Check out this gigantic pumpkin, grown with Biota Max treated soil!
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In a small skillet, saute onions in olive oil until tender. Add tomatoes and cook 1 minute longer. Remove from heat and add basil. Stir and cool in fridge until cold. In the bowl of your food processor fitted with the steel blade, put the dry ingredients and pulse to mix. Add butter and pulse until it forms pea sized lumps in the flour. Add tomato/onion/basil mixture and pulse until blended. Slowly add 1/2 cup half and half, pulsing until mix comes together into a ball. Add more if needed and mix only until dough comes together. Roll out 1/2″ thick and cut with biscuit cutter. If you want drop biscuits, add a little more half and half so that dough is wet. Mix egg with a little half and half and beat with a fork. Paint tops of biscuits with this egg wash. Bake at 425° until golden brown, about 10 – 12 minutes.
By now all of you Florida gardeners should have your seeds started. If you don’t, there are plenty of seed starting systems available, and it’s not too late to plant your seeds. If you get them started this week, You’ll be able to move them into your outside beds in mid-October, at 6 weeks old. Gardener’s Supply has these nifty seed starting kits that I’ve used in the past. I liked them a lot and was able to re-use them for a couple of years. These particular ones, shown at the right, have little plastic pots that sit in a base that sits on a tray with a mat that holds water. Like the basil pictured here, you have the option of starting several plants in each pot, then separating them later. I prefer to just plant one seed per pot so I don’t have to separate them. I just let them grow until they’re ready to be transplanted into the garden. Seed starting requires artificial lighting if you’re going to start your seeds indoors. The Florida summer sun is way too hot for these fragile little seedlings, so I start mine on my screened in lanai (the heat is actually good – helps them to germinate) under grow lights. I also like these starter kits because as the plants grow, I can move them around so that the taller plants can go at one end. My light is adjustable as well, so I can hang it at an angle, keeping the light about 3″ above the tops of the seedlings. Watching these baby plants grow is rewarding for me, and there are varieties of seeds available that I can’t find in plants. Starting my own seedlings is the best and least expensive way to get the garden that I want. Here’s a link to buy these starter kits. 2″ Self-Watering Transplant Pots, Set of 40 Happy gardening! 
If you’re serving this immediately, do the avocados when you prep your veggies. If you want to serve later, don’t dice the avos until ready to serve, then add the cubes to each serving or the leftovers will turn brown and make the whole mix unappealing. We eat this like chunky soup so there are few leftovers!
Slice the onion first, “wafer thin,” then squeeze one lime or lemon over it (at least 1 Tbsp of juice), add a good hefty pinch of coarse salt, and scrunch the onions with the salt and lime (or lemon). This will “pickle” and take the heat out of the onions but leave the onion taste. Set aside while you prep the rest of the stuff and add it back in with the avos.
Mix the rest of the ingredients together, toss and serve with tortilla scoops or sturdy chips.
*** Once you dice up the cuke, sprinkle it with salt and let it sit in a colander to extract the extra water. The longer you let it sit the more juice will come out.
Combine all ingredients except cabbage in a large pot. Bring to a boil and stir until salt is dissolved. Turn off heat and add cabbage, making sure all the cabbage is covered with the brine. Put lid on and let it cool slowly. Store in refrigerator in a large container with a lid. (I use old sour cream containers.) It’s ready to enjoy in a week, and the garlic gets better the longer it soaks in the brine. These keep for weeks and weeks in the fridge. I think of all the pickles I’ve made, this pickled cabbage is the best. And the garlic is just delicious, a real treat once it’s pickled for a month or so. Sorry folks. My garden has turned into boxes of weeds, albeit some of them are flowering beautifully and will soon drop seeds… I have been uninspired to pay attention to it for two reasons:
We are believing to find a new place to live in time for us to make a new garden. I suppose I could start some seedlings as a believing action. When I do plant my next garden, I really want to grow my own plantlets from seed. That way I can grow what I want to grow. The tomato grow bags had an unsuccessful season. I got no tomatoes on my brandywine heirloom. Not a single tomato. I think it was already too warm to set fruit. The better boy got a few tomatoes until the weather got hot. Tomatoes like cool nights, which we lack in the summer. You will be hearing from me on a more regular basis from now on, I promise. I’ll be seed shopping and sharing some things with you from the wonderful world of vegetable seeds. Stay tuned… and as always, Happy gardening!
For all of us South Florida gardeners, August is the month to start our seeds, so July is the time to make the plans for our gardens. Utilizing square foot gardening principles, I’ve found that I can cram a LOT of vegetables into a small space. One year I started over 200 seedlings and still went out and bought plants. There are 2 things to keep in mind when planning your garden: spacing needed for each plant and how tall the plants will get. Vegetables need full sun, at least 6 hours a day, and you don’t want to shade any plants by putting them to the north of something taller. Even tomatoes grow to different heights, and the store bought plants rarely give their height. As a rule of thumb, indeterminate plants grow tall – up to 7 feet tall, determinate plants are shorter, usually around 4 feet, and bush type are short bushes. Most seed packets give the eventual height and desired spacing of the plants. You can easily figure out the spacing from this information, bearing in mind that you don’t need space between rows because you won’t have rows. Just go by the spacing within the rows AFTER thinning. Why waste seeds by thinning? If the spacing is 6″ between plants, then you know you can plant 4 per square foot. 4″ spacing = 9 per square foot. 3″ spacing = 16 per square foot, etc. Keep your nightshades together as they like the same kind of plant food, and keep your cole veggies together as well, one per square foot. Tomatoes and eggplants need root room, so I give them at least 16″ of space. Start looking at seeds on line or in your catalogues. Decide now what you want to plant, and get your seedlings started indoors under a grow light by August 15th. Ideally, you should set your plants out the first week of October to harden off, and be ready to plant them by mid October. Happy planning!
I got another seed catalogue in the mail today from Burpee, one of America’s great producers of heirloom seeds, hybrids and plants. One of their tomatoes, “Brandy Boy” is a favorite of mine, and whenever I start my tomatoes from seed, I always include a few of these beauties. The vines are huge, and when caged they’re over 8′ high They sport large potato like leaves and each plant usually bears between 10 and 20 large pink beefsteaks at a time, and keep producing throughout the season. Burpee claims that this particular hybrid is one of their best tasting tomatoes. I agree. They’re what a beefsteak tomato is all about to me: the right balance between sweet, tangy and savory, and between gel and fleshy pulp. One of the things that drives me nuts about living down here in opposite gardening world of Zone 10 is that the plant growers – all of them that I’ve found – don’t ship any plants, even to zone 10, until APRIL!!! By then, our growing season is over for tomatoes and it’s time to plant the summer cover crop of sweet potatoes. If I want to grow any of these beautiful varieties, I’ll have to start the plants from seeds, which is easy enough. Imagine my delight to see this beauty on the cover of this year’s new catalogue. The name of this is Tye-Dye tomato, and is one of Burpee’s beautiful new hybrids. Just the name itself makes me want to grow it. But really, isn’t this a pretty tomato? The enticingly beautiful photographs make me want to order a bunch of plants, but alas, they would not thrive here in the burning sun of south Florida with a ship date of March or April. I will order a packet of these seeds and others, however, to keep in an old mayo jar in my fridge until seed starting time which this year will be in early August. That will allow the seedlings to grow under controlled lighting until they’re 7 – 8 weeks old. (Early October is the best time to get your garden planted here, as it will afford you the longest harvest.) I also like the look of this tomato, and love the different orange color! This year since I’ll be starting seeds, I’d like to grow a variety of colored tomatoes. I’ve grown Cherokee Purple before and it’s prolific, an heirloom that’s stood the test of time. Black Krim is another purple tomato. There are so many choices for every crop. I keep the catalogues around (they make great bathroom reading) for months, deciding what I want to plant and where to put it. Shop the catalogues, write down what you want, then PLAN OUT YOUR NEXT GARDEN before ordering seeds. I’ve tried to save seeds from one year to another and the frustration of seeds that don’t germinate delays my garden. It’s not worth it, when a packet of seeds is usually under $5. I’ll try not to over-buy this year. I have plenty of time to sight see!
One thing I did notice the last time I was outside in the garden is that the Brandy Boy tomato which grew so beautifully (it’s now over 7′ tall!) has NO fruit on it. Zip. Zero. Squada. I think it’s been too hot for the vines to set fruit. I did get some Better Boy tomatoes, however, and they have been a delight. But I’m reduced to buying hot house beefsteak tomatoes from Sam’s Club. They’re ok; even though they look anemic they have some taste. Nothing beats a good home grown tomato, but you deal with the weather you’re dealt.
I usually buy bare root plants from one of the garden supply places on line. Here in South Florida, the variety Bauregard grows especially well. I plant 1 per sqauare foot (don’t worry, they spread out and multiply quickly) and that’s it. When I get the bare root plants, they look half dead. The last time I got them, because the weather was inclement, it took a few weeks before I could plant them. I kept them in a vase of water on the counter. They did just fine. In fact, they’re very hard to kill. Even after planting them, they all fell down flat and looked dead. But in a week, they were perked up and thriving. Within weeks I had a lush ground cover of beautiful vines. Three months later I had spuds. Digging up sweet potatoes requires a pitch fork of some kind so you don’t mar the potatoes. There are always a few newer, smaller tubers hanging from the top vines, but the real treasures are deeper in the soil. Gently lift them to the surface with the fork or your hands, and let them dry for a day on the surface of the soil. Then brush the dirt off and store them in a cool dry place. They’ll keep for weeks as long as they’re not damp. Happy gardening! |
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