A Weekend Away
This past weekend I was in Cincinnati with some of my college girlfriends. The group of six become fast friends during the few months our freshman year of college back in 1994 and we’ve been getting together every year since.
It’s a weekend filled with eating, laughing, looking at photos, and staying up too late reminiscing about the good old days when we didn’t have a care in the world and were all living together in dorms and apartments.
We enjoyed a few of Cincinnati’s best like Skyline Chili and Graeter’s Ice Cream and Arthur’s.
It was a great time, it’s always nice to spend some time with old friends.
Do you have any yearly meet-up with old friends?
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The Flight of the Monarch
Earlier this year Mr Chiots and I watched The Incredible Journey of the Butterflies. It’s a documentary about the migration of the monarchs. I’ve read about this incredible natural wonder before and always thought it would be neat to see. We have a few monarchs around here in the summer, I see them occasionally, but yellow swallowtails are our most prolific butterflies.
Last night about 7:30 Mr Chiots and I headed out to take Lucy on a walk and I looked up at the sky and noticed a few butterflies flying over. Then I noticed a few more. We kept watching and noticed they were monarchs and they were clustering high in the trees above Chiot’s Run. I couldn’t get any photos because they were high up in the trees and it was getting dark. It certainly was an amazing site to see them clustering up for warmth and to see so many of them flying over. We may try to get up early to see them leave, although we’re not sure when that may be. These monarch will most likely we overwintering in Florida to return next spring. Here’s some interesting info about monarch migration if you’re interested.
Do you have monarchs in your garden?
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Quote of the Day: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.
I’ve definitely learned patience through gardening! I believe gardening is about the process not the final product, which is why I don’t buy a lot of mature plants. I prefer to start things from cuttings and spend years nurturing them into beautiful plants or start things from seed.
Has gardening helped teach you patience?
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‘Goldman’s Italian American’ Tomato
This year I decided to grow ‘Goldman’s Italian American’ tomatoes in my garden after reading about them in The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World’s Most Beautiful Fruit by Amy Goldman. Notice her last name and the name of the tomato – not a coincidence.
They’re described as: the famous Goldman’s Italian-American Tomato has ongoing production of large, red, voluptuous (large in the hip) pear shaped, paste tomatoes with exceptional flavor and few seeds. Individual tomatoes can reach one pound each. Makes one of the creamiest tomato sauces. Named by Amy Goldman for her father’s grocery store in Brooklyn after she found this at a roadside grocery store in Cernobbio, Italy.
They’re quite a lovely tomato, perhaps one of my new favorites. The vines aren’t as productive as hybrids, which is common for heirlooms, but they’re well worth the space. Most of mine have produced huge tomatoes and the sauce they make is velvety and smooth, with great tomato flavor. They’re quite beautiful as well, almost stunning. If you’ve never grown this variety I’d highly recommend giving it a try in your garden. I’ll be saving seeds from a few beautiful species of this plant and I’m hoping I’ll have some to share.
Did you discover any great new tomatoes this year? Is there a variety you grow each year without fail?
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Potatoes, Potatoes, Potatoes
If you remember this spring I was talking about having potatoes coming out my ears if all my potatoes did well. I finally harvested all the potatoes from the garden with the ‘Kennebec’ being the last ones. I was pleasantly suprised at the size of these potatoes. When I planted them this spring only about half of the potatoes came up, so I bought some more and planted them, about a month after the original ones were planted. The original ones sized up into HUGE tubers, with the ones planted later being about the size of our ‘Yukon Gold’ potatoes. I can’t imagine how many pounds I would have gotten if they had all started from the beginning.
I ended up with a harvest of around 200 pounds of potatoes for the winter. Of course I’m giving some to my mom since we planted most of them in her garden, but she also gave me some of her ‘Yukon Gold’ potatoes. I’m very pleased with our harvest, the best part is that potatoes need nothing but to be stored in a cardboard box in the basement, no canning, no freezing, no time/energy used for preservation.
A couple weeks before harvesting the ‘Kennebec’ potatoes, my mom and I harvested the fingerling potatoes. I wasn’t sure how the fingerlings would do, I assumed they would produce a smaller yield, but I was amazed when they outproduced every other kind of potato we planted. ‘La Ratta’ was the most productive potato in the garden, and I’m quite happy since they’re quite delicious and the perfect size I think, no cutting required, just wash, toss with olive oil and roast. I planted 2 varieties:
La Ratta: Long prized by French chefs as a top quality fingerling. We cannot recommend this variety highly enough, an absolute delight to cook with. Long uniform tubers, yellow flesh with firm, waxy texture and a nice nutty flavor, holds together very well. Especially good for potato salad or as a boiled potato. Commands a high price both in the restaurant and fresh market trade. 100-120 days.
French Fingerling: This is a wonderful variety! The rose-colored skin covers its creamy yellow flesh. Very versatile and good for any style of preparation. Peeling is not necessary or recommended. Rumored to have been smuggled to America in a horse’s feedbag in the 1800s. 90-110 days.
I will definitely be growing fingerling potatoes again, especially ‘La Ratta’ since they were the most productive. I’ll also be definitely grow: ‘Kennebec’, ‘All-Red’, and ‘Purple Viking’. I’ll probably try a few new varieties next year since that’s one of the reasons I garden, to try new things. I’m sure that my garden will always have a nice space devoted to the lowly potato.
Do you grow potatoes? How was your harvest this year?
