TOMATOES, CHICKENS and more in the urban garden: RED FIG

WELCOME URBAN GARDENERS

The goal of this blog is to educate, encourage and entertain fellow Urban Gardeners; your comments and suggestion are encouraged to make this blog a better place to visit.

Our focus is Heirloom Tomatoes and Urban Chickens, but we will also add posts on other fruits, vegetables and gardening ideas as we see relevant.

All of the photographs are my own photography, and can be used; please give me a photo credit. You can also purchase full-sized images.

To see what I really do for a living when I am not in my garden visit my business website and blog

URBAN GARDENING

I have been growing much of my own 100% organic, fresh food in my Brisbane CA (a few miles south of San Francisco) garden for almost 10 years now – This is the summer of 2009 and we have 31 different Heirloom Tomato plants that we are going to be reviewing (that means munching) and then sharing the information. Much of your success with Tomatoes will definitely depend on the weather.

We have three truly free-ranging hens, Hewey, Louie and Dewey - "the three wise hens" who do lots of their own gardening as well as supply us with eggs and organic garden fertilizer. They are also wonderful weeders. Their antics will entertain you in the following pages.

Also in our Urban Garden we grow apricots, peaches, five varieties of apples, Asian pears, figs, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, pepino melons, lemons, limes, oranges, cherries, grapes, tunas (prickly pears), passionfruit, onions, beans, English peas, cucumber, tomatillos, kale, arugula, a variety of peppers and potatoes.

Our herb collection includes:- parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, Italian and Greek oregano, three different varieties of basil, lemon balm, bee balm, lemon verbena, orange mint, peppermint and spearmint.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

RED FIG

RED FIG - (I) - Catalog #27
Leaf Type - Regular
Days to Maturity - 70

SIMPLY TOMATOES NOTES:
The Red Fig tomatoes have been grown in America since the 18th century. The Red Fig is an heirloom tomato named for a sweet delicacy that was made with this tomato and popular in the mid 1800s. Historically they were dried and packed away for winter use in substitute of figs. This is a big, leafy, indeterminate, regular-leaf tomato plant that is supposed to yield hundreds of 1 1/2-inch, pear-shaped, bright-red cherry tomatoes that have wonderful, delicious, sweet flavors with a very sweet skin, making this a delightful snacking tomato. A perfect choice to serve in a tomato salad or as a tasty decoration to culinary creations and to use for making a delicious tomato chutney. Rare tomato seeds.

Again, the weather of Summer 2009, really knocked the wind out of this plant, but as of September 5, it is making a comeback (per our picture above). I like these tomatoes and they do make a pretty pot with the Thai Basil, but the flavor is not as stunning as it should be. Ho Hum, I hink it is the weather.

To make the “figs,” boiling water was poured over the tomatoes to remove the skins and then the skinless tomatoes were placed in a stone jar with equal parts sugar to tomatoes. The resulting syrup was then removed from the jar and boiled and skimmed. The process was repeated over two days, with intervals of cooling. Finally, the tomatoes were dried in the sun for about a week at which point they were packed in small wooden boxes, with fine, white sugar between every layer. Tomatoes prepared in this manner were said to keep for years. (Note: A great 1840s family recipe is available in Heirloom Vegetable Gardening by William Woys Weaver.)