Growing Tomatoes And Some other Garden Items

I have 2 major problems growing tomatoes the past few years.  First, my enclosed raised bed garden is shaded by neighbors' junk volunteer trees as they have grown larger.  Second, a sunnier spot where I've grown them for 5 years has built up levels of tomato diseases and insect pathogens that just kill them.  I'll plant corn and some other crops there for a few years.

One problem with planting them elsewhere is that tomatoes like fairly soft rich soil and I don't really have space like that elsewhere.  So I thought about planting them in the best sunlight I have.  But that's where my meadow bed is.  And tomatoes don't like competition.

So I thought of using pots.  Tomato roots need space, so 5 gallon buckets are a bit small for my large heirloom tomatoes.  I looked at small trash barrels, but they were too large and a bit expensive.  So I looked up large deck pots, which were also expensive.

I did, however, find 10 gallon "nursery pots" at only $10 each in a pack of 10 pots.  That sounds perfect!  They arrived last week.

The first thing I noticed upon opening the box were some pieces.  Sure enough, one had a broken rim.  I was quite annoyed of course.  But get this,  they sent 11 pots!  So I still had the good 10 promised.  And the broken was is still actually functional.

So...  I'll put the pots around the outer edge of the meadow bed for the best sunlight.  I'll buy a trailerload of mixed 1/2 topsoil 1/2 compost from the local nursery and grow tomatoes in it for a couple of years.  Then I'll add that soil to the raised beds.  Or I'll put plastic trash bags over them and solarize the soil.

Solarization is usually used on large flat areas, but should work on pots just as well.  It might even work better.  One warning I read is that some harmful soil insects can move deeply enough into flat soil to escape the heat.  They can't do that in a pot!

That may seem like a lot of work.  But I love heirloom tomatoes!  And once you have had a homegrown heirloom tomato (not a chilled-for-shipping store-bought) one, you will never look at grocery store tomatoes the same way.

So I am hoping for a decent tomato crop after several years of frustration.

Busy Lately Outside

It is the end of the outside gardening season.   We had hard freezes 2 night in a row.  I covered the tomato plants because the next 10 nights are forecast to stay above freezing and I was hoping to get a few more tomatoes to ripen.

But they all died.  Well, tomatoes are actually tropical vines.  So I picked all the green ones.  There are some recipes for using them.  Fried in batter is routine, but I saw one for Tomato Parmesan and will try that too.

The Coleus and Mum pots were safely in the house, so they can go back outside for another week.  I will be bringing them and all the salad trays indoors after that to limp them through Winter.  Any color inside and any salad cuttings are good.

I disassembled the tomato bed today.  Not the simplest thing.  Pull out thge cage support stakes, remove the cages, take up all the labels, pull the plants, pull up the black landscaping fabric that kept the weeds smothered.  The fabric is all trash.  It seems to fall apart in 6 months.  

But at least the grassy weeds are all dead this year.  I'll be planting most of the Pansies there next week (a few will go around the mailbox and some in the deck pots this year).  

Did some serious compost bin work the past week (there are 2 bins).  

I bought a self-propelled battery Ryobi mower a few years ago and it is wonderful.  I have it set for mulching, and I can still use the bagger attachment (easy to attach and remove).  I shredded/mowed leaves all over the yard.  

Filled the empty bin 6" deep.  Then filled 4 trash barrels and 2 trash bags with leaves for future use.  There are more leaves in the trees, but I will shred them in place on the lawn as free fertilizer for both grass and trees.

I had too much green stuff for proper composting, so the leaves were nice to add.  Yesterday, I started turning the existing greenish pile into the other bin and mixed it with more shredded leaves 6" at a shot (the layers compress).  Found I had some good worms in the existing pile.

I got half of the old piled moved but it gets tiresome.  So the rest will get moved tomorrow.  Between the existing green stuff (kitchen scraps) and the newly shredded browns (leaves) and watered a bit, the new pile should finally heat up nicely.

I overseeded the lawn a week ago.  The shredded leaves won't bother them when I do that next week.  They will have either germinated or not and they can grow up between the leaf-shreds without difficulty.

Blew all the leaves off the deck.  They don't bother me any, but the cats dislike walking on dry crunchy leaves.  It offends their sense of stealth.  I indulge The Mews.  And the leaves don't do any positive good sitting on the deck.

Put a marinated chicken on the smoker.  Not exactly my old model (fancier shelves), but close enough.

I can never quite get it to fully-cooked in the smoker, but I've read that all the smokey flavor gets in after 2 hours, so I just finish them in the oven.  Sometimes I brush half with BBQ sauce for variety.  I pulled off a whole leg for dinner (with veggies).  It was delicious!

More to do the next few days...

Unwanted Tree Saplings And Garden

I'm not as young as I used to be.  And parts of me don't work as well as they used to, either.  Between falling off the extension ladder and general aging problems with both knees, I get calf, thigh and rib cramps and finger clenches.  And sometimes lower back stiffness.  

Getting old isn't for sissies (as Mom often said).  So, these days I do what I can.  Aspercreme and Ibuprophen help.  As does sitting in the tub with hot shower water falling on me in the morning (to wake me up and get me more mobile).  I wish I was 60 again, LOL!

But I have gotten more active again lately.  I caught up on the veggie garden, though it has less than I used to grow.   Most of the crops I used to grow are now easy to find at the grocery store and at a decent price.  But there are still some things I can't get.  So I focus on growing them.

Heirloom tomatoes are still at the top of my list.  The grocery store does sell them (at $5 a pound) but the fools chill them for storage-life, and that kills the enzymes that produce the great flavor.  So buying those is pointless.  I have 14 heirloom tomatoes growing well.  They are behind schedule, but catching up rapidly in this warm weather and rain every few days.

Next is Italian flat beans.  I've never seen any in the grocery store or even a local farmer's market.  They have a better "deeper" taste than regular green beans.  I have 20 plants of those starting to climb the trellis.  I can find them canned sometimes, but they are very soft and usually highly-seasoned.

It is time to plant some Fall crops.  My favorite Spring and Fall crop is Snow Peas.  I've never seen those at the grocery store either.

I have trays of lettuces, celery, and bok choy on the deck.  You've never seen real red lettuce unless you grow it yourself.  And I grow red romaine lettuce too.  My green leaf lettuce is nearly lime-colored.  Makes an appealing salad.  

I grow bok choy and celery for the leaves (I don't get actual "stalks).  The bok choy leaves are great for making egg rolls.  They preventing the raw veggies inside from poking through the wrappers and add flavor.  Celery leaves are strong-tasting and add some "bite" to my salads.

But those are all planted now.

GOT to cut down all the unwanted saplings this weekend!  Job #1 now that the veggies (and flowers) are all planted.

Nothing much to see there yet, but "soon"...

Planted Tomatoes Today

Talk about late planting tomatoes in MD!  But May had chilly nights (and predictions for warmer nights ahead so I delayed).  Then in early June, I kept staying up late and getting up late so I kept thinking "tomorrow".  Last week, we hadn't had rain in 6 weeks and the soil was very hard (but they kept predicting rain).   

I finally stopped messing around on Tuesday and watered the area until it was damn near mud (so the water got down a foot at least).  Then waited 2 days for the water to soak all around and leave the soil digable but "crumbly".  Thursday, I planted.  

Now, when I plant tomatoes, I try to do it right...

1.  Tilled the soil 6" deep to get everything loose and raked off the grassy weeds.

2.  Cut several lengths of 4' wide black mesh fabric (weed suppressor but water-permeable) and held them down with bricks.

3.  Put my 24' wide x 5' high concrete remesh cages on the fabric and poked a hole in the center of each to mark where the tomatoes would go.  Removed the cages.  Cut a 4" "X" at each hole.  Marked the spot of each X.

4.  Folded back the fabric and dug a 12" wide and deep hole at each spot, leaving the soil in place.  Sprinkled organic fertilizer on each spot.  Turned the soil over a few times to mix it in well.

5.  Put the fabric back in place and used a bulb planter to remove a cylinder of soil 12" deep, saving the soil in 2 buckets.  

6.  The bed can hold 11 tomatoes in 3 rows (4-4-3).  This year, I had Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Striped German, Black Krim, and Pineapple.  I set them at holes randomly.

7.  Wearing knee pads (my knees are not great these days), I got down on them and went to work setting them in the holes as deep as I could (tomatoes will grow roots from buried stems).  Back-filled with scoops of soil from the buckets.

8.  Stuck 3' stakes next to each tomato and held them up with plastic clips.  The clips have a small end to grab onto the stake and a larger opening to hold the seedling.  It all took about 4 hours...

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No pic of the newly-planted ones today.  They are a bit frazzled from the process and don't look good yet.  Pushing them out of the cell-packs, handling them for planting, and then straightening them gently to attack them to the stakes is stressful.  They will recover in a few days as their roots discover the joy of new  soil to grow into and they discover the fertilizer.

But here is a picture from last year and they will look about the same in a few days...

My tomatoes are all heirlooms.  They aren't as productive as hybrids, but WOW do they taste better!  

I used to plant the "best" hybrids available (like Celebrity and Big Beef).  About 25 years ago, I bought a Brandywine and a Cherokee Purple seedling at a farmer's market.  When I tasted the 1st ripe tomato of each, I simply pulled up the hybrids and forgot about growing them again forever.  LOL!

So I plant more of them and get as many ripe fruits as fewer hybrids, but it is worth it.  And I still have a few more seedlings (and cages).  I'll find somewhere to plant the rest tomorrow.  You really can't have too many great-tasting tomatoes.

Garden And Yard, Part 2

The light stand in the basement is filled with trays of flower seedlings...  The lights were off for the night, so it looks a bit strange.

I think I missed watering those above recently.  They look a bit wilted.  So I watered them after taking the pic.

 The tomatoes are large for the small pots, but I gave them an organic fertilizer last week and yesterday, so that should help the roots grow.  When I plant them tomorrow, it will be deeply (they send out roots from any buried stem).  And I mix a slow-release organic fertilizer in the foot deep and foot wide soil I dig out and then mix back in.  Along with crushed eggshells (the calcium helps prevent blossom-rot).

Absent Last Week

Sorry I disappeared last week.  It wasn't planned.  I just didn't get on the computer much.  It was just one day at first, then a 2nd, then a third, etc.  Turned into a whole week.

Nothing wrong; I just got busy around the house and yard.  Catching up on things...  By the time I did lunch, reading the newspaper (lots of stuff to read when you get The Washington Post), doing yardwork, doing house cleanup (I've been slacking on that), recovering from the work, making dinner, some TV, etc. And all of a sudden it is time to get some sleep.

There is always something that has to be done before something else can be done.  I couldn't do much last year after falling off the extension ladder and it is amazing how fast flowerbeds can go "all to hell" in a single year.  

And one sad example was where I planned to plant the heirloom tomatoes.  Too many years in the same spot, and diseases build up in the soil.  So I decided to grow them this year in a new spot.  The last few years, black-eyed susans grew there.  Not my photo, but similar enough.  I have them growing in various places and I have goldfinches.

But I wanted to save them into my developing meadow bed, so I spent time digging them up and moving them.  They are hardy.  After a week, all seem to be re-establishing themselves in the new spots.  That job done, I dug the soil where I wanted to grow the tomatoes.  The spot has an annoying runner-grass, so I had to dig deeply.  I picked out all the runners I could find and then covered the area with black mesh landscaping fabric.

That should smother the runner grass.  But mostly it lets water through the fabric and prevents splash-up from the soil onto the tomato leaves (which could infect the tomatoes).  So, I laid down the fabric, set cages on top for spacing and poked a hole in the fabric to identify where the tomato seedlings would go. Set a small stake in each hole.  Lifted the fabric and dug out a shovelful of soil into a bucket.

Mixed low N (too much nitrogen and you get "all plant no fruit") and some P and K and calcium into the bucket.  Poured the mix back into the hole.  Did that 11 times.  With all the planting spots established, I laid the fabric back down and cut Xs in the planting spots (for setting the seedlings down in later).

Planting the seedling was easy, sort of.  My knees down bend like they used to, so it was (grunt) get down, make a hole in the loose soil, set a seedling in, backfill the hole, set in a label, set in a 2' stake for the seedling to hold on to as it strengthens outdoors, and put a cage over it.  My cages are 6" concrete remesh with a separate stake holding them up.  Storm winds can blow an unstaked cage over. 

11 times.  I was worn out...

Then it was time to clear the flowerbeds.  Too many overgrown shrubs!  Several I planted years ago were described 5' tall and 3' wide.  They were 8' tall and 6' wide.  And sending up shoots from the spreading roots.  They had to go.

It was like hacking a path through a jungle.  The hedge-trimmer worked on the small outer branches, the more larger trunks needed a saws-all with a landscaping blade.

That was a brutal job and it isn't finished yet.  But at least I got it down to where I can cut at the bottom. And pull the parts over the fence.  

Which led to a day of hauling shrub and tree debris to the front yard to fill the 5'x8' trailer as high as I can tie it down safely for delivery to the County mulching site.  They take yard debris and pile it up until it is compost and then give it away for free to any resident with a trailer.  And will fill my trailer with finished compost for free on Saturdays.  So what I bring to them, I get in return.

I filled some deck pots with cheap flowers from Walmart and Lowe's.  It is nice to see flowers on the deck.  I usually grow my own, but I was lazy.

And FINALLY, I topped the trailer with cut brush from several years ago that was sitting in the edge of the lawn in several places.  Pulling the old debris from the vines that grew over them was a real fight, but I think I got them all.  They are all kind of loose and high, but I I will tie them down side-to-side, front-to-back, and diagonally.  I have added eyebolts and clips all around the outside of the trailer, so that gives me good tie-downs.

I'll have them fill the trailer with compost in return.  That will go around the tomatoes and flowerbeds.

And then the fight with the spreading poison ivy and periwinkle will start!  It's always something.  Never mind the wild blackberries that are thriving in the far back yard.  That is next week's problem to attack.

And I have 40 perennial seedlings to plant in the meadow bed.  

I sometimes wonder that I get any sleep at all.  

But I made 

Catching Up

Wow, 2 weeks since I posted here!  Well, I've been busy. 

1.  My lettuce trays on the deck "bolted" in the August heat.  Time to replant.  I have a large shallow plastic tub I use for mixing potting soil for Spring plantings.  Fine for dumping the soil in the trays and mixing it around to add new slow-release fertilizer, too.  

I did that on the deck.  No rain forecast for 2 days, so time to let it dry a bit for easier mixing.  Naturally, it rained.  And then more forecast for the next day, so I covered it wit a piece of plywood that almost reached the edges so I added a a big trask bag to reached over the sides.

The rain got in there anyway!  So I tilted it and siphoned the water out.  Muddy water doesn't siphon well, so I had to keep fussing with the tube.  I got most of it out.  And realized I had a dry tray inside, so I added that to soak up the rest.

That's not exactly rocket science, but it does take time.  I covered it better today.  The remnants of Hurricane Ida are coming straight through here Wed and maybe dropping 2-3 inches of rain on us.  The last thing I need for the trays is mud.  It compacts as it dries and I want to replant soon.  I miss my bright red leaf lettuce in my salads!

2.  I bought a battery-powered mower in 2018.  It's pathetic.  I went by Amazon ratings (no offence to Amazon) but I sometimes forget that their ratings only apply to customer ratings about things Amazon sells.  So if they sell average stuff, the best ratings are still about average stuff.

The Greenworks mower I bought has batteries difficult to remove (I devised twine loops to pull them out),  the batteries die after 10 minutes, the power is so weak that the mower cringes at 4" grass being cut down to 3", and it is entirely push/pull.  I've hated it for 3 years!

So I went to Consumer Reports magazine website (I have a subscription) and went looking for the best self-propelled models.  Wow, what a difference!  The one I bought in 2018 was rated poor.  

The best Top 3 ones at CR were about the same.  I bought a Ryobi "40V HP Brushless 21 in. Cordless Battery Walk Behind Self-Propelled Lawn Mower with (2) 6.0 Ah Batteries and Charger", model RY401014US (if you are curious).

I used it yesterday and it worked great.  Powerful, long-lasting. cut down 16" high weeds in an old bed for renovation (with a bit of care).  I had let a tall-growing weed grow there to smother the others.  I love the self-propelled rear drive wheels.  I WAS disappointed to realize that it didn't self-propel in reverse, but apparently none of them do.  My DR brush-mower does and I made an assumption that forward also allowed back.

But I use it in tight spaces and around trees where the riding mower can't go.  It's the forward self-propel that helps the most.

3.  And speaking of the DR brush mower (brutal thing that can cut down weedy shrubs and wild saplings 1.5" thick, turns blackberry canes into mulch, and is self-propelled forwards and back), I left it with gas in the tank 2 years ago (well, I expected to use it again soon but didn't).  Won't start now.  Have to inject the fuel line with "starter fluid".  Sounds like an old boy scout joke about smoke shifters, sky hooks, and 50' of shoreline, but it is real.  

If that doesn't work, back to the repair shop and and they both slow and expensive.  One thing I hate repairing is gasoline engines.  I can fix a lot of things, but those aren't one that comes easily.  

A neighbor once climbed up on the fence and asked if I was good at repairing things.  I said "yeah, as long as it isn't a 2-stroke gasoline engine".  You should have seen the look on his face; that was exactly what he needed help with, LOL!

I am switching to almost all-battery stuff these days.  They just keep working,

4.  Time for my first car maintenance visit.  13 months and I've driven 600 miles!  Laugh if you want to; I just don't drive much.  But I'm going to have to drive 120 mile round trip sometime in September to adopt my female Tonkinese cat, so I need to make sure the car is ready for a trip.

5.  The garden is producing a meal's worth of flat italian Romano beans every other day.  Not bad for a 5' long 1' wide trellis".  My 3 cherry tomatoes have fruits and I expect to strt picking ripe one in 2 weeks.  The regular-size tomatoes were planted late and are just beginning to open blossoms.  It will be a contest between warm-weather growing and the first frost on late October.  I expect a month's worth at least.  Maybe 6 weeks.

6.  The deck Mums are starting to bloom.  Yellow, orange, and red.  That will be nice.

7.  The Black-Eyed Susans are blooming nicely.

Actually, they are very numerous and spreading.  Well, they are native here. so no threat.  I encourage them.  They bloom for a few months.  My plan is to transplant the Susans in the garden paths to the meadow bed and add purple coneflower transplants (from places I don't want them).  Yellow and purple together look good to me.

Garden

The wet early Spring and the cold dry May has not been a great start to the gardening year.  For example, I usually pre-soak my bean seeds inside to improve germination and then I forgot them for a day and they rotted.  Twice.  I had new ones online with shipping.  Try to find Flat Italian Pole Beans at a Big Box Store in late May.  But I received them today.  So guess what, it is going to rain all weekend.

But maybe not.  The Weather-Guessers said yesterday evening would bring powerful thunderstorms, hail, and strong damaging winds. So I move all my  tender lettuces and flower seedlings inside temporsarily.  It drizzled for an hour.  Wow, such a threat...

I really have to get the garden planted.  Some crops mature by mid-Summer but some take the whole growing season.  I need to get the tomato and pepper seedlings into the ground, and seeds of melons and cucumbers started really soon.

Part of that is because I've read some gardening articles recently that say planting too early stunts growth and later plantings actually surpass earlier ones in total growth, health, and production.  But maybe this wasn't the best year to try that.  

These are 2 grafted Brandywine tomatoes I bought (heirloom tomato tops on vigorous disease-resistant roots from a tomato you wouldn't eat.  They were $10 each, but with heirloom tomatoes almost $5 each (and of poor quality - they refrigerate them) at the local grocery store, just 2 more per plant means a savings.  And I expect a dozen from each plant.

And here are the lettuces/greens.  I LOVE salads!  OK, actually this is celery.  I love the slightly bitter taste of the leaves so I harvest them "leafy" for both salads and stir-fries.

Red-leaf romaine lettuce.  You won't find them in the local store.

This shows endive (another slightly bitter green) and red leaf lettuce.  You've seen "red-leaf" in the stores and just the tips are red?  When I say "red" I mean "RED!

The whole stand from the side.

And the front.

The backmost tray is Bok Choy.  It is an Asian member of the cabbage family.  They are too young to harvest yet, but are growing fast.  Here's the mature version...

The stalks provide crunch (and can be used in any recipe involving cabbage - and smells better during cooking).  I use the large leaves in Spring Rolls.  I put the leaves on the wrapper and the shrimp/peppers/whatever on top.  The leaves prevent the ingredients from poking holes in the wrapper.  Leaf lettuce works for that too, but doesn't add any taste.

Next time, I hope to show planted seedlings of veggies and flowers.

TOMATOES!

I got a dozen all at once.  Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Pinapple, and Ponderosa Pink.

I ate one at lunch, one at dinner, one the next lunch and another the next dinner...

Heavenly.

They aren't pretty.  But they sure beat anything at the stores and farmers market.  And I already have more this year than all of last year!

The red plastic may have helped (no splashing up of soil-bourne fungals).  The waterbottles may have helped.  Large soda bottles screwed into plastic spikes that delivered water several inches underground slowly.  Into which I dropped slow-release organic fertilizer pellets to dissolve with each filling of the bottles.  And maybe lack of rain so I controlled the watering each week.

But for whatever reason, this is seeming to be a good tomato year here.

Busy As Bees We Is, Part 1

This is one on the busiest times of year for me in the yard and garden (the "Yarden").  No matter how I try to organize things, the week around the average last frost day of the year has too much to do.  This year (someone hit me with a "stupid stick"), I added to it.  I bought more flowers to plant.

In the past few days, I did too much and every joint and muscle is sore (I Love Ibuprofen and non-smelly muscle rub).  But I think I've gotten over the hump for this year, so I have time to post about it. 

First, I should say that I am not a very efficient user of time these days.  Oh, in the office, I was great at it.  I could multi-task with the best.  Switching from scrolling through telephone call data to answering a telephone question from a regional office, to joining a quick meeting on some other subject, no problem.  I was at the office and that was all I was doing.  Office stuff.

Second, at home, forget it!  I'm in bed 10 hours to get 7 hours sleep, I spend a lot of time preparing fresh meals, I play with the cats, I watch some TV in the evening (political commentary, baseball, documentaries).  I have to fit all the yard and house work around those.

When I plant stuff outside, I am very detailed.  Take planting tomato seedlings, for example.  I don't just jam a trowel into the dirt and stick a rootball in there.  No...  I dig a hole a foot wide and deep.  I put a handful of compost in the hole, add a sprinkle of crushed eggshells I saved (to reduce blossom-end rot), add sprinkle of 2-6-6 fertilizer (for stem and root growth - the compost provides the nitrogen).  I add the lovingly-grown tomato seedling, add a mix of compost and topsoil, and repeat that 2x until the seedling is buried with only the top leaves showing (tomatoes will grow roots from all buried stem). 

Then I form a wall around the seedling to hold water and stick a metal label in the ground with the variety name on it.  Then I put in a 3' stake to hold the seedling as it grows, and go on to the next seedling.  When I finish a row of tomato seedlings (3, 4, 5 whatever fits in the space).  Then I cut holes in a red IRT plastic fabric that both suppresses weeds AND reflects red light upward into the tomato plants (increases yields about 10-20% - I need all the help I can get with my limited sunlight). 

Then I place heavy-duty wire cages over each seedling.  Forget those cheap flimsy tomato cages they sell in catalogs.  Mine are made of concrete reinforcement  wire mesh.  The openings are 6" square, and the cages are 24" diameter and 5' tall.  Each cafe is then anchored in place with a 6' metal stake pounded at least a foot deep to prevent summer storms from blowing the mature plants in the cages over. 

And I'm doing all that rather bent over perched on a piece of plywood to distribute my weight so I don't compact the lovely soil around them!  It takes about 20 minutes per seedling overall from start to finish and I'm in awkward positions most of the time. 

That's the difference between a hobby and a business, LOL!

So, over the past few days, I planted 12 tomato seedlings - 4 hours just for that.  But they are good to go for the season...

Part 2 tomorrow...

Hurray!

The first tomatoes are turning reddish!   It may be a week, but finally the long lack of REAL tomatoes is near an end. 

Which is real good because the corn is just sitting there knee-high, the melons vines are 18" long, the cucumbers are just starting to grow up the trellis, the zucchini haven't set fruit yet, the carrots are coming up only 4" long (but with great flavor),  and my recent radishes have no radish.

At least the flat italian pole beans are producing.  Only a half dozen a day, but it sure beats the frozen or canned ones.  And they sure taste better than the regular ones.  When Dad was still here 4 years ago, he said those were the best beans he had ever eaten.  And he remembers growing regular beans in a garden himself.

It may sound silly, but I go out and look at the ripening tomatoes a couple times a day.  I CAN'T WAIT.  I am SO tired of of supermarket tomatoes (buying the cherry ones because they sure taste better than the larger ones but not by much). 

Those regular ones taste so bland because the stores have learned how to make them red without actually ripening them.  Its an enzyme trick.  And then they refrigerate them.  What little flavoroids (technical term - really) develop in the fake ripening process are killed when they are kept below 54F.  And the producers store them below 54F...

Reddening and ripening tomatoes work together on the plant, but they are actually 2 separate procceses.    Tomatoes turn red in the presence on ethylene gas (which they naturally produce during ripening, but produce-sellers apply to unripe tomatoes to turn them red).  Green tomatoes ship best, so they apply ethylene gas to redden them for sale.

Plant that produce fruits do it so the fruits will be eaten and (hard-to-digest) seeds pooped out  by fruit-eating critters all over the place.  I'm not sure if you wanted to know that, but that's why there ARE fruits.  And to go a step further, that WHY we see colors well.  To recognize fruits with ripe seeds in them.  The PLANTS did that to let us know when to eat them.  Which is WHY ripe fruits have sugar - to reward us fruit-eaters who successfully learn WHEN to eat the fruits (by color) when the (unimportant-to-us) seeds are mature.  And you thought they were "just" tomatoes or cherries, etc...  LOL!

The naturally ripe flavor of a tomato is a whole different thing than reddening.  There are about 400 chemicals involved (internet search), but carotene and lycopene are the 2 major ones.  Most of the rest involve soil minerals and a starch-to-sugar transaction that the tomato plant produces in its actual ripening stage (which is why commercial suppliers can fake the red color but not the ripe flavor). 

Yeah, I know I sound going overboard about my first ripe tomatoes, but I look forward to them all Winter and Spring and half of Summer!  And these are heirloom tomatoes naturally ripened with real flavor.  If you haven't had one of those, you just don't know!

And now you know why...

Garden Harvest

I got my first garden harvest of the year today.  Radishes, Spinach, and Snow Peas!  I ate the radishes before I thought to take a picture.  They were outstandingly good.  Both spicy and slighty sweet.

The spinach was great.  I had never grown it before, reading that it was hard to grow.  But I planted 6 square feet of it and nearly every seed germinated.  I harvested the largest leaves recently.

Spinach is an odd crop.  You cook it and it wilts away into almost nothing.  A basketful of spinach is a small bowlful when cooked.  But oh goodness it is tastier than anything I have bought in the bags in the grocery store!

A bit of olive oil or bacon fat in a large pot, heated moderately, spinach tossed in, covered 1 minute, tossed and cooked 2 minutes, served with a dab of butter and a dash of lemon juice and it is wonderous!

Here is the raw stuff...

And my late-planted snow peas are fruiting!  Picked while small and slim, they are so sweet and tasty!  The grocery store ones are too mature; tough and with strings on the sides.  Yeah, I know how to peel of the strings of mature ones (grab the lower end in one hand and press a thumbnail into it, pulling gently up toward the front).  But my new ones don't have strings and taste better.  

My chinese cabbage is next to harvest.  Plus more radishes.

My garden enclosure is working perfectly.  No squirrel or groundhog attacks.  The corn is growing great, I have tomatoes undisturbed, melons and squashes doing well, cole crops (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) of many kinds, and many small crops like carrots, chard, beets, carrots, etc.  This is going to be a GREAT harvesting season!

I have high hopes for the tomatoes.  I plant heirloom varieties because they just taste so good.  So far they seem healthier than in past years.  And I have 3 plants of 2 Brandywine hybrids developed by the University of Florida that were bred for flavor and disease resistance instead of shipping durability.  One is a large main season tomato called Garden Treasure and one is a "salad" tomato called Garden Gem.

"Supposedly", they have an heirloom taste with good disease resistance.  We'll see.  This is a hard area for heirloom tomatoes.  The humidity is very high in Summer, which encourages fungal diseases, and the Winters don't get cold enough to kill off soil parasites (nematodes, etc).

Meanwhile, I have the heirlooms Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Prudens Purple, Striped German, and Ponderosa Pink.  And for backup, I have a hybrid called Big Beef which is the best-tasting hybrid I know of.

And I also have my upside-down growing cherry tomato plant.  I grow it out the bottom of a 5 gallon pot hanging 10" above ground.  More about that some other day.  I just hung it yesterday, so there isn't much to show other than a scrawny seedling confused about which way is up.

Good and Bad Day

Discovered I could transact business with my far away credit union through a different local one.  They call it Credit-Union-Sharing (real original, right?).  But it beats driving an hour and back.

Picked 22 ripe cherry tomatoes and 3 large heirloom tomatoes in the garden. YUM!

Raked 10 piles of rocks out of the new leveled backyard.  Not sure what I will DO with the rocks yet.  But they have to go before I can plant anything there.  And I have a cool tool for raking rocks.  Get ready for the name - Rock Raker!  Maybe "Stoned Today, Gone Tomorrow"?


Actually, it works.  The front tines are curved slightly backwards, so it catches rocks and lets soil slide through.  I suspect some clam-digger adapted it to New England farming.

Fired up the charcoal offset smoker.  Cooked pork ribs and chicken.  The ribs are delicious; I'll have some chicken tomorrow.  And I have enough leftovers for 10 more meals.  Those hickory chunks make great smoke and flavor.

Watered the flowerbeds.  We aren't technically in a drought, but the recently-removed ridge soil was dry as dust 4' down and that's not good.  We we forecast "heavy rain" Thursday/Friday, but I got less than 1/4".  That doesn't even register on plants.  In fact, it's bad for them.  It encourages the roots upwards, where they dry out faster.

So I try to water deeply once a week.  We aren't low on water supply here (for the hoses), just not much rain  and lots of plants transpiring it from the soil even deep down.  Its the lack of water deep in the soil that worries me.

Watering is easy.  I have this thing I built...

 I bought 2 plants that I want more of.  One is a Knock-Off Rose and the other is a dwarf butterfly bush.  I hate buying plants that cost $25 in a 3" pot!  But I know how to take cuttings and root them.  So each of those plants will be 5 plants at least next Spring.

Call me cheap, but its the fun of doing the rootings I like...

And the cats are loving being outside.  Marley misses his mousies (destroyed when the ridge was leveled) but he accepts my promise that the new plantings will probably bring even more mousies around and he will have more hiding places.

I better deliver on that promise...

Ponderosa Pink Heirloom Tomato

I got my first ripe heirloom tomato today.  It was a Ponderosa Pink.  It wasn't great, well, the first ripe tomatoes of any kind usually aren't the best.  But this one had a special meaning.

You see, my Dad (deceased 2014) loved them.  I think that is what his Dad grew and to him, that was THE tomato.  Dad used to save seeds from them and regrow them each year.  Dad wasn't a very good gardener.  He just planted stuff in bad soil and went full-out chemical on them.  It was a very "modern" 1950s/1960s thing to do. 

We kids hated his garden.  He grew kale, for example, and we had to eat it.  The kale was so "metalic" that a magnet might have stuck to it. The corn was always too startchy.  The beans were OK.

But the tomatoes were pretty good, the few that grew.  Ponderosa Pink.  Dad saved the seeds in a paper bag in the garage.  As the conditions were bad in the garage, I'm surprised that any sprouted at all.  The year Dad and Mom left that house and moved north, the bag of seeds disappeared.  Dad always said he gave me the seeds, but he didn't.  The loss of the family Ponderosa seeds was a deep disappointment to him.  I assume that the bag of seeds on the garage shelf just got left behind and the new occupants tossed them away.

I followed Grandad's gardening practices.  He was organic, and his veggies always tasted good.  I suppose he also had good Ponderosa Pink tomatoes, but I was too young to know about varieties then.

As years passed and I got my own space for gardening, I looked up some of the best heirloom varieties of tomatoes.  I grew Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Prudens Purple, Aunt Gerties Gold, and Cherry tomatoes.  I didn't grow Ponderosa Pink. 

But I got curious about Ponderosa Pink this year and found a place that sold it (It doesn't seem to be very popular).  The shipping was more than the cost of the seeds, but, "well, what the heck".

So the first heirloom tomato I harvested this year was a Ponderosa Pink.

Dad, this one is for you...

The Garden Inside

I have been planting while I built.  I risked losing plants to the Evil Squirrels or Groundhogs, but I've managed to avoid them this year.  I may have reduced the local population down to where they don't like getting into my space.

Which is good, because there are still gaps between the rolls of chicken wire I need to patch. 

They great news is that my garden, while incomplete, is growing well.

First, I have my first main season tomato.  It is a Big Beef, which is a hybrid and not my favorite, but it is still better than the store-bought ones.  The heirlooms are just now fruiting and will take a couple weeks to ripen.

I'm trying somehing in one bed based of the Three Sisters of Native America plantings.  Thats growing corn, letting pole beans climb the cornstalks, and growing melons below to shade out weeds. 

I may have planted the corn late; the beans are growing faster.  But I'll see what happens for this year.  I can stick 8' posts in the ground between the corn plants to let the pole beans climb (and the pole beans are the flat italian kind which taste better than standard ones to my mind).  The melons are honeydew.

The heirloom tomatoes are growing unusually tall.  New soil with good compost, I guess.  But most have blossoms now.  Below them are 2 green squash and 1 yellow squash.

This bed has cantalope melons.  I'm planting Fall crops around it.  I'm off-schedule with most plantings this year because of the enclosure construction work.  I should be back on schedule next year.  But it is a rare opportunity for Fall crops that I usually don't get around to.

This cherry tomato was planted late.  It sat in a tiny 6-pack cell for months and I had about given it up for dead and/or stunted.  But after being in ground for only 2 weeks, it went from a 8" sprig to this.  Talk about GROWTH!  I may harvest cherry tomatoes yet...

This is more late plantings.  Broccoli, Leeks, Cabbage, and Celery.  All I can get from Celery around here is leaves, but they sure are strong-tasting!  Which is exactly what I want in my salads.

And I have Brussels Sprouts, Radishes, Carrots,

A Brief Planting Interlude

With the chicken wire overhung on the PVC frames, I realized I was able to do some planting in the beds below without worrying the draping of the chicken wire would rip them up.  HURRAY, I can start the garden in the new beds!  I had lots of home-grown seedlings waiting to go in the ground.

Here are broccoli, celery, leeks, and bell peppers...  I can't get full celery stalks here, but I prefer the leaves anyway for the stronger flavor in salads.

And some cabbages...

I have 9 heirloom tomatoes planted in large sturdy remesh cages.   2 Brandywines, 2 Cherokee Purple (my favorites),

1 Aunt Gerties Gold, 1 Striped German ...

 1 Prudens Purple, 1 Ponderosa Pink, and 1 Big Beef (a decent-tasting hybrid for backup)

Tomorrow, I'll be planting seeds in the other beds.  Spinach, radishes, carrots, scallions, beets, etc.

And one bed is reserved for the "3 sisters".  That's corn, pole beans, and melons.  The corn is a bi-color type (love bi-color corn for the combination of flavor and sweetness), the pole beans should climb the corn stalks, and the melons should cover the soil and shade out the weeds.  It's an American Native pre-Columbian practice.  We'll see how it works...