This week’s post care of Karista’s Kitchen

Fresh Seasonal Fish Topped With Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic, Shallots, Lemon and Fresh Herbs

It’s that time of year when I suddenly realize all the beautiful fresh local tomatoes will soon be a distant memory until they arrive once again next summer. I’m now in a full-fledged panic to use as many of those juicy tomatoes as I possibly can. I may have a small revolt on my hands as tomatoes are showing up daily in all three meals at the Bennett house.

Fluffy whipped French omelets with the distinctive Gruyère cheese and fresh chopped heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella en carrozza (Tuscan cheese sandwiches) with fresh sliced tomatoes piled high and grilled fish and chicken with roasted cherry tomatoes, smashed garlic cloves, diced shallots, a squeeze of lemon and fresh herbs. And I have more recipes yet to prepare! I think the Bennett crew will be “oh so happy” when tomato season is over.

I do love a good tomato. The smell of a ripe tomato takes me back to my childhood when I would pick the sun warmed fruits off the vines in our little garden and sit in the grass to eat them. No salt, pepper, herbs or mayo, just a juicy fresh picked off the vine tomato. Tomatoes make delicious additions to most recipes; adds fresh flavor, a little zing, and one would have to admit, the color of a tomato is hard to duplicate.

Sometimes the simplest of preparations are the best. Simply roasting tomatoes with garlic and shallots, fresh herbs, a drizzle of olive oil and lemon makes for a tasty side dish or exquisite topping for most entrees of fish or chicken. Serve with a fresh arugula salad drizzled with rice wine vinegar and olive oil.

Keep dinner simple… Enjoy the flavors of life! Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lbs seasonal fresh white fish (halibut, cod, rockfish, snapper, swordfish, mahi mahi) If the fish is fresh, it will taste delicious and hold up to roasting in the oven.
• 2 pints cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4 cloves garlic, smashed and lightly chopped
• 2 tablespoons diced shallots
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced
• 3 tablespoons chopped mixed fresh herbs (Oregano, Italian parsley, basil, rosemary or thyme)

Olive oil
Sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper

Directions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400F.
2. Mix together tomatoes, garlic, shallots, 1 tablespoon fresh herbs, and 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Toss with a drizzle of olive oil until lightly coated and then sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Pour the tomato mixture into a baking dish or foil lined cookie sheet and roast for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes are wilted and slightly toasty. Remove from the oven and set aside.
4. Drizzle the fish with a bit of lemon juice and olive oil, and then sprinkle with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Roast the fish until opaque in the center and flaky. Fish roasting times vary according to thickness. Start with 5-8 minutes and then check for doneness. If it isn’t done, let it continue roasting, checking every 5 minutes.
5. Once the fish is done, transfer to a platter. Mix the tomatoes with lemon zest and remaining fresh herbs. Top the fish with the tomatoes and herbs and serve immediately.

Hi Gardners,

We are now into the coasting season. With no plantings left, we just keep the garden watered and weeded. Even most garden pests are on to their next stage in their life cycle.

You should pick the vegetables as they are ready. For now it will be mostly tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cucumbers and zucchini. The replanted lettuce, carrots, beets and spinach will still be small. If you planted from seed, make sure to thin to one plant per spot once the seedlings come up. Each plant needs space to grow, and if you leave all of the seedlings that come up, none of them will grow well.

Some of your flowers, herbs, kale or chard may be huge and taking up way too much space. Please cut them back to give light, space and resources to the little plants in your garden. If you have any compost left, this would be a great time to add it to your garden to give your last season a great start.

Happy gardening!

Hello gardeners,

Back to school is in the air, and it feels like summer is drawing to a close. I even saw my first red maple leaves yesterday!

Your garden, however has at least another 2 months of good growing left in it! As long as you keep up with the watering and weeding, you should get a lovely fall harvest of all the vegetables you replanted.

If you haven’t had a chance to replant yet, there is still time! You can even just empty out a couple of squares, top up with a bunch of compost and broadcast lettuce, beet and carrot seeds (one type per square). Water, water, water and as the sprouts come up, thin the little seedlings for your mixed-green salads until you have the desired spacing between plants. 4 per square for lettuce, 9 per square for beets, 16 per square for carrots. Once your thinning is complete, mulch to preserve moisture, stabilize soil temperature and keep the weeds down.

This summer has been so hot and dry, it has been particularly difficult for diseases. Especially powdery mildew, and other leaf bacteria and fungus. Be sure to remove any diseased or damaged leaves from the garden. Your best defence against these types of invasions is to keep your garden free of debris, and to stop the spread by removing affected plant parts. A baking soda spray (1 tablespoon Baking soda, 1 teaspoon oil, 1/2 teaspoon dish soap in a gallon of water) works wonders to protect the plants.

Your eggplants and peppers should be just about ready to eat. The more you harvest, the more fruit you can expect from your plants. Peppers can be harvested at anytime, green, or once they have changed colour. Eggplants can be picked at a variety of sizes. You should pick them before they start to go from shiny to mat. It has been a tough year for cucumber and zucchini, but if you managed to keep yours going, the smaller you pick the fruit, the tastier it is, and the more you pick the more you get. Good luck!

Please let me know if you have any gardening questions.

Tereska Gesing

Check out our first YouTube video about organic vegetable gardening in the Montreal area.

Hello,

Tomato season is in full swing. You should be enjoying wonderful tomato-basil-bocconcini salads.

I like to include some steamed Kale to the mix and drizzle with reduced balsamic and some nice virgin olive oil. Delicious.

If you were not diligent in removing the suckers from your tomato plants earlier in the season, you may have some very long branches dragging on the ground or otherwise spilling into your garden. I suggest tying these up to the trellis with some string to give your other plants more space and to keep slugs away from your tomatoes that might be touching the ground.

This week we finally got some sustained rain! With all of the drought and dry weather we’ve had for the last 6 weeks or so, many of the plants have been unusually stressed. This makes plants more susceptible to pests and disease. We have seen problems with cucumbers, melons, zucchini and squash especially. They have been attacked by cucumber beetles and powdery mildew.

Powdery mildew can be controlled with a spray made from 1 tablespoon baking soda, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1 teaspoon dishsoap in a gallon of water. Spray the entire plant, the spray will stop the powdery mildew from spreading, but will not cure affected plants. Remove damaged leaves where they connect with the vine. Also a good defence for beans and against Cabbage Butterfly.

Cucumber beetles can also be spotted, but so far I’ve only seen the striped variety. At this point in the season, the best we can do is to remove them manually and kill them. Remove any damaged leaves, and be sure to keep the ground free of debris. You can generally find them in and around the flower.

Unfortunately it is too late in the season to plant more cucumbers, zucchini, melon or squash. If your plants are too far gone, simply remove them. Dispose of the plants in the garbage (not on a compost pile ) and we will try again next year. You can replace them with a fall crop.

Now is a great time to plant fall crops. This can include any lettuce, beans, peas, spinach, radish, bok choy, roquette, beets, carrots. If you want a broccoli or cabbage, I still have a couple of seedlings available. Just drop me a line and let me know.

This has also been a particularly bad year for the Cabbage Butterfly, and resulting Cabbage Caterpillar. This green caterpillar likes brassicas: Broccoli, cabbage, bok choy and kale. Check these plants for an inch long green caterpillar. Remove and destroy. If the plant is still small, it can benefit from washing the underside of the leaves with soapy water to remove any eggs. Spray with the baking soda mixture to help deter the butterfly from landing.

If you still have your old pea plants from the beginning of the season, they most likely have some pea pods that have fully dried out. You can crack these open and plant the peas directly into the garden for a fresh crop.

Don’t forget to add compost whenever you replant. Adding mulch (i like natural cedar mulch) around your fall plants can really help them conserve moisture and regulate root temperature better.

Tereska Gesing

Hi,

We finally got some rain! With this unseasonably hot, dry weather it is imperative to water deeply, daily.

The absolutely best thing to do is to put a sprinkler on a timer for 1 hour every day. The best time of day is 4:00 – 5:00 AM.

This is a funny transitional time for your garden, especially this year since it is so bloody hot. The lettuce is finishing up and the tomatoes, peppers eggplants and squash are just getting started.

This means that the next couple of harvests will be heavy on the beans and peas, check your carrots and beets they are probably ready as well. Use your finger to dig around and investigate the size of your root vegetable before picking.

Once things cool down a bit, the lettuce will get going again. To help this along, you should mulch the spring vegetables to keep their roots cooler sooner. You can mulch the whole garden. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash and zucchini with river stones (the darker in colour the better to add heat) and all the rest – lettuce, beets, carrots, kale, chard etc with cedar mulch.

Gardening wisdom says to use straw or dried grass clippings, but I say cedar mulch is so much more ‘city’. Since our gardens are small, you can easily mulch with cedar and simply remove the cedar mulch at the end of the season. In addition to moderating the temperature, mulch helps keep the weeds down and moisture up.

It is still a great time to start your fall plants indoors. Here is a seed starting primer:

1. Take egg cartons, single serving yoghurt cups or small pots and fill them with dirt. Wet the dirt
2. Plant your seed. A good rule of thumb for the planting depth is 3 x the width of the seed, so beet seeds at 1/2″. Speck-sized seeds like lettuce can simply be sprinkled on top. Try as much as possible to put one seed per container.
3. Put your pot in a sunny spot. Keep your soil moist, but not soaking.
4. Plant your seedling in the garden as soon as there is place for it. The point of starting your seeds indoors is to avoid wasting precious garden space on germinating seeds. The spacing for each individual plant is found on your seed packet. Example: 4 lettuces per square foot.

Beets and carrots, can be seeded right away. The spinach, next week and lettuce on going.

Please give your tomatoes, squash, zucchini peppers and eggplants compost and crab meal fertilizer (on sale at Maison Coop Verte 5785 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest.) They are working hard to produce fruit and can really use the extra help.

Your snow peas should be ripped out and replaced with your seedling or a seed. They will still produce a bit, but are probably getting pretty unsightly and not very productive.

Pick your tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini as soon as they are ready. You don’t want to leave them on the vine too long. Cucumbers and zucchini taste better small, and tomatoes will get overripe and kind of gross. Also, the more you pick, the more your plant will produce.

Tereska Gesing

Hello Gardeners!

As we approach the dog days of summer, it is time to do a nice garden clean up and start your replanting if you haven’t already.

This is an overview of that process, but don’t worry. I will remind you of each step as it comes up.

NOTE: Have a bag of compost on hand to add to the garden every time you replant something. This will go a long way in keeping your soil fertility high, and your plants healthy and pest and disease resistant.

Your lettuce plants probably have a very thick central stem regardless of your harvesting methods. This means they are getting past their prime. Next time you harvest lettuce, instead rip out the entire plant, roots and all and replace it with the seedling you started a couple of weeks ago, or with a seed.

If you plant seeds in the garden, make sure to give them extra water, as they don’t like to dry out. Lettuce seeds should just be sprinkled on top of the soil, and planted 4 plants per square.

Your snow peas will start slowing down production about now, they will pick up again in the fall when the weather cools. If you are motivated to do so, you can rip out all of your snow pea plants and plant fresh ones. This will give you a much better harvest in the fall. You can start the peas in pots next week, and rip out and replant your peas the week after.

If your garden was planted in April, your beets and carrots are ready to come out. For later plantings it might still take some time. You should harvest them as you need them for eating, and replace each harvested carrot or beet with a seed to get them started germinating as soon as possible. Carrots do not transplant well, but the beets you can also start in pots next week and put them in the garden in late july once all of your beets are harvested.

Your beans should be just about ready to harvest. Keep an eye on them and harvest early and often. The more you pick, the more will grow, and young beans taste much better than older ones.

Don’t pick your peppers, they are not ripe yet. You may start seeing small green peppers on your pepper plants. Green peppers are just picked before they get a chance to turn colour. If you leave them long enough, they will all turn red, yellow or orange. Even the jalapeño, which are spicier once they change to red.

The broccoli suffered the early hot weather and is not heading up nicely. I have started some more broccoli seedlings for a fall planting. Let me know if you want one and we will bring it to you when it is ready (free of charge) If you enjoy eating the leaves and stalk you can certainly keep doing so, if not rip it out and replace it with something else.

If you have aphids on the underside of leaves, shoot them off your plants with a strong jet of water regularly. Keep an eye out for small bright green caterpillars and slugs and squish them when you see them. Also, small black and yellow striped beetles on your cucumber plants (cucumber beetles) need to be stomped on. These are the pests we’ve come across so far this year. Let me know if you have any questionable bugs and I will direct you. Photos help.

Don’t forget to train your tomatoes up the trellis. Keep the weeds out of the garden, and water whenever it doesn’t rain – or at least every second day. Make sure to cut back your kale, cabbage, chard and broccoli leaves that might be shading your other plants. They are all delicious fresh, sautéed or steamed.

This is a fun graphic cheat sheet to help with which insects are pests and need to be destroyed!

Tereska Gesing