I love gardening as it brings together those of us that have a passion for garden to table cooking. This year it was very difficult to find tomato starter plants due to the increase in popularity of gardening. We have close friends that purchase a small farm last year and had more veggie starters than they could use. Bruce shared about 14 of the most amazing tasting heirloom tomatoes starters. They had a creamy almost custard feel when you took a bite and were rich in tomato flavor.

We are finally getting rip tomatoes, it has been a cooler year than normal in the San Francisco Bay Area and warmed up last week. 70’s – low 80’s is great for most other veggies but tomatoes and peppers love the heat. I compost via worms, your veggies have 80% more nutrition when you use worm filings mixed into your soil. Our tomatoes taste the best of any I’ve ever had. The other thing that can be added into the mix is seaweed, great for putting nutrients into the soil. In the fall when I prep my garden I’ll go to the beach and collect seaweed to prep for next year’s growing season. Many hardware stores and nurseries have seaweed plant nutrients . Tomatoes & Peppers should have nutrients added every two weeks for enhanced production.

Shishito peppers & small sweet peppers love the warmer weather of August. Most of the Shishito peppers were from one plant. We love to grill with a bit of oil and spices. They are very easy to grow and we should get at least 2 more harvest this season.

This is an organic heirloom tomato that I grew from seeds I collected from our local grocery store. When ever I get a tomato from the store that is exceptional I’ll take some seeds and dry them out on a paper towel. In Feb we start planting indoors in little pots. This year since it was so cool I had to transfer them to bigger pots a couple of times before I could put them outside. Best to not put tomatoes out until temperature is consistently above 50 at night.