Make room for tomatoes!

This week the tomato plants are multiplying at both an alarming and satisfying rate. Beginning with one flat planted with multiple seeds in each of 35 cells, we transplanted the sprouts into many, many plant packs. We must have about 150 tomato plants now representing about 40 different varieties.

But where to put them when it's time to transplant them into the ground? Our ready-made trellises in the raised beds, destined to accommodate the tomato plants after the harvest of peas growing on them now, are insufficient for all of these tomatoes. So, over the past two days, we've created a new planting bed that will hold three new rows of trellises and about 60 tomato plants.

To create this new bed, we hoed the weeds and turned over the soil. Then, all of the grass clippings from the lawn this week were laid down over the bed. We like to use grass clippings (and, in the autumn, leaves) to build new soil through composting. The grass is a good source of composting material because it is clean (we don't use pesticides on the grass) and it gets hot as it decomposes, thus warming up the soil. After the grass was spread over the soil, it was worked into the existing soil to turn the grass into the soil. Then, Perry hauled quite a few wheelbarrow-loads of organic compost (an aged, cured mixture of redwood tailings and horse manure) from the driveway to the new bed, and spread it over the planting area. Finally, the area was sprinkled with a lot of coffee grounds (good source of acid) obtained from the local Peets Coffee. Voila! Add a little chicken wire to create the trellises, and a new planting bed will be ready to go! Here are the photos before, during, and after this process. In a few weeks, when the tomato plants are ready to go into the ground, the ground will be ready to embrace the little plants.

Nora and Andrew make Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon.

Bella was a college student in the late 60's, in Boston, where Julia Child was a local celebrity. Bella loved watching Julia's WGBH TV show, "The French Chef" and she used Julia's book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," to plan and prepare her feldgling dinner parties. Inspired by her teacher's cheerful nonchalance, Bella offered her guests quiche lorraine, spinach and cheese souffle, coq au vin, duck with cherries, and beef with bearnaise sauce.

The first time Bella cooked a meal for Perry, she made "something" in aspic. The aspic was a first for both of them, so noteworthy (weird) that neither can remember what the "something" was.

Although Bella's pies and cream puffs had delighted her father for years, they became even better when she made them with Julia's pate brisee and pate a choux. At our Thanksgiving feast, Bella regularly makes 5 different pies, so that each family member can have his or her favorite. The first 4 pies are sure to be cherry, apple, pumpkin, and lemon meringue. But the 5th is a swing pie and, in various years, it has been key lime, pecan, or coconut cream. But Bella's greatest pie triumph came a few years ago, when a Parisian post-doc in her lab at Stanford pronounced her cherry pie, "incroyable!" All thanks to Julia.

We now cook more Italian than French food and several other cuisines as well. We have dozens of excellent cookbooks and, of course, the Web. Nonetheless, Julia's worn, food-stained, 40-year-old book remains on our kitchen shelf. We frequently take it down to make an old favorite, but occasionally we make a new recipe that somehow we have never made before.

The recent film "Julie/Julia" introduced many people to the wondrous Julia Child and renewed our interest in her. When our local bookstore, Kepler's, celebrated Julia's birthday in August with a cookbook sale, we bought copies of her book for Aaron, Nora, and Nathan. We also started watching her TV show all over again on DVDs from NetFlix.

Amazingly--or maybe not so amazingly--we are still learning from Julia. Who remembered that it takes only 20 seconds to make an omelet? What a great idea to put all your ingredients on a tray before starting so that you don't forget any in the rush of cooking. How convenient it is that almost anything Julia cooks can be served with a simple green salad and a crisp Riesling to make a perfectly lovely lunch. But did Julia really think a novice cook would start making a much more delicious French-style meatloaf (a pate) by skinning a duck???

We especially enjoy watching Julia's TV show with Nora and her friend Andrew. Having grown up in an era of highly processed and refined media, they watch in awe as Julia wings it. Taping her show in one continuous, unedited session, glancing at her cue cards, losing her tools, saying one thing when meaning another--Julia never loses her confidence or enthusiasm. How self-actualized was this large and rather ungainly woman, to insist on more and more butter--because it makes everything so delicious!--as long as "you're not on one of those horrible diets." How insouciant she was, commenting affectionately that the much-admired French would disdain the Asian glaze she put on fish, because, "They don't like anything they did not think of."

Naturally, we were delighted when Nora and Andrew offered to prepare us a dinner of Julia's signature boeuf bourgignon, sauteed asparagus, and parsley potatoes. Bon apetit!

Aaron ties up the peas

When Aaron comes to visit, he always grazes on whatever vegetables or herbs are mature. He also looks for projects to do that involve planting or transplanting, cultivating, preparing the beds, and so on. Last week, he tied up the pea plants that are now almost four feet high.

Time to get going with tomatoes

Perhaps the most special food crop one can grow in a garden is tomatoes. The varieties, colors, sizes, textures, shapes, and flavors are so numerous! And "heirlooms" purchased in a grocery in season, assuming they're available at all, are limited in type and priced at $9 per pound and up. That's $9 per tomato!

We started in early February, sprouting about 35 different varieties of tomatoes in flats placed next to a window in the garage that gets morning sun. Each cell has about 8 seeds in it, so if we get 4-5 seeds sprouted per cell, that will be upwards of 120 plants! In a few days, we'll separate the sprouts and repot them into larger pots, still keeping them growing indoors (for now).

So, give it a go! There are several suppliers of heirloom tomato seeds that you can find on the Web. (See, for example, www.tomatofest.com.) They're easy to sprout from seeds, and you'll have enough plants to give some away, and still keep yourself in BLTs and insalate caprese all summer.