santa barbara country n news-tomatoes and compost

SANTA BARBARA COUNTRY N NEWS-TOMATOES AND COMPOST

me countrifying the grandkids

earlier this summer we were gone for almost 2 weeks traveling 
when i returned the tomatoes that looked so good in the garden had a lot of dead leaves on them
all the fog and lack of sun in the mornings left them that way
so
i removed all of the dead leaves and trimmed back the damaged vines somewhat
i also picked all the largest green tomatoes
yes i let my wife she make some fried green tomatoes as long as i got to eat most of them
which i did

i took all of  the remaining green tomatoes
wrapped them in newspapers
hung them in the kitchen closet
then
a few weeks later
i removed the bag of tomatoes
unwrapped them
below is what they looked like
the green one is just to show what they looked like in the beginning

now
in texas i would do that in the late fall just before the first freeze
so we would have some ripe tomatoes later in the fall or early winter

i think these will carry us through until the new green tomatoes on my vines ripened
probably off and on until the fall weather starts getting cooler and wetter

wet and fog seems to be what determines how well tomatoes do here later in the fall
we dont have to worry about freezing temperatures

this last week i harvested some of our compost thats made in the garden in these bins that are 4 ft cubes
i must say this is the best compost ive ever seen
you know
the kind where you feel like you could just take a spoonful and put it on vanilla bean ice cream and eat it all

we transferred a couple wheelbarrows of this stuff to a 40 ft bed where we planted corn for our fall harvest which will be donated to food kitchens

this compost is made from trimmings from trees and shrubs and plantings from the garden
these are ran through a grinder to make a fine mulch like material
this is mixed with food scraps from the garden and from a nearby food kitchen
things like old rotten fruit trimmings off cabbage lettuce old spoiled citrus potato trimmings etc

this is all stirred up once a week
its all kept moist
sometimes you can see smoke rising from the bins like they are on fire
once i plunged my hand down into it and thought i had burned my skin
its also full of worms
as its matures its moved from one bin to the next
there are 6 bins
the last one is the good compost that has been screened to remove larger pieces
whats left is this compost pictured above
that looks like something you would put on blue bell vanilla ice cream

when your compost looks like you could eat it and it smells good you know its right

the organicgreen doctor