My simple home garden

The tomato plant is still doing okay. I have about 4 or 5 green tomatoes about the size of golf balls. I’ll try to get a picture this week and include it in next weeks update.

So far this plant hasn’t been much trouble at all to grow.

First, I want to start by saying that I am no chef or even a slightly skilled cook. When I cook, I just throw things together that I hope will not end up poisoning me.

So, today I decided to use the garlic scapes I picked the other day. What I did was to chop them up in to tiny pieces about 1/2″ long. I mixed them in a pan with a can of corn and a can of beans (draining the water from the cans before adding them.) I heated them up on high to get them all nice and toasty. Then I took some rice and put it on a plate and mixed in the vegetables and a little salt and pepper and a bit of butter.

It was pretty good. It would probably make a chef laugh hysterically at my attempt a cooking, but hey, it filled my tummy. The garlic scapes didn’t turn all mushy. In fact, they were still very firm after they were cooked. Maybe I should have cooked them separately to make them soften up, but I think the crunchiness of the scapes and corn added some texture to the green beans and rice.

Overall it was a mildly successful adventure. And I survived it relatively unscathed except for a few burns as water spattered off the washed scapes and on to my skin.

I took a picture of the finished meal for you to admire of scoff at, your choice.

Garlic scape meal

I’ve never grown garlic, but apparently hard neck varieties like I planted grow a stem called a scape.

From what I have read, you harvest the scape a few weeks before you harvest the bulb. Harvesting the scape is good for two reasons. The first is that it can be eaten. Look on google for recipes for garlic scapes. The second is that if left to grow, the plant will continue to expend energy on it instead of concentrating the energy on growing the bulb.

I chopped up a scape and tried it in some scrambled eggs. It tasted mildly garlicy and not bitter at all.

Latest picture of my tomato plant growing in hydroculture. The time put in over the last few weeks of trying to pollinate the flowers on my tomato plant have finally paid off. Here is a picture of two tomatoes that look like they have been properly pollinated. I think hydro-culture is the easiest way to grow plants I’ve used so far.

Growing Challenge update - Hydroponic organic tomato.