A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Many times ripe tomatoes fall to the ground during the growing season. Oftentimes birds or squirrels will eat the fruit before we have a chance to pick it. Most of the time when I find tomatoes with big holes in them, I'll pluck them off the vine and toss them over the fence to our hens.  They make quick work of the tomatoes. Sometimes, however, the tomato falls to the ground, ferments in the summer heat, and dissolves into the ground.

The seeds, coming from heirloom, open-pollinated seed-stock, when the time is right, sprout and grow.  "Volunteer" plants, we call them.  I have several tomatoes coming up like that on numerous rows that are currently growing our Fall crops.  I really don't know what variety of tomato it is.  Here is one in the photo below that is competing for space with some healthy bok choy.  The tomato plant is very healthy, too, but will get knocked out when the first frost comes.

I don't have a hot house to move them to in order to save them.  A couple of years ago, I dug plants like this up and put them in pots in my garage to try to get some fruit off of them.  Really, I think you need a greenhouse for this, as I never had any success.  A friend of ours grew some beautiful tomatoes from plants like this, but she told us that they just didn't have any taste.  Maybe being outdoors in the sunshine, fresh air, cooling and warming temperature and rainfall is what gives homegrown vegetables their incredible flavor - flavor that is hard to reproduce in artificial conditions.

A tomato plant competing for space

You know it is really too bad that these tomatoes won't have an opportunity to produce fruit before the cold weather comes.  The average frost date according to this link is November 10th and that is only a week away.  What a beautiful flower this is!  It would have made a great-eating tomato, I'm sure.

There are times when I feel like this tomato.  I get an idea or a dream that I wait around and wait around and by the time I start moving on it, it's too late, and the idea or dream sort of withers and dies on the vine.  Timing is everything and often I'm a day late and a dollar short.  There are two good quotes about this very thing:

"The early bird catches the worm."   

But there is another quote that is equally true:

"While the early bird catches the worm, the second mouse gets the cheese!" 

A little too late!

The rest of the post is about a few things that the timing is right on.  Here are some turnip seedlings that are popping up out of the ground like popcorn.  While we'll eat a few of the smaller turnips and eat some of the greens, these turnips are largely for the benefit of the cows.  During the cold winter months when the pasture has grown brown and dormant and all the cows are eating on is hay, they really welcome cut up turnips and turnip greens that I'll toss them over the garden fence.

Future Feast for the cows

This picture captures a couple of very young Contender green beans that are just starting to grow.  In the background you can make out a bloom or two that hopefully will have time to turn into beans that we can harvest and cook.  Although the average frost is approaching quickly, this area of the garden where the beans are planted are shielded by the canopy of an oak tree that might provide some protection from winter's first frosty grip.  I love green beans and hope that we can harvest a bunch before the freezing weather gets them.  An added plus is that the plants are fixing nitrogen in the ground.  It is kind of cool that they produce their own fertilizer.

Green beans for the pot

The broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants are growing nicely and I'll give them a good spraying of fish emulsion soon for a foliar feeding.  They've been mulched with hay and now all the hard work is done.  We'll just wait for them to get ripe, not unlike the cows who wait by the garden fence for us to toss them weeds/leaves, etc.

Brassicas growing & Cows begging

Speaking of the cows, they'll be sorry to learn that I just read an article about eating the leaves and stem of broccoli.  Often, people just pick off the florets, but the leaves and the stem provide great nutrition, fiber and flavor to your meal as well.  Sorry girls, looks like you'll have to stick with the turnips!  It won't be very long now before we'll be able to start seeing heads develop.  

Soon!

I won't be late when it's time to harvest the winter crop...