I Win!

I got the first tomato! I'm not counting the few cherry tomatoes I ate in the garden this morning. I'm talking the very large Italian Heirloom tomato that has been slowly ripening and which I didn't pick yesterday as it was not perfectly ripe. Tonight it shared center stage with freshly dug fingerling potatoes and a perfectly ripe avocado for dinner. I must say that while very simple and only vegetable the dinner was close to perfection. The small fingerling potatoes(Austrian Crescent) that were unearthed this afternoon were steamed until just barely tender. The FIRST tomato was thinly sliced and drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and kissed with just a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt and a brief whisper of freshly ground pepper. The avocado was halved and sliced with a squeeze of fresh lime juice. Nothing fancy but damn fine victuals and a memorable first tomato/first potato celebration.

I did actually get some work done today before I reveled in the FIRST tomato. Somehow I underestimated the vigor of some of the tomato plants and spent a lot of time adding extensions to the stakes. Some of the tomato plants are now over 8 feet tall which presents a real problem when I used 6 foot stakes and tomato cages. That will teach me to be a little penurious with the horse manure when I prepare the tomato beds.

The first major harvest of green beans today as well and I spent part of the very hot afternoon freezing 6 quarts of beans. That is the first preservation from this year's garden except for a couple of small packages of snow peas. We are on our way. The beans are just starting to produce so there will be many more packages of beans frozen and I planted more beans a coupe of weeks ago.