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Red Dirt Ramblings®

Firmly rooted in the Oklahoma soil

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Harvesting ideas at GardenComm and a veggie garden report

13 September, 2019 By Dee Nash

by Dee Nash
13 September, 201913 September, 2019Filed under:
  • Flowers
  • Gardening
  • Grow Your Own Food
  • Vegetables

It’s been a week of harvesting ideas at GardenComm along with tomatoes and peppers from my late summer veggie garden. These might seem like disparate topics but read on. I promise to tie them together.

Some of the beautiful smaller hills in Utah. They also have huge mountains like in the background. Utah was dry, but beautiful. As my friend, Mary Ann Newcomer says, “You just have to put on your desert glasses.”

I just returned from GardenComm’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City, and I so enjoyed the conference this year. The educational sessions were enlightening. I met four new-to-me homestead bloggers. They do a lot more crafts and canning than I do. I admire them because I do not like to can in the heat of summer. I did it as a teen with my mom, and it was hot.

As my friend, Carol, of May Dreams Gardens said, “I always knew there were other parallel blogging universes, but I could never figure out how to meet the bloggers in them.” Now we have.

I took this closeup of pink cosmos in a Utah garden, and I’m just sharing it here because it’s pretty.

Kris Bordessa of Attainable Sustainable, Teri Page of Homestead Honey, Amy Stross of Tenth Acre Farm and Devon Young of Nitty Gritty Life gave a talk on “Engage Your Audience Across Multiple Platforms.” They were so good, and I learned a few things. For example, I think I need a virtual assistant, but that’s my problem, not yours.

View of Salt Lake City from the top of Red Butte Garden.

The gardens of Salt Lake City and its surrounding towns and suburbs were so beautiful. I especially liked Red Butte Garden. If you’re in the area, don’t miss it. Oh! And, I enjoyed Ashton Gardens at Thanksgiving Point. Look for a blog post on it in the coming weeks. It reminded me of Butchart Gardens.

River of flowers in Ashton Gardens.

At the trade show, I discovered a bunch of new products to try. Look for those on our podcast, the Gardenangelists, in the next several weeks, and I’ll also work them into blog posts.

Carol Michel and I hosted the awards portion of the GardenComm Honors and Awards Dinner. We are again co-chairs of the Awards Committee this year. I would encourage you, GardenComm member or not, to tell garden communicators of all stripes to enter the awards. We will have a wonderful slate of judges for next year, and there are many different categories. You don’t need to be a GardenComm member to win either although if you ever went to one of the recent conferences, you’d want to join.

They get better and better.

Firefly tomato
‘Fire Fly’ cherry tomato in my garden. They are super sweet and easy to eat. Children will love them.

Back home, I harvested more tomatoes and peppers yesterday. It’s been an excellent tomato year in my garden. Peppers have been producing like gangbusters too. Soon, I’ll do a post on which tomatoes performed the best, but in the meantime, here are the tomatoes I grew this year. Yesterday, I harvested ‘Habanada’ peppers and Red Torch tomatoes. The tomatoes look like the love child of a larger cherry tomato and flaming grape tomato. They are beautiful and have a complex flavor. Meanwhile, out on the vines are so many ‘Fire Fly’ sweet cherry tomatoes that I’ve given up harvesting them. I do eat a few off the vine every time I go out there. I also moved a tomato worm from ‘Red Torch’ over to ‘Fire Fly’ and said, “Eat away!”

It’s late in the season, and the hornworm can try its best to turn into a five-spotted hawkmoth. Three ‘Fire Fly’ plants produced more tomatoes than our family, neighbors, and employees could eat. ‘Red Torch’ is less prolific, but is more “tomatoey.” Both ‘Red Torch’ and ‘Fire Fly’ are All-America Selection winners and are highly disease resistant.

Habanero pepper ‘Habanada’ and ‘Red Torch’ tomatoes harvested yesterday from my garden.

Yum, yum.

This week on the Gardenangelists’ podcast, Carol Michel of May Dreams Gardens and I discussed asters and how to grow garlic. I hope you’ll tune in to listen. If you don’t know how to subscribe to a podcast, just email or message me on Facebook or Instagram, and I’ll show you how. It’s super easy, and the nice thing about podcasts is you can listen while you do other things like walk on the treadmill or clean your kitchen.

That reminds me. My kitchen needs cleaning. Ciao!

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Tagged:
  • GardenComm
  • GardenComm19
  • Utah Gardening
  • Utah Gardens

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Beth@PlantPostings says

    18 September, 2019 at 4:02 pm

    Beautiful photos of Utah! I wish I could have been there, but as it turns out I wouldn’t have been able to go anyway with a death in the family. I enjoyed GardenComm when I attended. One of these years I’ll be back.

    • Dee Nash says

      25 September, 2019 at 12:10 pm

      Beth, I’m sorry you weren’t there. I missed you. I’m also sorry about the death in your family.

  2. Amy says

    18 September, 2019 at 10:44 am

    It was wonderful to meet you at GardenComm. I’m glad our universes connected for a moment!

    • Dee Nash says

      25 September, 2019 at 12:09 pm

      Amy, it was lovely to meet you too. Thanks for your talk. It was great!~~Dee

  3. Chris Wells says

    15 September, 2019 at 7:30 pm

    I am glad you had a great tomato year. We started out like gangbusters here in West Texas with a wet spring and lots of growth and then Mother Nature turned off the facet and cranked up the furnace and the tomatoes came to a screeching halt! We had lettuce and spinach early, onions, peppers, lots and lots of cucumbers, zucchini and patty pan and even spaghetti and butternut that were complete volunteers that came up from kitchen scraps. But we never got even one big tomato for BLT’s. So sad. My mother is 96 and next year when she and I garden she will be 97! I sure hope we get some decent tomatoes next year. I am definitely trying some new types and praying for just a little rain and temps under 107!
    I sure enjoy your podcasts and came across them by accident. Keep up the good work!

    • Dee Nash says

      25 September, 2019 at 12:59 pm

      Thank you Chris for listening. I’m sorry about your tomatoes. Don’t you just wonder how the pioneers made it in Oklahoma and Texas. At 100° tomato fruit just won’t set.

  4. Lisa at Greenbow says

    14 September, 2019 at 4:44 am

    Those little tomatoes look delicious. If I remember them next year I will give them a try. I enjoyed your photos of Utah. I will be looking forward to see more.

    • Dee Nash says

      25 September, 2019 at 1:02 pm

      Hey Lisa, they were really, really good. All of my tomatoes were delicious this year except Terra Cotta. It was pretty but tasted like blah.

  5. ginny talbert says

    13 September, 2019 at 11:50 am

    I made sauce for the freezer with my glut of cherry tomatoes, sungold being my fave – so sweet! I grew two new (to me) heirlooms this year and was pleased with production from both (German Queen and Pineapple). The pepper ‘Cajun Belle’ went crazy again this year, lots of little peppers?. And after 12 years with no hornworms, they discovered my garden this year. Canning is a pain, but freezing is so easy. Try it!

    • Dee Nash says

      25 September, 2019 at 1:00 pm

      Hi Ginny! I love Sungold too. Sunsugar also isn’t bad. They make such wonderful sauces. Darn hornworms! I freeze a lot of my produce. I no longer can unless I’m making jelly.~~Dee

  6. jeanie skibiski says

    13 September, 2019 at 10:31 am

    I just subscribed to your podcast! Looking forward to listening to it while I work in the garden!

    • Dee Nash says

      25 September, 2019 at 1:01 pm

      Thanks Jeanie! I hope you enjoy it!

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Hi, I’m Dee, a professional garden writer and speaker born and raised in Oklahoma. Here you’ll find all my best dirt on gardening and travel. Welcome!

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