Time to Grow a Garden
Last year, my youngest daughter went to visit a local farm to learn about agriculture. The kids planted pumpkins and at the end of their visit they each skipped away with a young tomato start. As soon as she came home she promptly and enthusiastically nestled it into our empty garden boxes. Getting to the garden was always an “I should” thought, but in reality my time was short and I wasn’t really interested in taking care of one more thing so the seasons went round and round and nothing was ever planted.
Once the plant was firmly in the ground, she diligently watered it and low and behold, the thing actually grew, and grew, and grew until it spread over the entire 4 X 4 garden box and eventually out onto the patio below. Then large orbs began to show up, turned red and we had a harvest larger than anything we could keep up with.
Flash forward a year and during this lengthy time spent puttering around the house due to quarantine I thought to myself, well if there’s anytime to grow a garden, it’s now. Lack of time certainly isn’t an excuse anymore. Armed with false confidence, I went to the garden store to buy amendment for the soil, scooped and folded it into the existing soil and placed an order for starts from a friend and neighbor, Christina of Sprig & Sprout, who grows starts at her home and sells locally at a variety of farmers markets around town.
At the top of my tomato list is the Sweet 100. Plucked from the vine and eaten on the spot, the bright, glowing, fiery sunset orb is sweet and tart with a snappy skin that bursts in your mouth. And since rain, growing temperatures and light are not as abundant as our neighbors to the south, I figured the smaller the tomato the more likely I’d actually see it come to fruition. In it went with another small red variety, Juliet, and another favorite, albeit larger variety, Green Zebra, as well as complementing herbs: basil, mint, tarragon and lemon verbena. I watered and waited. And low and behold, they grew. They grew so prolifically that I didn’t even have a chance to get a cage wrapped around the Sweet 100 and now it has overshadowed and overcrowded the herbs and taken over. As I write this, only a few have ripened and been enjoyed but they are everything and more than the ones I buy at the farmers market because I grew them. And is there anything more calming than the scent that wafts from tomato plants after running your hands over the branches? I think not. So we sit nightly in the hammock next to the tomato plants to breath in their beauty and relax.
Last week when I was invited to a friends house for a socially distanced al fresco dinner, I brought tomato tarts. The added benefit of owning a bakery is that you can grab extra dough from work and come home to assemble a fast and easy dish that seems to be more than the sum of its parts. The dough I used is made with freshly milled rye flour, giving it a robust flavor similar in fragrance to dry fields after a day in the blazing sunshine. I folded the dough around a smear of soft cheese, a few halves of orange and red tomatoes tossed this way and that, a spoonful of olive oil, a grind of pepper, a sprinkle of salt, a grate of parmesan and then into the oven they went. Some chopped basil was tossed over the top when they emerged from the oven, and then these individual (no contact!) snacking tarts were enjoyed on the back patio under the shade of a giant pine tree with a glass of rosé in hand.
These tarts are available for preorder on August 8th and 9th in both individual and large sizes.