Ah, the satisfaction of seeing the fruits (literally!) of our efforts!
From left to right we have stevia leaves, Nashi pears, lemons and grapefruits, tomatillos, “Carolyn” tomatoes, heirloom Val Evans Pink Oxheart tomatoes (they’re the ones that have a similar shape to Roma, and a beautiful coral skin), San Marzano tomatoes, the big ones are Beefsteak, and in front a couple of small Indigo Rose (black skin and pink inside).
Speaking of Beefsteak, here’s one we picked a couple of days ago:
Tell me that’s not impressive! Delicious, too, thick meaty texture and almost no seeds.
The stevia leaves were pinched off the tops of the plants, apparently that’s what you are supposed to do to make the plants bush out – kinda like basil plants. The rest we will wait to harvest until autumn, just before they start to flower. I haven’t used stevia before but I’m excited to try it as a natural and healthy sugar replacement. From what I’ve read it sounds pretty easy to make a stevia tea that you can store in the refrigerator and use small amounts to replace sugar in baking or to sweeten drinks like tea. One suggestion was to steep the fresh leaves along with mint for a refreshing tea (I’ll be trying that out later as an iced tea – a cool refreshing drink to look forward to on this hot sunny summer day!) Mother Earth News has some great info on growing, harvesting and using stevia, including a chart on stevia-to-sugar equivalents. FYI I bit into one of the leaves, it was super sweet with a pleasant taste.
The tomatillos are destined for salsa verde (more on that later!). We have more tomatoes than we can eat so some will be turned into pizza sauce (blitz with olive oil, garlic, fresh basil, a little red wine vinegar and salt and pepper) and frozen for future use. We have homemade pizza once a week. It’s my absolute favorite food in the world. We are going to make our first attempt at sun dried tomatoes as well. I found some good info on this blog and am going to give it a shot.
Off to food preparation!
We Grew That 