Last week's windstorm took out a full third of my tomato seedlings, and half of my spinach seedlings. While it's now too late in the season to start new spinach, I was able to head over to the local natural foods store, which has a large nursery filled with heirloom tomato seedlings. I picked up three new San Marzano tomatoes to replace the seedlings of that type I lost, and on a whim bought one "Homestead" tomato. That still leaves me short quite a few seedlings, but I have a few spares still in the greenhouse so I will be OK.
I have no idea what the "Homestead" tomato will look like, but it's worth a bit of ground to find out. Why not? While I'm sad that my original seedlings were snapped off in the wind, I will still have plenty of tomatoes to eat and preserve once summer comes.
And since I have an abundance of wild mustard growing around the property, tomorrow I'm going to try cooking it to the wilting point and see if it can double for spinach in some recipes, like casseroles and omelettes. We shall see.
Is wild mustard the same as garlic mustard? Very noxious plant here on Ohio but it can be cooked and is pretty good. Sort of like a spinach-chive hybrid. I'm anxious to see the "homestead" too! Oh we are so far away from planting tomatoes here! I'm planning on only doing a few cherry...but we'll see.
ReplyDeleteWell, it might be the same. Our wild mustard has a long stem with a bud that looks (and tastes) very close to broccoli, only a bit spicier. And I've read that the leaves are edible and can be a stand-in for spinach. I'll let you know how it cooks up!
DeleteWe are blessed with a long tomato season, which I'm thankful for, since I love tomatoes. We've even had them around at Thanksgiving, in warm years, if you can believe it!