash the tomatoes, core them, and then cut into cubes. Usually I cut them in half, then the halves into four pieces (or six if the tomato is larger). Then I place the “cubes” skin side down on a cookie sheet and plop them into the freezer. Once the tomatoes become “ice cubes,” I put them into quart sized freezer bags and they go straight into the deep freeze.

If you will store them in a regular freezer, they won’t last as long. Frost free freezers are always heating up and cooling down, which is why you get freezer burn. But tomatoes stored in a deep freeze will last for about a year (maybe even a little longer).

I use my frozen tomatoes in a couple of ways:

• add a few to soups or sauces (simply remove unwanted skins that slough off before serving)
• use as a base for chili
• use a a “fresh” tomato sauce for pasta

It’s best to add them to recipes in their frozen state. If you thaw them out first, you will lose a lot of juice.

Thawed tomatoes are never good for simply eating. They will be mush, so it’s best to use them for sauces and soups.