Monday, October 4, 2010

My October Surprise: Tomatoes and 'Shrooms?

While most of the leaves have dried up and turned brown, I still have ripening fruit on three of my tomato plants. These are Celebrities, and I have Moskvitches and Brandywines on the vine. With the cooler days and nights, and the lower sun in the sky setting earlier in the afternoon, I'm not sure they'll all ripen, but I'm going to leave them on the plants until the very last day. I check the weather online everyday, and will pretty much know when the first frost is coming, and I'll go out and pick whatever is left. Fried Green Tomatoes, anyone?

I'm not a mycologist, and I don't even play one on TV, so I won't be ingesting these cute little Mushrooms. They're popping up all over the garden now that we're getting more rain and most of the vegetables have been pulled. Notice the leaves on the ground. Very few trees have turned color yet, almost none in fact, but I'm still seeing a lot of dead leaves blowing around. I hope it's not going to be one of those years where the leaves just drop instead of putting on a show first!

B O N U S   P H O T O — Not a tomato or mushroom, and this dahlia wasn't pink or blue for the post below, so it's a bonus photo today, lol. The centers are purple until they open up to a uniform cranberry color. I wish all of my dahlias had started flowering earlier, the variations in flowers on each plant this year is absolutely fascinating. I'm really going to try to save the corms over the winter. I'm going to pull them after the first killing frost, and keep them dry and cool (but not cold) in boxes filled with sphagnum moss. Hopefully they'll go dormant but not die and I can plant them next May 15th.

8 comments:

  1. I'll vote for fried green tomatoes before I let them go to waste. I Don't know anything about mushrooms in the wild. There is lots of stuff online which I took a peek at but didn't find anything that looked like what you've got there.

    Happy Monday Morning.

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  2. ME TOO ANNIE. LETS HAVE LUNCH TODAY.CALL MARE AND WE'LL COOK UP SOME GREEN FRIED TOMATOES. YUM, SO GOOD.
    CASEY, I DON'T KNOW WHY BUT I REALLY LOVE THE MUSHROOM PICTURE. YOU JUST HAVE A WAY WITH A CAMERA. MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER IS A PICTURE TAKER. IS TAKER A WORD. IF NOT, I JUST MADE ONE UP. MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE SAID,SHE LIKES TO TAKE PICTURES. WHO CARES, I LIKE TO SHORTEN SENTENCES OR MAKE UP NEW WORDS. SHE'S MORE INTO KID PICTURES, I NEVER WAS ONE TO GRAB A CAMERA. FILM WAS NEVER IN THE BUDGET. GRAMPS AND I SHOULD HAVE OUR PICTURE TAKEN. MAYBE SOMEDAY.
    WHEN YOU PICK THAT LAST TOMATO HAVE SOMEONE TAKE A PICTURE OF YOU PICKING IT. POST IT SO WE CAN SEE THE END OF SUMMER.

    GRANNY

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  3. My uncle would go into the woods with a basket and come back with it full of mushrooms. They never killed anyone, which was nice. He was a city boy. I don't know where he got the mushroom thing.
    Never came back with truffles. :{

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  4. apparently there aren't that many mushrooms that are actually poisonous, but you never know.... they're cheap enough in the stores!

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  5. This dahlia is beautiful - I think a deep red and purple color combination is very exotic.
    Whether fried green or eaten ripe, a tomato shouldn't be wasted. I'll take mine either way.
    I wouldn't take the chance on wild mushrooms either, My local market has no less than 3 varieties every time I shop. And their prewashed, lol.

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  6. can't beat prewashed! usually the ones that are sliced are the same price too, so I get those. I have enough to do in the kitchen, so prewashed and precut is just fine with me!

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  7. The tomatoes that are still green at (pre) first frost can be wrapped in newspaper and put in a brown paper bag. They will ripen to a much less vivid color and their taste will be rather delicate but they will smell like tomatoes and have the texture of a ripe tomato. We did this at home for years because the man next door would bring over a lot of the last picking.

    Paul, NYC

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  8. thanks Paul! I've heard that newspaper and bag thing before but wasn't sure about it. I think I have another week at least, according to the local 8-day forecast. i'm starting to bring in my indoor plants that I put outside for the summer. I brought in my two Shamrocks and Poinsettia today. Last year is the first time my Poinsettia turned red for christmas and it's twice as big this year.

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