Red, Ripe and Roasted: Tomato and Garlic Festival is this Sunday. I went to them years ago with an idea to get fresh produce for the food bank and they were excited to take on the project.
Bring a bag of garden produce and get into the conservatory free! A truck from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank will be there to collect the food. If you don’t have a garden bring something from the market or even canned food will be accepted.
I’ll be there all day signing copies of Tomatoes Garlic Basil and will be doing a cooking demonstration at 1pm. Making simple tomato, garlic, basil sandwiches with fresh mozzarella cheese.
The event has chefs cooking all day, roasted garlic tasting, farm market, a seed swap for gardeners, and a tomato contest-ugliest, smallest and largest ripe tomato.
Another really cool thing, is that it’s the perfect place for gardeners to buy seed garlic without paying postage. There’s a garlic farm that comes and offers lots of different varieties.
Hope to see you there.
I’ll be leading a bus trip to one of my favorite gardens with my radio partner Jessica Walliser. We’re headed to the 10 acre Cleveland Botanical Garden.
It’s an all inclusive trip including deluxe motor coach accommodations, special guided tour of all 10 gardens, lunch, garden talk with Doug and Jess on the way up and garden videos on the way back. The trip leaves from downtown at 8:30am on September 12th, there’s also a pickup at Soergel’s at 9am, it’s $110 per serson.
We have a lot of fun on these trips and there are lots of interesting plantings at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. I think one of the best things about the trips is being around other like minded people. Everyone learns a lot.
If you’re interested call 412-779-5861.
On August 15th, 2010 gardeners got to know what purple, orange, yellow and striped tomatoes taste like? It was my fantasy for years to have an event to taste lots of different tomatoes and my friend Dan Yarnick made it happen.
As part of his big Sweet Corn Festival he held The Great Tomato Taste Off. He’s grew nearly 100 different varieties out at Yarnick’s Farm in Indiana for everyone to taste. It was a great opportunity to try tomatoes and see what might be interesting to grow next year. The festival runs from 2pm to 8pm, and I’ll be there cooking tomato dishes, tasting tomatoes and talking gardening from 4pm to 6pm.
Yarnick’s Farm is five miles east of Indiana, Pa, for more information log onto yarnicksfarm.com.
Don’t know what to do with all those tomatoes? Well, there are 31 recipes in Tomatoes Garlic Basil that will help you figure it out. For the month of August the book is available signed by yours truly for $18.95 with free shipping. The book is also filled with ideas to grow all three, explains how to plant garlic in the fall and has lots of stories from my life in the garden.
Just send a check for the amount to-
Doug Oster
PO Box 11013
Pittsburgh, Pa 15237
Summer is cranking away and I love this purple coneflower that’s not purple at all. This is ‘Double Delight’ and it just started blooming. When it’s done I’ll cut it back and it will bloom well into fall.
There are lots of colors this flower comes in besides purple and breeders have been having a ball with the species.
Check out http://www.coneflower.com/ to see some of the great varieties.
Officials from Penn State University have discovered late blight in Westmoreland, Beaver, Indiana, Somerset, Cambria and Blair counties in Pennsylvania. This is getting scary.
http://blogs.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=124&Itemid=145
Here’s a video of the Eighth annual Post-Gazette Backyard Gardener Plant Swap held at North Park. It’s so fun to meet all the gardeners and see all the great plants exchanging hands.
On Sunday May 30th I’ll be holding the eighth annual Backyard Gardener plant swap and give-a-way. The event will be from 9 to 11 a.m. in North Park across from the Skating Rink on Pearce Mill Road.
If swapping, please have all plants labeled, and don’t bring anything invasive. Please be fair and friendly while you trade.
I’ll be giving away free heirloom tomato plants there, too, one per family while they last all courtesy of Mindy Schwartz from Garden Dreams in Wilkinsburg. If you want tomato plants, be there when we start at 9 a.m. They go fast.
