More Summer Tomato Crop

I gathered a bunch of our smaller tomatoes the other day for a summer pasta dish. The Scatalone plant was the last one I put in this year. I picked up the start from the farmer's market and it took me ages to find this variety.

It is the most amazingly delicious fruit - so far my favorite variety. Sadly, because it went in last, it's not nearly as large and booming as its predecessor was last year. I must remember next spring to order starts ahead of time for this amazing tomato and get at least two plants!

Here's a shot of a variety of our smaller tomatoes - early ssubukis aliana, isis candy, scatalone, black cherry.

Delicious!

Summer Bounty Comes Rolling In

Our waldo peas seem to be finally finishing. I'm not sure why, but the leaves have developed a waxy white covering that may be due to overwatering. I think I'm going to trim them back so they can fall to compost in the garden box soil. In the meantime, I noticed that there are actually new shoots coming up, which is fantastic because my son LOVES to eat these peas!

Today I'm making a roast pork tenderloin in fig sauce for dinner and we needed figs. We are incredibly lucky that there's a bike path a block from our house. There's an incredible array of fruits that grow along the path and on fruit trees that grace the walk to the path.

We headed out to the fig tree on the path this morning only to discover that the most recent blush of ripe figs had been harvested by others. There are plenty more on the way, and we did manage to find the last few edible ones for our sauce.

Likewise, our pear tree is producing beautifully this year. Above is a shot of the (as yet) uneaten parts of today's bounty. We already ate a lot of peas and some pears and figs!

First Tomatoes of the Season!

I lied right there - in the blog post title. These aren't technically the first tomatoes of the season. We've already had a smattering ripen early, but they never even made it into the house for a wash. We just popped them into our mouths too quickly.

Here's the first photograph of the first (ish) tomatoes of the season. 

There are three varieties shown here. At 1 o'clock is the Isis Candy - very sweet. This lives in the back tomato patch. At 4 o'clock is the Early Ssubakus Aliana, also sweet. It's in one of the big planter boxes on our driveway. 6 o'clock features a small Cherokee Purple. There are monstrous ones hanging on the plant right now that dwarf this little one. It was a tasty tomato on my bagel! Finally, and 8 and 10 o'clock are two Black Cherries. This is the blighted plant, but it's producing well so far (I've trimmed off the offending leaves and stems). The plant does look scrawny, with super long stems and not very bushy, but the fruit is delicious so far.

The Plant Killer Strikes Again - Flooding

I am a one-person biblical disaster when it comes to the care and maintenance of plants. Lord help me if I ever have to depend on growing my own food! Due to ignorance, forgetfulness and / or the outcome of having a puce thumb, I seem to provide my poor plants with so many variants of plagues and wrath to have to survive. Only the heartiest plants can handle life in my garden!

Today was no exception. Poor plants. For the second year in a row we're having odd issues with our automatic sprinkler / irrigation system. It seems that my gardening efforts are fated to have mechanical problems! The sprinkler system goes off sporadically. Sometimes it stays on schedule to water every morning for 10 minutes, then suddenly it won't work for two weeks. It's set to go off early in the morning, so I don't always know if it's watered the garden or not. We have it set to drip irrigation, so you have to put your finger in the dirt to be certain it's been watered.

The system hasn't worked all week, and I've been running it manually, but not daily because I wanted to pare back the watering a bit anyway. I ran the water this morning for what I'd planned to be 10 minutes... then promptly forgot about it..... for AN HOUR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We'll see how my poor plants deal with the flooding. The good news is that the garden is set at the top of a hill, so it's not like the plants have to sit in puddles of standing water. I hope I haven't ruined the crop! The tomatoes were just really starting to boom.

Aack! My Tomatoes are Blighted!

I'm no tomato doctor. If anything, as per the title of my blog, I'm a tomato undertaker. True to form, it's mid-July and after an early blush of plant coddling over the spring and some booming growth... one of my tomato plants is ailing.

Last Year's Fails: 
Blight on the Brandywine?
Last year, my pink brandywine became extremely sickly. It produced one lonely and mealy tomato and, in the end, it looked a bit like a dog hung on its choke-chain. That's not an image I like to promote, but that's what it looked like -- it had lost almost all its leaves in a slow turning from dark green to pale yellow and this one tomato was on one of the highest branches. It wavered there on this thin neck of a branch as the plant became progressively sicklier and scrawnier. The brandywine was the one plant I had really looked forward to, as I'd surmised the tomato's flavor would be most like my husband's childhood tomatoes. So, I strung the poor thing up pretty high to keep it from drooping over onto the driveway.

In retrospect, I think this plant had blight, especially now that I've read up on the condition more.


Another Blight?
I had another plant go pretty badly, as I recall now. The leaves never got too diseased-looking, but the fruits were all leathery and gross and the plant never really thrived. I think it was the Black Plum. The Illinois Fruit and Vegetable News has pretty good descriptions of some ailments for tomatoes. In the blight description, it mentions "leathery" fruit, which this plant definitely had, but it didn't have so much leaf death.

Blossom End Rot
 I had two plants with an obvious condition last year - blossom end rot. Both the Gourmet Yellow Stuffer and the Scatalone lost almost all their fruit to this last year. The Scatalone is a long fruit anyway, and my understanding is that tomato shape can have an effect on the condition.

This Year's Fail: Blight on the Black Cherry?
So, we're just barely getting our fruits in now with lots of beautiful looking green tomatoes on all the plants... but my Black Cherry has suddenly become a withering plant with brown leaves and browning, soft stems. The leaves have some black speckles too.... is it blight? Yikes!!!

The Miracle Fruit that is the Loquat

In case you don't know what a loquat is...well.. you haven't lived. I just discovered them last year. They're AMAZING. They are a plum sized orange / yellow fruit that grows on trees.

Flavor
Their flavor varies throughout the season, but the "freshly ripe" ones are slightly tart with (to me) a green grape / apple / apricot type taste and grape-ish texture. The middle ripe ones are sweeter with a balance between the tart and sweet and the past-prime are just super sweet.

Important Note:
Loquats have large seeds inside - the number varies - I've seen one and up to three. They are like apricot seeds or very large apple seeds, but the main point is, like apricot seeds... DON'T EAT them - they're poisonous.


How to Eat:
Also, to eat a loquat properly, you peal the outer skin and nibble around the seed.

Loquat Season is Here!!!

Yay!!!! All last spring, I cajoled my (then) very strong willed 2 yr old into early evening walks with me by enticing her with the prospect of getting some delicious loquats from neighborhood trees (there are three fruiting, quasi-public domain trees on our block alone).

Today, we had our first loquats of the season. Perfection!

My toddler son had his first taste and is hooked and I have a new incentive for my (now) very strong willed 3 yr old to take after dinner strolls with me!

Another Stab at a Brandywine Tomato

At the farmer's market yesterday, I also picked up another tomato plant - a red brandywine. Last year, I had a pink brandywine in a 5 gallon nursery bucket. It did unbelievably poorly - was very sickly, losing what few leaves it developed. Ironically, this was one of the most important plants to me last year, since my husband spoke of how much he missed his favorite tomatoes from Jersey and I was guessing that Brandywines were his variety.

Somehow the pink brandywine managed to squeeze out three mealy tomatoes. In the end, though, it looked a bit like a dog hanging on a choke chain --- I'd slung its one super-long and spindly branch up high, tying it to a bamboo stake to keep the last developing tomato from capsizing the branch and falling ***SPLAT*** onto the driveway.

Needless to say, I'm hoping this year's will fair better. In order to give this one a fighting chance, I put it in a 10 gallon nursery pot with fertilizer-rich soil and some sand at the bottom for better drainage. I couldn't justify putting it in one of the final coveted spots in our northern bed, considering how badly its cousin performed last year.

I've put the brandywine pot next to another 10 gallon pot that has garlic thriving in it from last year (see - that which I've totally neglected thrives -- the garlic was a companion planting for tomatoes last year as a means of keeping aphids away). Both are on the eastern side of the big boxes, so when I hook up the automatic irrigation next weekend, they'll be easy to include.

This year's unsuspecting brandywine experiment... Mwa-ha-ha-ha!!! (front right. Left is garlic)

More Plants in the Garden - Bell Peppers

I decided to plant bell peppers with the tomatoes that are in the big boxes, so I picked up what I could find at the farmer's market yesterday. I ended up with two red bells and one chocolate. I hope to round out the pepper crop this year with a purple and an orange, possibly another chocolate too!

I got the peppers in the boxes today and they seem happy.

Brandywine in front, chocolate bell pepper in back.




Tiny red bell peppers in fore of box on right. Garlic and fava beans in front.

My Grow List

This is a brand spanking new site that a friend of mine (and very new food gardener!) hipped me to. I hope they add new features, like being able to post from this blog directly to my account there, but it's still fun and the questions forum is GREAT! Can't wait to see what kind of community develops.

Here I am at My Grow List.

Tomato Plant Update #3

We planted the tomatoes today, but beforehand I got some shots of them still in thier cups.

Here they are from the top:





And the side:

Tomatoes are Finally In!

It took longer than expected, but the little tomato starts I've been tending since Tammy gave them to me back on March 25. It's been on and off cold at night, and we're still getting some winter rains, but I decided to get them planted out. They're pretty hearty by now and have gotten really big in their little cups!

This is the Early Ssubakus Aliana, in one of the big planter boxes:



Here's the Black Cherry in the other big planter (I put them on opposite ends for maximum spread, and intend to put bell peppers on the empty sides tomorrow).



Here are the Cherokee Purple, Tomatillo and Isis Candy (left to right):

Garden Planning

This is mostly a "note to self" type post. I thought I remembered seeing some of Tammy's garden plans from last year on her blog, and I just came across the posts.

Here's from when she planted out last year and here's is an update. In addition, this is her list for 2010. Finally, she's got these posts about her shaded herb garden. Funny, just this morning I was wondering how our herbs will do tucked away in their little semi-shaded box. I'm mostly wondering how the peas (and later on beans) will fare, but time will tell!

I want to keep track of it because she's planted a lot of the things I'd like to plant / do plant in those beds and I'm looking for ideas on spacing, etc.

Planting Out Day!!!

It's finally here! May 1st and we are planting out today! Of course, I still don't have the plants' exact locations figured in our garden spaces, so I have to do a last minute research mission online about plant spacing.

Tomatillo - 24 inches

Transplanting Out

Possibly because of the notorious variability of tomatillo plants, there seems wide disagreement about a good inter-plant spacing for them: the range offered runs from 15 to 24 inches. On the one hand, one wants them as close as practicable, to conserve garden space and to encourage the necessary cross-pollination; on the other hand, one doesn't want the plants competing for sun and space. We used 24 inches and were glad we did--they bushed out quite a bit.

Tomatoes - depends on variety
I found some info about tomato spacing here. Since all my varieties are indeterminate, I'm going to hedge my bets with 24-36 inches in between. It's funny, but I recall from last year that the plants with larger fruits stayed relatively smaller, while the littler varieties spread out more... I'll try to plant a small variety next to a large and see what happens! Perhaps I'll alternate with bell pepper plants. 

Transplanting Out

Transplanting out can be done in several ways. Some simply plant in the usual manner; with tomatoes, that means setting them deep, as deep as possible, so that the lowest leaves are just barely above the soil surface. Another technique is trenching: make a shallow trench, say 4 to 6 inches deep, then lay the seedling (which is, recall, 9 to 12 inches tall) on its side in the trench, gently bending the stem so that only the plant's top is above the soil surface (there are some illustrative photos on one of the sites linked below, well down that page). The virtue of this technique is that tomatoes will send down roots from any part of their stem that is in contact with soil, so this way one gets a lot of root, with much of it near the surface, where warmth and water access are better. But (there's always a "but"), on the other hand, the root system isn't as deep as with conventional planting. Dr. Male's recommendation is to trench only for those seedlings that look spindly or "leggy" and are scarcely able to stand upright on their own; the good doctor grows an immense number of tomato plants annually, but we who grow less than immense numbers can afford to overplant and be picky by culling leggy seedlings at transplant time. Still, both methods bear consideration. As you see, peat pots are not felt by experts to be the best approach; but if you're using them, be sure to bury their rims a good inch below the soil level, lest they wick out moisture from the soil to the air.

Here are the tomato descriptions:

Cherokee Purple
80 days, indeterminate — Given to heirloom tomato collector Craig LeHoullier by J. D. Green of Tennessee, it is at least 100 years old and was reported as originally grown by the Cherokee Indians. The fruits are large (twelve to sixteen ounces), dark pink with darker purple shoulders.  Excellent complex flavor, slight sweet aftertaste, perfect slicer for tomato sandwiches!

Black Cherry
65 days, indeterminate — This is a new variety that is very productive with cherry shaped fruits that have the dark, purplish coloring of 'Cherokee Purple'. Flavor is wonderful, very rich and sweet

Isis Candy ~ Warm yellow cherries are uniquely marbled with a red blush to full streaks, lovely and delicious, IND, 80 DTM

Early Ssubakus Aliana - no idea, but the rest look indeterminate, so I'll just go with that...

Zone 9 Blueberry Varieties

So, from Raintree, these are my choices for zone 9:


The Chandler Blueberry

It has the longest ripening season of any blueberry, providing more than a month of sweet, firm delicious fruit.

$13.50 / plant





The Elizabeth (no photo)
It's back! Blueberry gourmets have long been trying to find a source of Elizabeth! This variety developed in New Jersey in the 1960's is sought for its superior flavor. $12.50  / plant


Misty Blueberry

Hardiness to 0° F, a very low chilling requirement of only 150 chilling hours and a tolerance for higher pH soils makes this a perfect USDA Zones 7-9 choice. $14.50 / plant

This looks like a good plant for this area.
















Reveille

The unique crisp, almost crunchy texture and the outstanding popping flavor make this a must for your blueberry patch. $8.50


Unfortunately, it says they need 600 chilling hours... may be too little for here.



Sharp Blue

If you are in the South, enjoy delicious fresh blueberries year around! Sharpblue is the most adaptable variety in low chill areas. $8.50

 This looks like a good choice for us.



Sunshine

Hardiness to 0 degrees F, a very low chilling requirement of only 150 chilling hours and a tolerance for higher pH soils makes this a perfect choice for gardeners in the Pacific Northwest, the South or in California. One gallon plants. $12.50


Hmmm... looks possible

Blueberry Bushes

A while back, Tammy told me that she'd ordered her blueberry bushes from The Raintree Nursery in Washington. I've been wanting some blueberry bushes for a few years now, especially since my son has demonstrated that he will eat them until he turns blue (or at least his poops do!). I guess she also picked up some bushes at Costco, of all places, and her general notion was that both places have good prices.


Multiple Bushes and Varieties and Know How Many to Buy
What little I know of blueberries is that it's good to mix two varieties for pollination purposes (though I'm unsure why you need different varieties to cross pollinate... wouldn't you end up with a hybrid fruit then?), since they're not self-pollinating.

Pollination: Most fruit trees, including blueberries have both male and female organs on the same flower, but not all are self pollinating.  The best bet for blueberries is to have different varieties of blueberries  within 100 feet, so bees can travel and cross pollinate.  Blueberries cannot be fertilized by their own pollen!

The Blueberry site also notes the importance of choosing varieties that have overlapping seasons, as well as counting on two plants per family member. Here's a good list of seasons and varieties and here's some more info from the blueberry site:

You may want to select varieties that ripen at different times or feature large fruit (best for fresh eating and desserts) or small fruit (best for muffins and pancakes). Bushes with brilliant fall color or different growth habits offer the gardener lots of choices to use throughout the landscape. For blueberry lovers, allow at least two plants per family member.

 Zones, Baby, Zones
It's also important to make sure you get varieties that do well in your zone. I'm in an odd area, with Northern California's micro-climates having a strong effect, it's hard to know on any given day what the exact climate is. However, using this guide, I was able to guesstimate that we're in zone 9. The guide is great because you can look up your hardiness zone by zipcode.

Coffee and Blueberries?
Another thing Tammy taught me was to keep the soil acidic. She had a whole idea about mixing coffee with the water every now and then, but I'll have to double back with her to see what her exact measurements were.

Potting Soil Comparisons

I came across this fantastically in-depth potting soil comparison the other day. It's too bad he only used one organic soil, as I'd much rather see how various organic soils fared with one another. Nevertheless, I'm impressed by his thoroughness! Here's his conclusion:

Supersoil's high germination rate and superior growth in both melon and tomato seedlings make it the preferred choice of the potting soils tested. When the additional factors of ease of handling, easy watering, fast drainage and low cost are also considered, it is the clear winner.

Peaceful Valley Farm Supply's potting soil came in a close second. But, the fact that it's four times the price of Supersoil after adding in the cost of shipping and not conveniently available makes it much less desirable. Another downside is that it contained weed seeds that germinated in the sample I tested. This was an annoyance that could be a serious problem for someone whose desired seedlings looked like the germinating weeds. How would he or she know which to remove?

They are many dozens of other potting mixes on the market that I wasn't able to test so this experiment can't be considered definitive. But, it strongly suggests that Supersoil potting soil is a superior product capable satisfying anyone's gardening needs. It's certainly the brand I'll be using in my garden from now on.
 

And here's a final note of warning that he makes about a horrible brand he used the year prior. Funny enough, this is the potting soil that I've been using (not the rose one, but the vegetable one). Yipes!

The year before the above comparison I purchased four bags of Gardener and Bloome's Rose Potting soil and used it to plant 77 pots with zinnia, tomato, melon, Canterbury bell and salvia seeds. The results were a complete disaster. Although I followed my regular routine for growing seedlings, a routine that's worked flawlessly for over 20 years, with this brand of potting soil I only got a 20-percent germination rate, the few plants that came up grew poorly, exhibited many disease symptoms and 30-percent of them died. Upon testing the soil I discovered that in spite of the package advertisements stating that the soil contained a wide spectrum of organic amendments such as bat guano, worm castings, kelp meal, alfalfa meal and so forth, the soil was completely lacking in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous. Even after adding extra fertilizer the plants grew poorly. I've used many potting mixes over the years and this is clearly the worst. Perhaps I got a bad few bags out of what may otherwise have been a a good production run, but for myself I will never use this product again.

Fertilizing Tomatoes

As I've mentioned before on this blog, I seriously thought you couldn't fertilize vegetables in order for them to be organic. At least, not until this year. Apparently, that's cool. Here's the skinny on organic fertilizers:

In addition to increasing yield and fertilizing plants directly, organic fertilizers can improve the biodiversity (soil life) and long-term productivity of soil, and may prove a large depository for excess carbon dioxide. Organic nutrients increase the abundance of soil organisms by providing organic matter and micronutrients for organisms such as fungal mycorrhiza, (which aid plants in absorbing nutrients), and can drastically reduce external inputs of pesticides, energy and fertilizer, at the cost of decreased yield.

Nifty!

Anywhoo... Seeing as we're going to finally plant our tomatoes next weekend, I thought I'd brush up on Tammy's hints on tomato feeding. I've already been using the E.B. Stone Organics Tomato and Vegetable Food, but looks like I need to get some Dynamite Mater Magic.

Lettuce and Greens Plantings

We finally got our boxes moved to the right spots in our yard today! My husband has been working crazy hours, including late nights and weekends, so it's taken us over a month just to get a few hours together to move the boxes and fill them with the rest of the soil.

As an incentive to get it done, I bought some nice lettuce, basil and giant chard starts, as well as a strawberry plant from the accordian man at the farmer's market and 6 organic starts from the hardware store, all of which we got planted today. Tomorrow, I'm going to follow up by sowing lettuce seeds, as everything I've read suggests planting new lettuce seeds every two weeks.

We still haven't put our tomato plants out yet. There have actually been a few cold nights lately, despite warm days and I don't want to expose them to a serious chill. We will get them out next weekend. I'm hoping in the meantime that Tammy can come over and help me plan where they should go!

So, today's plantings in the lettuce bed were:

6 x romaine lettuce starts
6 x speckled butter lettuce starts
6 x regular lettuce starts
6 x mesclun lettuce starts
6 x arugula starts


We also planted 1 basil start in a little box on the decking and the seven strawberry plants in a strawberry pot on the lower deck.

Here are some pictures - they're not great quality - from my phone - but I wanted to remember the beginning of the bed as a comparison later in the year.

Little romaines and baby giant kale peeking from behind the lavender. 

Speckled lettuces and pinwheel.

Our two little boxes, finally next to each other, rather than perpendicular!

The Tomato Starts Are Ready

...but we're not planting them this weekend, despite the perfect weather. Why not, you ask? Because we have a special guest this weekend... The lovely Flo!




She is the world's largest dog --- a leonberger. She's ever so sweet, but can wreak havoc on precious starts by just sneezing on them!

The Northern Border Bed

This is where we will be planting tomatoes. We just cleared it of some purple canna and something green. This weekend has been perfect for planting our starts, but we are dogsitting the world's largest dog. Note that the bed is freshly minted on the right side.

Thus, we're waiting until Flo goes to put the plants in.

The Small Garden Boxes

These are the small square foot garden boxes we built last year, one in the fore, one perpindicular in the back. We were moving them, so they're only half full of dirt.

The closer one features the world's cheapest pea/bean trellis (3 x bamboo sticks + duct tape and string = gardening MacGuyver style). You can see our late-planted Waldo peas shooting up.

The back box has a smidgen of kale, very small lettuces, Rosemary, thyme and parsley. This is going to be an all-herb box this year.

The Little Lettuce Bed

This is half of the little southern lettuce bed, where we will plant... Zucchini. Just kidding. Lettuce.

Come on, people, keep up with the pace here!

*note the dilapidated potted mint. I mean, really, who kills mint??!?

The Big Planter Boxes

Here is a shot of our big square foot garden boxes - with half the dirt and no plants (yet!). Don't mind the Clampett style background... It's still in transition from last year's disaster!

Garden Layout

We live on a small property - roughly 6000 square feet. Our front yard is quite nice, but completely unprotected from marauding deer, which makes it only good for growing edibles that deer can't stand. Our lemon and lime tree do great out here, but everything else, practically, gets messed with. The backyard is a very, very small, postage-stamp-sized yard, half of which is dominated by a driveway, and a remaining third of which is covered by decking. Our lawn is probably 10 x 15. We have several growing areas:

Adding Dirt to the Tomato Starts

In other update news re: the tomato / tomatillo plants - yesterday my daughter and I added a lot more dirt to the cups. It's not getting consistently warm yet, so I don't want to plant them outside just yet, but they seemed so big that I wanted to give them more dirt.

Tomato Plant Update

It's official... I got Tammy's tomato starts just over three weeks ago, on March 25, and they're still alive!

The 2010 Tomato List, So Far

Last week, Tammy hooked me up with five starts - four tomato and one tomatillo. These are the types she gave me, along with the origination of the seeds:

Tomatillo Verde (Baker Creek)
Cherokee Purple (Winter's Own)
Black Cherry (Winter's Own)
Isis Candy (Winter's Own)
Early Ssubakus Aliana (Winter's Own)

The Troublesome Cherokee Purple

My tomato plants are 6.5 weeks old. I've had the starts for a week as of today and one of them is showing signs of faltering. The third tier of leaves, counting from the top down, on the Cherokee Purple has some issues...

Update on My Tomato Plants

Here are my little chalupas as of today, April Fools. Tammy started the seeds on February 13, which makes them now 6.5 weeks old. I pruned off the bottom suckers today, mostly because I'd heard it's not good to get the leaves wet and it was getting hard to water the plants without wetting the bottom sucker leaves.

Pruning & Tying a Tomato Plant

I was just looking for a good picture of a tomato plant to show the suckers, and I came across this handy site. Pruning is way down the road, but I like how well the article explains how to do it and includes three basic rules.

Tammy's Mater Magic

It's been a full week (almost) since Tammy graced me with five fledgling tomato plants and one tomatillo plant. Miraculously, all have been watered and sunned, put out in warm weather and brought inside at night and on chilly days... In short, they're all still alive and perky looking.

Tammy gave me some great suggestions about caring for them, which are basic... almost idiot proof. She noted that:

1. I might want to add some dirt along the way, as they get bigger, before it gets warm enough to plant them outside
2. When I do add dirt or plant them outside, I'll want to put them as deeply as possible into the dirt --- not just insert the roots alone, but plenty of stem. She pointed out how the stems have little "suckers" (feathery / prickly little looking feelers) that, if put in dirt, will become roots.
   
3. Tammy said if there were lower leaves sprouting off the main stem, I should remove them prior to surrounding that part of the stem with dirt -- otherwise they're likely to carry off on their own and become a separate sprout.
   

I've been given all this advice before from pretty knowledgeable gardeners, but it always seemed overcomplicated. Tammy made it sound so basic. Love it!

What Makes a Good Gardener

This article speaks to me... I can't exactly put my thumb on why...... maybe it's how she talks about the shame of the beginning gardener (ahem) about killing plants (ahem, ahem) via any manner of neglect, ignorance, bad luck or naivete (ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem).

Tomatoes of 2009

Remember Steve, my tomato guy from last year? Here are the plants I remember acquiring from him, along with a note on where I put them, and a quick flavor note (for my own recollection). I'm going to do a more comprehensive write up later. Ones in bold are those I must plant again this year:

1. Silvery Fir Tree: square foot garden - uggh
2. Green Zebra: back garden, pretty good
3. Red Zebra: picket garden, a-ok
4. Yellow Taxi: picket garden, amazing
5. Black Krim: large container, shared, mealy
6. Black Plum: large container, shared with Azyochka, a few decent tomatoes, plant looked poorly quickly
7. Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge: large container, never really produced
8. Azyochka: large container, shared with black plum, barely produced, bad flavor
9. Brandywine Pink: small container, looked poorly straight away, produced 3-4 tomatoes, so-so
10. Gourmet Yellow Stuffer: large container, alone, all got blossom end rot
11. Principe Borghese X2 : large container, shared, great producer, delicious
12. Scatalone: small container, most with blossom end rot
13. Marglobe: large container, shared, delicious, wonderful producer
    

Fail Points on Last Year's Tomatoes

My tomatoes and I, we got off on the wrong feet right away last year. It reminds me of when I bought my first "new-new" car, a Daewoo, and literally ran over a raccoon on my maiden voyage from the dealership to my house in East Oakland.

Here are some of the ways I failed my tomatoes last year:

1. LATE START: I got started too late -I think I bought my starts in late May. My friend Tammy had hers in the ground at the end of April.
2. TOO MANY PLANTS: I got an overwhelming number of plants and did not have proper space for them all, so I ended up putting most of them in 5-10 gallon containers, which would have been fine, but, in order to cut costs, I doubled up a lot of them. Whoops.
   
3. WRONG SOIL: I used an odd mix of soil that wasn't really potting soil for my tomato containers. I think 1/3 of it was my leftover Mel's Mix from the square foot garden we'd cobbled together (yay my husband's great handiwork!), and the rest was organic garden soil - not potting soil. Thus, the water wouldn't have drained properly from the containers.
4. NO FERTILIZER / FEED / NUTRIENTS: I didn't fertilize the soil. Classic rookie mistake for a plant killer like me. I misguidedly thought fertilizing = not being organic and generally assumed that a tomato plant needed to toughen up to stick it out with me and produce, dammit. This year I will baby more!
5. OVER / UNDER WATERED: I set up an automatic water drip irrigation system that kept having a faulty part. Thus, between the tomatoes being planted in poor soil for proper drainage and the fact that the waterer would stop functioning, I basically drowned and dehydrated / cooked the poor plants. I swear, it's a miracle they made any fruit at all!

I know there are plenty of other things I could have done differently, but these leap to mind for now.

I will do better this year! I'd better... for the plants' sakes!

How Tomato-Fest 2009 Got Started

Last year, I had it in mind to create a vegetable garden. I thought it would be nice to be able to step outside and collect lettuce for dinner, and I grew up eating farm-fresh tomatoes from Sep's Farm in Long Island. To me, the taste of a sun-warmed fresh tomato is the taste of summer.


My husband, being a fella from Philadelphia, believes that the pinnacle summer tomato experience hails from New Jersey. My husband is a great cook cook and one of his greatest summer pleasures is to get a bunch of ugly heirloom tomatoes and make a delicious salad with them. At some point last spring, I got it into mind that we'd save money (pshaw) by growing our own tomatoes. I also became obsessed with recreating his pinnacle tomato. See... I know exactly how to recreate my "core" tomato experience - next time I'm in Long Island, I'll just stop at Sep's. For my husband, however, it's a little trickier - he's unsure where they got their tomatoes, just that they were probably from New Jersey.

Long story short, I was wildly naive about

A) the cost of creating a garden during the first year. Damn, all that dirt is expensive!!!

and

B) finding my husband's pinnacle tomato - I had no idea there were so many varieties!!!

If I were to rate last year's gardening experience 1-10, with 10 being perfect, I'd give it a 4. But, we're back in for another year and hopefully we'll turn out a bit better this time!

Steve, My 2009 Tomato Dealer

Last year, I got almost all of my tomato starts from a fellow named Steve who grows tons of heirloom tomatoes to make heirloom ketchup. This is his site: Heirloom Ketchup



When I met up with him in Richmond to buy the plants it was a little overwhelming - he had so many and he only sells them in $20 lots, which was the equivalent of about five or six plants. He keeps this greenhouse in an area of Richmond that borders between highly industrial and residential. On the way in, you pass by all these abandoned greenhouses on lots that are for sale, as well as a scrapyard with people lined up outside with cars full of aluminum cans.

Steve was very nice, and my daughter, then 2, was intrigued to walk around, but the greenhouse itself was in a state of disarray. Steve was in the middle of moving his plants up to his outdoor growing space, near Davis, I think.

Anyway, I came with a list of the ones I specifically wanted, which I had agonized over after reading descriptions on his Craig's List ad, and also on other heirloom tomato sites. As he hunted for the right strains and couldn't find this one or that one, we got to chatting... and he started throwing in extra plants here and there. He is so zealous about his tomatoes that he kept describing each plant in a way that made it seem even better and more fantastic than the last.

The next thing you know, instead of having 6, maybe 7 plants, tops, I walked out with probably 15! You can see Steve's full cultivar list here. I hope he updates his site sometime to include his fantastic descriptions.

Plan to Germinate Tomato Seeds

(above picture snagged from some other site... mine will not be in a petri dish!)


My friend and new garden advice goddess, Tammy, gave me some beautiful looking tomato starts the other day. She had started them from seed and, handily enough, posted a great tutorial on growing tomatoes from seeds on her blog.

I'm going to give her method a try starting tomorrow. I'm happy with the five plants she gave me, but my mother-in-law sent some beautiful looking plant seeds from Landreth's as a Christmas gift, and I've got to try those too!

Welcome!

Hi there! Thanks for popping by. This is the first post in my new blog, which is meant to chronicle my amazing feats of killing plants.

I've always been a black thumb with plants - I vacillate wildly between gross neglect, parching plants to the near bitter end, then drowning them, literally, with daily over-waterings. I'm not completely inept at caring for things - historically, animals have blossomed under my care, and I have two small children who have managed to thrive thus far. When it comes to plants, however... not so much.

Despite past evidence of failure, I decided to dive head first into creating a square foot garden last summer. In addition to planting (and killing) numerous lettuces, some corn, string beans, peppers and sundry herbs, we also had about 9 tomato plants in containers. There were some successes, but, in the end, I lost heart because, at summer's end, some of the craftier deer figured out how to circumvent my hoopty deer fence.

This year, 2010, I'm back with a vengeance. We JUST had a great fence / gate built into the end of our driveway, which completely seals off our back yard. Now that I feel we can embrace a new year of plant killing without help from the larger local vermin, I'm ready to give it a try.

I wish I'd kept record of last year's attempts, as I've already forgotten a number of the tomatoes we planted, as well as which ones had better success than others. My mom, a fantastic gardener, had suggested a record, and now I see why.

Also, I'm inspired to share this as a blog because I have gotten so much out of reading my friend, Tammy's blog: http://marinmangos.blogspot.com/. She, too, claims to be a beginner, but that's total BS - she even knows about things like "grafts," "cross-pollination" and "harvests."

Wish me luck!