My dietary rule is pretty simple: Eat a variety of minimally processed foods with only small amounts of meat and animal products. That has served me well for years. I plant and grow food that I like, without paying attention to what science has to say about it. As readers of this blog know, I grow and harvest a variety of foods that are minimally processed and–at present–I produce no animal products. Two of my favorites are the black raspberries I grow (harvested in late spring, early summer) and the local blackberries I forage in late summer. They taste great, so that provides motivation enough for me.
However, if you’re the kind of person that likes food fads, or scientific justification for everything you eat, this article in the New York Times may be of interest. Apparently, scientists are discovering that some berries, notably raspberries and blackberries, have cancer fighting characteristics. Whoopee! Go wild! I’ll just keep growing, harvesting, foraging and eating them because they taste good.
These are my two Sungold tomato plants, still producing in late January. Surrounding them are some of my winter crops, red cabbage, arugula, spinach and kale.
I can’t believe I’m still harvesting tomatoes from “last” year’s tomato plants. In October and November I took out my summer crops, including most of my tomatoes, as I needed more space for my winter crops. My Sungold tomatoes were still producing, so I let them be, figuring I’d get a few more weeks of tomatoes from them. Then, in mid-December we had a cold snap that forced me to cover up my winter crops to keep them from freezing. The weather has warmed since then, but that freeze should have finished off the Sungolds.
Amazingly, the Sungolds just keep on producing. I’m currently getting about a half pint per week from the two plants. During the summer, they are very productive plants and produce some of the most amazing tomatoes I’ve tasted. Everyone seems to like them, as they are tender, juicy and sweet. I call them garden candy. Now I’ve discovered another trait that makes them worth planting, frost tolerance.
I have to say that the Sungold is a hybrid and I don’t normally plant hybrids, because I like the idea of planting heirloom crops and seed saving. But, I buy these every year now (two plants last year) because they taste so good. The plant’s frost tolerance gives me another reason to make this tomato a must-plant variety, hybrid or not.
Mar 25 2009 update: The tomatoes are gone, now, but I was still harvesting them well into March. I’ll definitely plant Sungolds again this year!
Lists that need to be updated regularly don’t lend themselves to blog posts, so I’ve set up a page where I can put items related to my garden without having to write a post everytime I update it. For now, this page links to a list of crops I am growing currently or have grown in past years. Check out what’s growing!
Urban Agroecology 