Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!!!

Everyone loves tomatoes - all sizes, shapes, and colors.  For instance, the Cherokee Purple Tomato.  It isn't really purple but more of a beautiful dark maroon with green on top.  That first year I bought four varieties of heirloom tomato plants from Seed Savers Exchange.  A novice at gardening, the space I left between plants in my garden made it very difficult to harvest later.  So many gorgeous tomatoes.  The Cherokee Purple are particularly sweet and juicy, perfect for tomato sandwiches and canned tomato juice.

The first seed I ever tried saving was a tomato seed.  Now several years later we have our own family variety.  I was told that tomato plants do not cross pollinate but I don't believe that's totally true.  Our family variety seems to be a conglomeration of those first four varieties that I purchased and planted so close together.  My friends, the pollinating insects, took care of spreading the pollen around.  Sharing it.

In my email yesterday I received this beautiful blog post on growing tomatoes organically.  Great information altogether in one short article.  Sharing it.

Where Do Seeds Come From?

Starting a home vegetable garden can be overwhelming at first.  High Mowing's article offers helpful information.

How to Choose? Open-Pollinated vs. Hybrid Varieties

 
Choose well now.  Our options are diminishing rapidly.

According to the report, Monsanto has alleged seed patent infringement in 144 lawsuits against 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 U.S. states as of January of 2013. Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta together hold 53 percent of the global commercial seed market, which the report says has led to price increases for seeds -- between 1995 and 2011, the average cost of planting one acre of soybeans rose 325 percent and corn seed prices went up 259 percent. 

Buy organic seeds.  Grow of your own food.  Get together with neighbors and start a community garden.  Learn how to save your own seed.  NOW.

When should I start my veggie garden?

After your first attempt to grow a vegetable garden, you probably have more questions than answers.
 Should I start my seeds indoors then transplant into my garden?  Should I plant seed directly into my garden?  When should I plant?  Which veggies like it hot and which like it cold?  What varieties will grow in my area? When should I fertilize and what should I use?  What soil pH does my tomato plant prefer? Or my asparagus?  Or my blueberry bush?  What is nitrogen, where does it come from, and why does my garden need it?

Let's start with The Garden Planting Calendar for your area from All Things Plants.

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Keeping Monsanto OUT of Your Home Garden!

Found this today on "The healthy Home Economist".  

The Four Steps Required to Keep Monsanto OUT of Your Garden  

Seed Catalogs

Here's a list of seed catalogs that Sharon Astyk posted on her blog. Weblinks are included. Have fun shopping for seeds and many great how-to books.

Thanks Sharon for pulling them altogether.

Tomatoes

YUM!!

Roots and Shoots, Shingles and Studs

INSIDE: baby tomatoes, cucumbers, and, believe it or not, a sweet potato grow and get ready for transplantation outside into the garden.

OUTSIDE: Jennifer and Nicholas, her puggle, help re-roof the shed so split wood can be stacked inside.

LESSON: cycles, cycles, cycles

August Already!?!

Oh, boy! Our few beautiful days of summer are flying by. The gardens are loving the warmth and sunshine after weeks of rain. My tomatoes look like a jungle. The bumble bees have multiplied, even saw a honey bee the other day. A friend gave me a magenta butterfly bush last spring. Large feathery blooms have indeed attracted butterflies including a large black swallow tail. Red raspberries and black currants are in the freezer along with chives, blanched kale and local corn. Still have some frozen wild blueberries from last year. My blueberry bushes won't produce for a couple years. Cucumbers are soon to be done producing. Ten pounds of cukes wait in the kitchen to become bread and butter pickles. We snack on sweet peas right off the vine. Green beans made it to the table yesterday for their first meal along with a salad of tomatoes, green pepper, onion, and cucumber - all freshly harvested. The slug population is diminishing but still takes the summer squash and zucchini. They can't stay away from those large yellow blossoms. Peaches, pears, plums, and apples will soon be ready at the local orchard for canning. Bought my first pressure canner last week and will use it to preserve something this season.

Seed selection, planting location, soil preparation, planting, cultivating, fertilizing, pollinating, insect and pest control, water management, harvesting, EATING, and storage...all take concentration and diligence, especially when avoiding chemicals in the process. But all this seems like play compared to figuring out how to feed your family year round from your own garden produce and the locally grown food you are able to preserve.

Start the process of learning to feed your family now.

Years ago I planted a purple coneflower in my back yard. It struggled along then finally disappeared. Last year three coneflower plants grew up near my raised bed - about one hundred feet from their original location. This year they are wonderful. Must learn how to preserve Echinacea (coneflower). As an herb, it has properties that help boost the immune system. Grace is currently in a doctor's care because her immune system seems to be deficient.

LESSON: Trust in The Creator and effort to cooperate with His design brings Blessing beyond your trust and effort alone.

Gardening Progress Report

This is a short description of what is our long list of vegetables harvested so far in 2009:
zucchini, black currant, red raspberry, black raspberry (wild), strawberry (local, not our own), kale, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, green pepper, chives.

Planted in 2009 but not yet harvested: tomatoes, onions, garlic, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplant, summer squash, chard, peas, green beans.

Planted in 2008 or 2009 but will harvest next year: asparagus, rhubarb, blueberries.

Plan to add to garden in 2010: strawberries and an herb garden

Learning this year: continue amending soil, continue expanding the grow area, growing food is much more work than growing shrubs or flowers, need to calculate how much of each veggie to plant for our consumption, home grown produce spoils much faster than the grocery store produce - could it be all those chemicals? (Heard from a friend who recently travelled to Costa Rica that the locals will not eat the bananas ready for export to the U.S. because of all the chemicals used to keep them "fresh".)

The most graphic lesson this year: the slug is NOT the farmer's friend.

100th Post

The largest question on my mind today...how many slugs will a nine inch pie tin full of cheap beer hold? I used to think all worms (except the earthworm) claimed The Most Disgusting Living Thing title. Slugs oozed to the bottom of the loathsome list this spring. With rain, and cool, and wood mulch, the slug samples every leaf, flower, and fruit in my garden. This morning as I picked slugs off plants with my two-stick tweezers, I held back the urge to gag. The slime and goo proved too much for me when I plopped great-great grandpa/grandma into the beer bowl. Time to wash my hands...with detergent, possibly bleach...ugh.
Dave now calls me, "Slugger".

June 19th -- on my mind

Mom's birthday. She would have been 85 this year but died of breast cancer at 57.
MRI this morning. Checking my lower back for source of pain in knees and legs. After removal of a tumor from my left thigh along with a couple hamstring muscles a few years ago, there are several possibilities for source of pain.
Dave's quartet. They sing for one of their largest audiences tonight. The guys look so pretty with their new ties.

Jennifer driving down from Maine. I'm waiting for the phone call asking us to pick her up somewhere between here and there with broken down vehicle...
Bing cherries. Possibly the most satisfying food ever created is now here in the markets. Sweet Bing cherries and tree ripened mangos what more could anyone want?
New Steps. The process goes on...nice, huh?

Sun finally broke through the rain clouds. What a glorious day!

Vegetable Gardening Basics

Found this website when looking for info on asparagus and rhubarb. The site is simple and user friendly with all the basics.

Watch Your Garden Grow from the University of Illinois.

Inground Container Gardening

That's what I'm calling it...Inground Container Gardening. If the soil in your yard is like mine - clay and rock - then you understand. When you manage to dig a hole big enough to plant something, you find the hole itself could double for a clay pot or plastic bucket. Ugh!
Soooo...I abandoned the trench idea for the blueberry plants. (I'd still be digging) And went for the container gardening method. For the blueberries we dug holes larger than required, filled the holes with acidified potting soil, put in the plant, watered well, and mulched with sawdust left behind by the chainsaw. Photos to follow.

Boy, do I need a bath.

Putting in my First Blueberry Plants

On Tuesday the temperature reached 93 degrees, a new record in our area for April 28th. By Wednesday evening a frost warning circulated! Ah, New England. This morning it is 40 degrees, no frost, but I had brought my little tomato plants back in the house just in case.
A few days ago four blueberry (not wild blues) plants arrived. Yesterday, after digging the first hole, I poured water into it just to check the drainage. That hole held water like a pail! Nice. So today I'll be digging a trench rather than four separate holes for the blueberry plants. That way I can fill the trench with organic material and better soil. Good luck to me.

The nursery that sent the blueberry plants included a booklet of how-to instructions. Listed below are their -

RULES FOR CONTAINER GROWING

1. Containers may be plastic, wood, metal, or clay. Your container must provide drainage. You cannot have water sitting in the bottom so the root system lies in a pool of water all the time. To provide drainage, drill or punch holes in the container, then put a couple of inches of broken crockery, gravel, marble chips or comparable material in the bottom.

2. Use a container big enough not to crowd roots. Trees require containers about 24 inches across, whether round, square, or rectangular, and as deep as your knee. For grapes and berries, use a container to one-half the tree size. A good mixture of soil for container growing is 1/3 sand, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 loose planting soil.

3. Feed your plant(s) with a liquid fertilizer once a month. Water them during growing seasons frequently enough to keep the soil slightly damp, not moist, to the touch.

Begin Easy

Here's a short, easy, information video about container gardening. Spring is the time to begin. Go ahead, jump in.

Food for you

Hungry? What shall we eat?

A Nation of Farmers

Now prepare to plant what and where you have space.
Try an Earth Box. Try something.

What's Going On Here?

We harvested our first radish... pretty puny, huh? We just began gardening in earnest this year. The lesson of building up the soil has hit hard and firm. So we decided not to be discouraged about what is or isn't growing and concentrate on future growing seasons.

Don't get me wrong we are harvesting a few things. Here's a picture of our first whole meal which includes new potatoes, fresh onions, home-churned butter, strawberry jam from local strawberries, red raspberries from our own patch, and whole wheat bread from home ground wheat. Delicious. Tastes better when you produce it yourself.

Dave sharpened up the Stihl to open up more sky for the tomatoes. Right now our raised bed only gets about three hours of sun a day. So while we are just getting a few baby green tomatoes, others are harvesting. When I get my techno-act together, I'll post a slide show of this year's first delimbing when Dave's son removed the large limb hanging over the house.

Life grows in other areas too. This is one day old Nicholas with Grampa. He's a real beauty. Pretty sure he has the making of a News Anchor already. There have been a series of birthdays too. Birthdays are important to celebrate especially in a large family. Every year each member of the group has a day to be the center of attention. We all just celebrated our eighteen year old granddaughter's birthday and she leaves home for an out-of-state college in two weeks. Recently Grace turned five. Yesterday Violet Elizabeth turned three. She thrilled to blow out all three candles by herself. What fun is this!

HAPPY 58th BIRTHDAY BARB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

APottoPeein

Time for a little catchup. We're back in town, back to work, back to thinking change in life style. Although we didn't fully celebrate Crunchy's Golden Showers Garden Party, we have a new addition to our bathroom appliances. Apottopeein. This handy little "appliance" has a screw on lid and can hold up to a half gallon of liquid human fertilizer concentrate -- urine. When diluted with water ten parts water to one part urine, it offers nitrogen to garden soil. Already plants around my yard and garden are smiling with the green glow of new nitrogen. It's so easy, always available and doesn't cost a thing. (My particular pot, a former storage container, was nabbed and recycled into its new prominent position as Apottopeein.) I recommend this simple and natural way to fertilize your outside plants and shrubs. You may however prefer the upscale glass version of Apottopeein available wherever you find one.

Golden Showers Garden Party

This new challenge is right up my alley. They call me The Pee Queen at work - I deal with pee all day long (along with other bodily fluids). We humans live off the land we ought to give back to it. Normal, healthy urine is sterile. It contains the waste products of your body's metabolism. Should be a natural fertilizer. Join in the challenge. If you don't have a vegetable garden, use your diluted urine as fertilizer for your flowers, grass, shrubs, whatever. We're going to use some collected rain water to dilute - 10 parts water to 1 part urine.
See info on the Golden Showers Garden Party.

Starting from SCRATCH

By eight thirty this morning the tiller, rakes, small garden tools, gloves, fertilizer, seeds, and tomato plants crowded the back of the van. Our limited experience with gardening drove off for number two daughter's place in New Hampshire. They wanted to start a garden and we wanted to encourage them. Earlier this spring David read an article in Countryside Magazine about one gardener's Mantis tiller. Impressed with his praise and the price, we bought one. The writer was absolutely right. This tiny tiller can even pull rock!! David tilled, Janis raked rocks out of the tilled bed, the little girls and I loaded the stones into a wagon, pulled them to the designated spot and... Ready... Set... Dump.

"Well, Janis, guess you have new respect for farmers."
"I have great respect for farmers. That's why I go to the grocery store."

The tomato plants ended up in a different part of the yard but the soil, no, dirt, no, ground was water repellent! When I dug a hole, a little hand with a toy watering can filled it up. That hole held water like a pail! We waited and waited but nothing. Finally four tomato plants were sacrificed so their potting soil could be harvested and dumped into the three pails, I mean holes, where we planted the three sturdiest looking tomatoes. We'll see what happens.

Oh, by the way, we forgot our gardening hats. Don't ever forget your gardening hat. For twenty minutes I had two little girls on my lap arguing over who should hold the ice pack on Nana's left eye. The black flies preferred my left eye only. Don't ask me why.

LESSON: I'm sure there's a lesson here somewhere but my bath water is ready and I really, really need it now, right now.

7, 6...I planted a peach tree

The "butter jar" belongs to David and the compost container belongs to me. Not sure how that happened but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. (Some blessings wear alot of heavy makeup.) In the pile of decomposing leaves and food waste a peach pit opened and the seed inside sprouted. Three inches tall with baby leaves beginning to open, it now lives in my yard. My first Independence Days Update will begin with - I planted a peach tree.

Let's take stock of where I am.

1. Plant something: Up until this year I have grown only cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and a few beets that I harvested as greens. This year we have planted potatoes, onion sets, beets, Brussels sprouts, rhubarb, asparagus, sunflowers and chives in the front yard. Six varieties of tomatoes, garlic, onions, sweet peas, leaf lettuce, radishes, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, sweet peppers in the side yard. Black currants and red raspberries are out back. Parsley, basil (purple and Italian), cilantro, mint, chives and dill are inside growing hydroponically. Alfalfa and radish seeds are sprouting in jars for eating fresh. Next weekend we are starting a garden at my daughter's place in New Hampshire with sweet corn, winter squash, green beans, tomatoes, and flowers. Still to plant at home is bee balm. Hopefully it will attract pollinating insects - bees. I've seen a couple honey bee visitors but our resident bumble bee regularly cruises the property.

2. Harvest something: Only the herbs are ready to be harvested. I'm experimenting with drying them and just eating them fresh. A sandwich with basil instead of lettuce is quite tasty!

3. Preserve something: I found online information on the principles behind drying food and how to build a system that works called, A Review of Solar Food Drying. Back when I was taking a black and white photography class where we developed our own film, David took an unused dresser, removed the drawers, and built screen frames to slide in where the drawers used to go. We hope to adapt that set up for drying foods. I have about fifteen dozen quart-sized canning jars and the equipment for hot water bath canning. Other equipment includes a saucer for making apple sauce and an apple corer/peeler.

4. Prep Something: We have VERY much to do in this area. We have started purchasing some food to store - peanut butter, baking soda, powdered milk, white vinegar, sugar, wheat berries, unbleached flour, white rice, brown rice, and a variety of legumes. We have also purchased our first rain collection barrel and a small Berkey water filtration system. Our well water is very hard. The filtered rain water is wonderful for drinking. We are collecting an assortment of water storage containers and planning the expansion of our system.

5. Cook something: Years ago we purchased a Vita-mix system including the dry container for grinding grains. We have been baking our own whole wheat bread. There are small red beans soaking tonight.

6. Manage your reserves: So far everything is new. However, my freezer is full of wild blueberries which need to be canned and either stored or sold...speaking of blueberry muffins...ah, breakfast, my favorite...

7. Work on Local Food Systems: We are still investigating what is available locally. I began my tomato plant give away. So far eight plants have new homes. Plus this blog is new. Hopefully our experience will encourage someone else to begin a change where they are.