Growing Heirloom Tomatoes & Vegetables

After reading over and over, what great “organic fertilizer” worm castings are, I decided to put it to the test. I’ve included pictures to show just exactly how amazing this stuff really is. If I hadn’t seen this for myself, I would NEVER have believed it could do what I’ve witnessed.

In sowing my tomato seeds (peppers are about to go through the same process) I decided to transplant ONE plant a bit (WAY TOO) early. The starts didn’t even have a set of true leaves yet. In other words they were stems with cotyledons, when I transplanted my Purple Russian tomato plant.

As you can see from the below pictures (now these starts are ALL the same age) the one plant to the far right is the Purple Russian. It was transplanted in 5:1 potting soil / worm castings, 5 days prior to the rest of that tray. I was absolutely SHOCKED at its immediate accelerated growth, so I decided to plant another full tray with worm castings. Those are the ones in the tray next to the Purple Russian.

Purple Russian - First Transplant

As you will see in the next picture, at the same time I planted the tray of tomatoes in worm castings, I also planted a tray of tomato starts in plain potting soil. The difference is absolutely amazing! I have now added some worm castings to the tops of the cups in the test tray, so they may (hopefully) catch up.

2nd Transplanted Seedlings With Worm Castings

2nd Batch Transplants without Worm Castings

If you are interested in trying worm castings, you can either make your own worm bed and raise your own worms, or you can buy packaged worm castings all ready for planting.

My choice was obvious with the number of plants I grow each year, so my worm bin is nestled nicely on my back porch. It’s a wonderful, green way to dispose of table scraps and organic debris.

For a wonderful manual on worm farming, Click Here!

Or for Nature's Solution Worm Castings 5 Lb, Click Here

Looking for Red Wiggler Live Composting Worms? Then Click Here

After yet another move, it’s planting time again but this year I won’t need to move my plants during the growing season. However, I will be planting a number of items in the trusty containers like last year. Unfortunately, toward the end of the season, my tomatoes were gasping for room in their 5 gallon buckets, so those will be mostly in the ground this year.

So when should you plant your tomato seeds? That depends on a number of things, including your zone and when you want to set them out. When is that you ask? If you put your starts out unprotected, you shouldn’t plant until the danger of frost is over. Given that, if I awaited the frost to be over, we can’t plant out until June. However, planting in June doesn’t ripen many of the late season tomatoes until late September to October. This puts those tender perennials back into the soup of being in danger of an early frost or even an unseasonable rain causing late blight.

To find out when your Last Date Of Frost (LDF) is, you can check on the Old Farmers Almanac website or you can pick up the Old Farmer's Almanac to have some great reading material. Buth they list major cities and their last expected frost dates. I am nearest Seattle, so my last expected frost date is March 10. However, this is not always the case, so I will be setting my starts out in mid to late April, with my Home Made Wall-O-Waters for protection. Given that, my goal to have all my heirloom tomatoes and peppers planted will be April 30th . Most of the peppers will be in 5 gallon buckets as they did beautifully last year. Best year I’ve ever had with peppers. And the deer didn’t like them lol.

Due to the fact that we have such a mild climate here, I want to go into a bit more detail for those of you who have more extremes in temperature changes. If you select your nearest city and find the LDF, count back 6-8 weeks. This is when you should start sowing your seeds indoors.

Many types of seeds can be started early indoors. There are little planting tray greenhouses that you can use. Typically they will hold 25
or 72 plants to get you started. This year, I’ve decided to use the 512 plug tray inserts. What a difference it makes in transplanting those hundreds of little seedlings.

I prefer to make my own soil less mix and fill the cells rather than using the peat pellets as they tend to dry out too quickly. They can also cause problems with root growth unless you remove the netting around them before transplanting. You can also use plastic or paper cups as long as you put a hole in the bottom of them.

Before I get into the pre-sprouting method I use, I'll give you my soil less mix recipe to get your pots prepared for the little starts.

4-6 parts Sphagnum Peat Moss
1 part Perlite
1 part Vermiculite

Or you can choose a prepared seed starting mix

Tomato Sprouts 4 days

If you don’t have two hundred or more types to grow, and you’re only sprouting 2 to 25 types, pre-sprouting works great! What this means is that I place them on a folded, moist (with a 10:1 ratio of water and hydrogen peroxide) paper towel and wrap my seeds up in it and place it in a small baggie. Then I put it in a warm place (I use a seed starting mat). Each day I take the paper towel out and check for sprouting. Sprouting can take place in as little as 3 days this way or as long as 10 days depending on the variety of seeds.

Once the seeds have sprouted, I carefully place each one in a separate cell of my seed planting tray.

seedlings in soil less mix

Okay, now for the method I prefer with large quantities of varieties of tomatoes. It is just a real pain, to have to open several hundred bags each day, to check on the status of those little sprouts.

Seedlings ready for transplanting

Use one of the seedling trays (I prefer the ones with the seperate cells that can be removed so that when I transplant in larger pots/cups, I can use the lower tray to hold those transplants) with separate cells. Fill the tray about 1/4 of the way with a 10 percent mix of water and hydrogen peroxide. Fill each cell with sterile seed starting mix and then firm down. Place 3-6 seeds per cell then sprinkle a thin layer, about 1/4 inch, of the sterile seed starting mix. Use a mister, filled with the same 10 percent hydrogen peroxide mix and spray each cell on the surface. Make sure that each cell is labeled and moist.

Seed Starting Tray

Either method you try, make sure the seedlings stay moist and place where they will get plenty of light. For this, I use a seedling light rack. After you see the first set of true leaves, your little seedling is ready to be transplanted into a larger pot. At this point, I usually use a very diluted mixture of Liquid Fish Emulsion on my tiny seedlings. They just seem to thrive on it.

After the seedlings reach 6-8 inches tall, they are ready for hardening off. This is basically getting them accustomed to the changes in temperature, wind etc. Though a bit of a pain, hardening off is done by placing the small plants outside during the day and bringing them back indoors at night. This process takes about 7 days.

Now your plants are ready for transplanting into the garden.

If you need any heirloom tomato seeds, check out what we have available and on sale at heirloomtomatopatch.com
There are several ways to extend your Tomato growing season. From Hot Kaps to Wall O Water's. There is even another new type of Wall O Water called Kozy Coats. These are red in color and I've heard great things about them. According to studies, tomato plants do much better with the red spectrum of light. These reflect the red spectrum onto your plants and many folks have had great results. Plus I'll share another method that I've figured out and I'll post that soon.

Many of the books that I have in my library offer great information on temporary methods to start your season several weeks before the typical season. In fact, I've actually over wintered Tomatoes and Tomato cuttings to get a jump start on the following season. I'll offer more info on that a little later.

The method of planting your starts outside is very important. Make sure you have rich organic soil and dig a hole about a foot deep. Place aged manure in the bottom (different types of manure vary on how hot they get. The safest is rabbit, horse, Steer
or Cow Manure. If you use Chicken Manure, it will burn the roots if you don't put a nice barrier between the manure and the roots.) and cover with a layer of soil.

It's important to know that tomatoes will grow roots along their stem anywhere the soil touches it. This enables you to create a very strong root system with your plants. Break the lowest branches off of the tomato plant and place the plant at an angle in the hole. Cover as much of the stem as you can.

Keep your plants well watered and feed with an organic fertilizer about ever other week or so. I use Liquid Fish Emulsion which is nothing more than emulsified fish. Approximately, once a month I sprinkle a little Tomato-Tone around the area above the roots being careful not to allow any to touch the stem of the plant. Then I carefully work it into the surface of the soil. A small hand rake
works well for this.

Though mine didn’t survive the deer attacks, I did, fortunately, give seed for this fine squash/pumpkin to several friends. Yay, to my surprise they were able to bring a number of them to maturity. So I have been very blessed in receiving a couple of beautiful Musquee De Provence AKA Fairy Tale Pumpkins. We had worked very hard, through the season, to hand pollinate them in order to keep them pure, so these will grow true to the parent plant.

Musquee de Provence

If you’ve never tried Fairy Tale Pumpkin, this is, not only one of the most beautiful pumkpkins EVER, but also one of the absolute best tasting pumpkins I have EVER had. Last season, I put together an amazing pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving and it was gone by the end of the evening. The flavor was unbelievable!

If you’re interested in seed from this spectacular beauty, it’s available. Not to mention, you’ll receive more than 6 or 7 seeds like I did, from my purchase three years ago.

In the next few days, I’m going to post how to cook and prepare your own pumpkin instead of that canned stuff that has no flavor at all. To top that off, I’m going to post an amazing recipe (the same one I used for the pie last year) for you to try this season. It’s great with sugar pumpkins too, so if you don’t have Musquee De Provence available, try it with a sugar pumpkin.

Don’t forget to sign up for our monthly FREE Heirloom Seed Drawing…you just never know what great items will be in each wonderful package.

Sign Up Here

Happy Gardening

Well, it’s ready…as I said before, we’ve put together a great Monthly Drawing for FREE Heirloom Seeds! We’re so excited to get this going and get feedback on the varieties we offer and so forth. So don’t hesitate to hop on over to our sign up page for your chance to win one of our amazing packages!

Of course, we’ll ask you to offer feedback on what goodies you receive, but take a look and see what you think!

Enter To Win Here

GOOD LUCK and HAPPY GARDENING

After cutting open the last tomato, to save seed, I realized, “Holy cow! I don’t have any more to do.” What will I do after harvest? Sad thing is that many of my heirloom squash plants sit with fruits with big deer bites in them. BLASTED BEASTS!! If I wasn’t a hunter before, I can sure see a reason to become one now. Such beautiful pests…but pests none the less. I could go into more detail and tell you they PULLED UP MY STRAWBERRY STARTS….simply to leave them on the lawn. Grrrrrrrrrrrr

Well anyway, while the last of my tomato seeds are drying, I wanted to point out that I have decided to run a sale on those that I have quite a batch of. So if you want to take a look at the heirloom tomato seed page, you’ll see some great deals. This sale won’t be around long, so take a look and see if there’s anything you may not be able to resist.

http://heirloomtomatopatch.com/heirloom_tomato_seeds/

Off to do some more weatherizing…so….

Happy Gardening

After a very frustrating last few weeks of chasing deer out of the garden, I was able to salvage at least three quarters of what I planted, for seed. Unfortunately, the pictures couldn’t be taken as they were a bit nibbled on the ends etc.

If you think I’m joking about the deer from H E double Hockey Sticks, they even ate my Lupine (LABELED DEER RESISTANT) down to nubbins, not to mention, they picked it up with the last bite (5 gallon bucket, soil and all) and tipped it upside down.

These beasts managed to find their way into an 8 foot fence, that was guarded by two dogs, ate down every Dahlia plant, Rudbeckia plant not to mention more than 10 fig trees and 6 large grape plants. What is left are leafless stems that will hopefully survive. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take cuttings from them until next year.

Anyway, it’s slow going, but the tomato seed database is coming along. I’m less than half way done, but it’s finally coming together. Currently, there are another 70 or so varieties drying with another 22 or so fermenting. They’ll all be added shortly, but take a stroll through and see if there is anything you like.

http://heirloomtomatopatch.com/heirloom_tomato_seeds/

In the next few weeks, I plan on putting together a drawing for heirloom seed packages. I'll explain more later, but for now....

Happy Gardening

Well it has been a frustrating yet rewarding experience of Tomato Gardening this year. As I may have mentioned, we have some aggressive deer that think they own the land we reside on. They have figured out how to penetrate an eight foot fence, 3-6 times per day. They eat anything and everything in their path, and they could care less if you want seed, they’ll simply slurry them all over the ground as they munch munch away at your hard work and efforts.

So, needless to say, it has been a strategic harvest this season. Though several varieties that I had planted, didn’t survive the deer attacks, I did end up with a nice variety of saved seeds. I’m still in the process of fermenting many of them, but with about 150 varieties saved from the nearly 200 planted, I didn’t do too badly.

Once the seeds are dry, I’ll be posting more available on the website.

Here are a few pictures of the process….

Needless to say, my kitchen counter is COVERED with seeds drying and fermenting.

Next season will be AWESOME!!!!

Home grown heirloom garlic has to be the best EVER! If your family is anything like our family, you put garlic in almost everything. It’s healthy, flavorful and can even be made into a spread if you bake it up. I hear it’s supposed to keep vampires away, but hey, Twilight kind of put a whole new light on that.

We grew our garlic varieties this year, in split 55 gallon drums. They grew beautifully!

So do you have any idea of how many types of heirloom and gourmet garlic are out there? Currently, I have 28 varieties in my own garden and that’s only a small portion of what’s available.

We also have a few extra lbs if you’re interested in growing any in your own garden. I’m happy to offer by the bulb or by the lb, but 1 lb per order is the limit. For personal use, you probably won’t need more than a couple bulbs to a half lb, to keep you into garlic for the season.

Here’s what we have….

Chesnok Red – Hard Neck variety 7-10 cloves per bulb. One of the best for baking and roasting. Medium Hot flavor and retains flavor when cooked.
Persian Star – Hard Neck variety Mild Spicy zing smaller bulbs with 4-6 cloves per bulb. Purple stripes with white smooth outer wrapper.
Purple Glazier – Hard Neck variety – deep purple cloves with 8-11 cloves per bulb. Strong tasting but not hot.

And we also have a couple varieties in bulbil form….

Extra Hardy German – Hard Neck variety
Mixed Gourmet Hard Necks
Shilla – Hard Neck variety

If you are interested, you can purchase these here

Today we harvested another beautiful tomato fresh from the vine. It’s called a Black Master and what an amazing flavor and color! It looks like we will soon be harvesting tomatoes daily.

This amazing plant has produced a number of fine looking tomatoes, which means there will soon be tomato seeds available for it. Well that is after they are ripe, fermented and dried. The flavor of this Black Master is absolutely outstanding with it’s sweet and rich earthy flavor. The scent is so amazing, I’ve so waited to actually smell a tomato that really smells like a tomato! LOL Those things in the grocery store may as well be used for baseballs, cause they sure don’t resemble tomatoes at all.

After weighing the wonderful specimen you see below, it was a 6 oz beauty! It’s quite a nice producer of 4-8 oz purple brown beefsteaks. This is one tomato I will definitely grow again next season.

Black Master Tomato

Happy Harvesting

Let me ask you this: How many strangers, have you given a plant to? Have you ever frequented a store and offered to share seed or a plant from something out of your garden? Have you ever stumbled into someone in the nursery section of a store and ended up offering plants to them?

Quite honestly, I can say, “I have”, to all of the above. Not only have I started conversation in the local WalMart, which ended up with me returning to meet the wonderful lady I met in the garden section, to share my plants, but I’ve also returned to stores where I’ve offered plants as well as seeds and shared them with the employees behind the counter. I have to say, yes, I’m a bit eccentric, but I really enjoy sharing with people. It was pretty funny to see people with their questioning looks as I walked in a store with a bag full of tomato plants to “GIVE” to a stranger behind the counter. All I can say to that is that the Good Lord has provided, from all over the world, LOADS of seed for me to grow, the ability to grow them well and an avenue to share, so I need to share with others.

That isn’t even remotely close to how many plants I’ve given to friends and family. I have plants all over the country that have been either shipped out, hand delivered or even picked up at my home. I always plant too many, but I always know that someone will enjoy them as much as I do.

So when will you share your works of art? Oh yes, those beautiful plants and saved seeds are absolutely works of art!

Imagine being the reason a family is able to put fresh produce on the table. Imagine a family in need, being able to supply fresh food to their family or even that family who has never grown anything from seed, enjoying the amazing flavors of home grown, fresh out of the garden produce. What a wonderful feeling!

So SHARE A PLANT / SEEDS from your garden! If everyone that knew how to grow plants, would share just a couple, it would make the world a better place.