Jules Jones

Had the first fruit from the Siberia tomato in my lunch today. This is supposed to be a very early variety, but in fact it was 12 days behind the Patio Dwarf, and also behind the mystery tomato. 59g, although the first ripe fruit was one of the smaller ones on the plant and I expect the next couple to be a good deal heavier. A couple of small flaws that had to be cut out during preparation. Raw taste was mild and slightly sweet. Pleasant enough flavour if nothing outstanding, and it wasn't early as promised, but it's a heavy cropper as a patio pot plant, and so far has shown no tendency to get out of control and head for the eaves. On the showing so far, it wouldn't necessarily be my first choice, but I'd certainly grow it again.

Speaking of out of control tomato plants -- the Brandywine was planted under the flowering plum. It has now reached a height of six feet, and is merrily climbing into the tree...

ETA: pictures here: http://jules.jones.googlepages.com/tomatoporn -- click on a thumbnail to get a full-size version.

Harvested, and ate, the first tomato of the season yesterday. It was a 115g specimen from the Patio Dwarf, and a good flavour, though nothing outstanding.

We ate it as part of the salad accompanying the cold steak of wild-caught King salmon I'd cooked at the weekend. WholeWallet had the wild-caught on special offer so that it was only moderately more expensive than the farmed Atlantic salmon, and at the moment wild-caught is more environmentally friendly than farmed unless I can find organic farmed, which I can't round here. However, it was worth the extra money in taste as well as guilt factor.

The first Mamma Mia plum tomato has been colouring up since Friday, and will be ready to eat in a day or two. There are a couple more fruit on the Patio Dwarf just starting to colour, so we're definitely getting into tomato season now. I'm not sure about whether the anonymous variety in one of the pots is about to ripen, because I have no idea what it is and therefore am not sure what colour it's supposed to be. It was labelled as a Yellow Pear, but the fruit is salad-sized rather than cherry-sized, and it looks to be a determinate plant, so one thing it definitely isn't is a Yellow Pear.

What is thoroughly annoying is that the Brandywine and the beefsteak are not setting fruit at all. Not a single one. Big healthy plants with lots of blossom, but it doesn't come to anything. Good thing I got more plants than I expected to need for actual amount of fruit consumed, because I wanted to try a lot of varieties. There are still half a dozen plants that *are* earning their keep.

I did indeed buy duck legs, and start the preparation for confit this afternoon, according to the recipe kindly supplied by desperance here:
http://community.livejournal.com/foodanddrink/4293.html

Two slight hiccups, in that the legs in the New Castro Market this week are larger than the last time I experimented with confit, and thus will not fit in the same Pyrex dish as last time, and in that I forgot about the bay leaves. The latter is no real problem, but the former might be, as the quantity of stored duck fat assumed a particular cooking dish. There is a larger Corningware dish available -- we shall see on the morrow whether it matches both the quantity of duck legs and the quantity of duck fat.

Long term food preparation also happened, in that yesterday I planted the Siberia tomato in the pot on one side of the patio door, and today planted the Black From Tulsa tomato in the pot on the other side of the door. Both went in on a layer of banana skins at the bottom of the pot topped by only a thin layer of compost, so that I could bury the lower stems below the final surface of the compost. It will help them develop better root systems, a necessity in this climate where they need all the water-gathering capacity they can get even when well watered. I'm planning to put the Yellow Pear in the other patio pot, with the rest of the plants going in the bed in the front garden. There was a minor virus outbreak last week with yellow-mottled leaves, suspected vector being the Roma plum tomato bought a week or two after the rest, but the infected leaves were removed and all but the Roma are still looking healthy and vigorous. Several of the plants have put forth their first flower trusses in the last few days, although at this point they're still tightly in bud.

The pineapple sage is coming along nicely after winter, with a flush of flowers that's keeping the hummingbirds very happy, and enough fresh leaves for me to use occasionally. The grape vine has thoroughly broken bud, and various other things are poking up from the soil. It'll be a while before there's anything other than rosemary in great abundance, but I forsee lunch components straight from the garden in the near future...