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.

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...

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.

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!