How I Strung My Tomatoes

Last year Hannah posted a video showing how she strung up her tomatoes rather than staking them and I thought it was a great idea. Since mine are planted in raised beds this year, I thought I'd give it a shot.

First I took these big metal whatchamacallits that I found in my basement and nailed them to the corners of the raised beds.

Then I tied a stick to the top connecting the two whatchamacallits. I put one nail directly in front of each tomato plant to attach the string. After I placed the string in the proper locations and tied them to the nails, I pulled the tomato plants up and tied them to the string.

Right away the tomatoes were pulled up off the giant squash and now more of them hang over the edge of the raised beds. This should help with the space problem.

Do you have a creative way to stake tomatoes? Be sure to tell me about it so I can put it on my list to try next year.

Technorati Tags: staking tomatoes,stringing tomatoes,organic veggie gardening

Another Day, Another Broccoli Raab Post

I harvested the Broccoli Raab this morning before work. Apparently you can eat the heads, the leaves and the flowers. I decided to use it to make a simple pasta dish. I sauteed onion, garlic, mushrooms and crushed red pepper in olive oil then added the green stuff. I dumped it over some cooked Penne pasta. It tastes pretty darn good!

The problem is that the Rapini shrinks a lot and I really needed about 4 times as much as I had.

Anybody wanna come over for pasta?

Potted Lettuce

This is going to be my new patio table centerpiece. It will soon be filled with lettuce from the seeds that I sowed in a shallow terracotta pot I had sitting in the basement. The patio table is white and I think the contrast of the terracotta pot and the mix of lettuce leaves is gonna be great!

Anybody else have an interesting edible centerpiece?