Monthly Archives: May 2010

Yet another day of wet and gray, but the garden must go in! Given that, I’ll be working toward finishing up planting my tomato plants in the rain. There are still many varieties that need to be planted and I’m bound and determined to get them all in. Moving may be quite the chore, but hey, I’ll have my plants! I really don’t have an addiction, it’s a passion =D.

After picking up another trailer load of soil, yesterday, I’m ready to get planting. With more than 100 additional varieties needing to be planted, I need to get them planted ASAP, so when Tuesday rolls around, I’ll probably collapse. But the tomatoes WILL be planted lol.

So far, we’re up to 104 tomato varieties in containers. Most are indeterminate, but there are a few determinate as well as a few semi-determinate. I’m still not completely up to date on how semi-determinate tomatoes grow…and how you can tell if it is semi vs determinate or indeterminate. So I’ll keep tabs on my semi-determinates and compare to the determinate and indeterminate, to see the difference in their growth.

Currently planted are…
1x6 Paste, African Togo, Akers West Virgina Black, Andes, Andrew Rahart, Arbuus, Banana, Baylor Paste, Bear Creek, Big Italian Plum, Bisignano #2, Bison, Black, Black Aisberg, Black Cherry, Black Elephant, Black Ethiopian, Black Krim, Black Master, Black Oxheart, Black Pear PL, Black Russian, Black Star, Blue Ridge Black, Blueberry, Box Car Willie, Bradley, Brads Black Heart, Break O Day, Buckbees New 50 Day, Carbon, Carol Chykos, Cerman Paste, Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Purple, Chico III, Chinese Paste, Chinese PL, Copia, Costoluto Genovese, Cream Sausage, Cuban Black, Cuor Di Bue, Dads Barber Paste, De Barao Red, De Barrao Black, Early Wonder, Eckert Polish, Efipop, Elfin, Flaming, Frank Stein Black, Giant Fiolet, Giant Italian Paste, Giant Sicilian, Goldman's Italian American Paste, Gypsy, Hawaiian Pineapple, Hellfruct, Henderson Pink, Honkin Big Black Cherry, Japanese Black Trifele, JD's Special C-Tex, Jersey Devil, Long Tom, Marglobe, Marizol Purple, Marvel Stripe, Mexican Paste, Midnight In Moscow, Morado, Mortgage Lifter, Mr. Brown, Mule Team, Myona, Noire De Cossboef, Noire De Cossboef ?, Paul Robeson, Pierce's Pride, Pink Accordian, Pink Ruffled, Pioneer 2, Prudens Purple, Purple Calabash, Purple Wonder, Rento, Rio Grand, Rogers Best Black, Romeo Paste, Sara Black, Seattle's Best Of All, Southern Night, Spudakee, Striped German, Super Sioux, Tim's Black Ruffles, Tlacolula, Tsygan Black, Vorlon PL, Winsall PL, Winsall RL, Wuhib, Yates Beefsteak.

And can you believe that’s less than half of what I originally planted?

As you can see, by the picture below, we have All Blue potatoes in containers as well. I’ll be updating you on how they will be transformed into tall containers that will be overloaded with potatoes. So be sure to check back and watch for our special method of creating boat loads of spuds!

All Blue Potatoes

Beans are coming along beautifully. Some varieties will need to be planted again, due to the extreme wet weather and the seeds rotted…imagine if they had been in the ground. WOW…what a mess they’d have been. So I’ll be taking those couple that need re-planting and starting them in the greenhouse, then I'll bring them out when they germinate. But for the time being, here's a pic of some of the beans I’ve planted.

Rams Horn / Pretzle Bean

Though we don’t have the greatest luck with peppers in our area, I always try to get them going. Containers may be the answer to our dilemma. With containers, I can keep them warm during the cooler, early months, then placed in the garden for our hot Summer days. I’m also going to try this with melons this year. We’ve never been able to get melons to mature, so maybe the greenhouse will help with that as well.

It’s another day of wet and gray, so thought I’d share what my peas are doing and how I planted them.

As with the tomatoes, I drilled the buckets and filled with a couple of scoops of soil and a scoop of horse manure, then filled about 2 inches from the top, with soil.

Planting Peas In Buckets

On May 22nd, after pre-sprouting the peas, I inoculated half of them and placed non inoculated pre-sprouted peas in one bucket and inoculated pre-sprouted peas in another bucket. I placed them about an inch apart and then, covered them with about an inch of soil.

May 27th pictures show them about a half an inch above the top of the soil. That’s a total of 7 days from placing them in water, to above ground.

Peas Growing

Staking will be necessary, very soon! They will begin to develope their runners and the earlier they are trellised or staked, the better. I'm so excited to taste those sweet sugar snap peas and snow peas YUM!

I realize it isn’t an heirloom vegetable or tomato, but I had to share my recent beauty in a 5 gallon bucket. This dramatic Black Iris was given to me in a trade and was wintered over in the bucket. Though I didn’t take pictures of the inside, it has multiplied with lots of new babies.

Beautiful Black Iris

I was so excited to walk out yesterday morning to see it had opened up and it is so deep purple that it looks black. It’s just breathtaking! I don't have any idea, how long this one has been around, but I'll sure keep it around and pamper it in my garden.

It has been a very rainy week. But that’s what we get in the Pac NW and the very reason it’s so green in our area. Gardening has been taking place between downpours, and I’m really hoping that we get some nice weather for this holiday weekend in order to finish planting the rest of the vegetables.

The garden is coming along quite nicely as the peas are springing up, beans are growing nicely, potatoes are showing and tomatoes are getting bigger.

I wanted to post a picture of my Cherokee Chocolate, to let you see how quickly it is growing. Unfortunately, it outgrew it’s bucket, so it has now been nicely placed in a split 55 gallon drum and it’s looking much more happy than it was. Believe me, that was a chore! The poor thing was so root bound, the roots had circled the bottom of the bucket almost twice. It almost immediately showed signs of being happier. After it perks up a bit more, I’ll post a picture of it in its new home.

I’ll also be doing some companion planting in the drum. After all, there is a whole lot of space left around the plant in this drum. It would be great to have carrots on one side and basil on the other. I’m not sure which I’ll plant with it but I sure will share with you how it goes.

Cherokee Chocolate Updates

Quite an unexpected surprise…

Saturday AM, I went out into the greenhouse and noticed the egg casing my son found a couple months back. At first, we weren’t sure what it was, but after looking at images online, we found it was a praying mantis egg casing. So we put it in the greenhouse to see if it might hatch.

I’ve been trying to read up on them and learn how, when, where etc…that they hatch. I wasn’t even sure if the egg casing was spent or not. So it was kind of strange to see a bit of sawdust like stuff hanging from it on Saturday AM. After noticing the stuff hanging from it, I picked it up and examined it, but didn’t see anything else different. I looked around, but didn’t see anything near by so I just placed it a bit closer to the isle of the greenhouse and went about doing what I needed to do. That afternoon, I went back in the greenhouse and took a quick glance at the egg casing…there were critters all over it. But it still didn’t look like anything had come out yet. There were about 10 little tiny mantids crawling around.

This afternoon, I went in the greenhouse to package up some tomato plants to ship out to a couple of friends. I turned around and…HOLY COW…there was yet a third hatching from this egg casing. Those little guys were EVERYWHERE! Sending my son into the house to get a mason jar, I figured I would clip the aphid covered grass that is growing under my counter and cut it into small pieces, just to make sure they have food and won’t eat each other. I’m working on where to put them now…cause I’m sure there is another hatching coming.

After this experience, I’ve learned that they don’t always hatch all at once. They like it WARM…and when the sun came out, each time, they have had a few hatch out. From what I understand, they will hatch 100-400 babies, so I may have many more coming.

Okay, you want to plant some snap or snow peas, so how do you start? If you’re anything like me, you are an absolute fanatic when it comes to sugar snap peas and snow peas. So how do we get them going?

Well, there are a number of suggestions on the net that say how to plant them, but I’ve yet to see what my grandfather taught my father, who taught me. As we know, peas are a crop that can be planted very early in the spring. In fact, in our area, Presidents day has always been the suggested time for planting sugar snap peas. However, we also know that peas can be planted throughout the season, for later harvests. So I'm going to share my family's Old Time pre sprouting SECRET. According to Grandpa, the seeds need a cold snap (not necessarily freezing) in order to give them that boost to start growing.

All the info that I’ve been able to find, simply says, “Plant them, they will grow. Give them 7-10 days for germination and they will continue on from there.”

Okay, here’s a unique suggestion…how about dropping that 7-10 days down to 2-4 days?

While peppers, tomatoes, and most other vegetables sprout more quickly in heat, others need a snap of cold to wake them up, which is called cold stratification. That is what I’ve always experienced with snap peas and snow peas.

I use (due to keeping them labeled for identification) medium zipper bags and place my seeds inside. At that point, I cover the seeds with water, seal them up and place them in the refrigerator for 24 hours. When they have hit the 24 hour period, I remove them from the refrigerator and pour the excess water out, set them on the counter to warm, for the next 24 hours. In mid afternoon, you’ll find sprouts! That’s 5-8 days ahead of all the other info you will find out there on the web!

Peas Pre Sprouting at 48 hours

Peas Pre Sprouting at 60 hours

They can be treated with inoculant prior to planting, or not. It’s entirely up to you and I can’t give positive results for inoculant, in either direction, at this point. That’s another test I’m working on.

Currently, I’m in the process of planting; Super Sugar Snap, White Sugar Snow, Mammoth Melting Sugar, Oregon Sugar Pod, Sugar Ann, Dwarf Gray Sugar and one garden pea called Blue Podded Shelling.

Hope this gives some of you some great ideas….

Happy Planting!

Though I may sound crazy for admitting this, but I can’t pass by a good plant sale. A few weeks back, we had a local store that had gallon tomato plants for sale 2 for $5. Well most were the common hybrids, but they did have a batch of Bradywine. Believe it or not, I had not planted this variety (have the seed, but didn’t get them in) this year. Looking at these big, lush tomato plants, I picked out two that looked really healthy.

In looking through the plants, I didn’t notice signs of blight, but soon after placing these plants (TG I didn’t put them with my others) on my front porch, they broke out in a serious case of blight which looked just like this

Tomato Blight

Well, this blight began to take over the entire plants and when I returned to the store, they had received another batch of these plants that were covered with blight. The poor sickly plants were awful! I continued to keep the plants FAR away from my greenhouse of hundreds of tomatoes.

Last year, I had heard that a mix of hydrogen peroxide and water, sprayed on the leaves could cure the blight. The explanation was that the fungus cannot grow in an oxygenated environment. So I figured I’d give it a try, due to the fact that I had nothing to lose and I would probably just trash the two plants anyway. I mixed up a 10% solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide and water, then with a spray bottle, I began to douse the plants from top to bottom. I then did a spray of a mixed solution of seaweed extract and water directly onto the leaves as well. After that, I began pinching off all the infected leaves and basically gave the poor plants a crew cut or maybe even a Mohawk. The more top area leaves, I clipped with scissors leaving portions of leaves that were infected on the ends but not close to the stem. In fact, I actually didn’t cut every infected leaf off. I did leave a couple that only had small spots on the ends. I guess I was rebelling at creating a bald plant.

Note: Be sure that you dispose of the cut portions in the garbage can, or you can infect your future crops of tomatoes. Also be sure to wash your hands immediately after clipping these branches. Do not touch any other plants until your hands are cleaned and sanitized.

After about a week, new growth began forming at the areas, where I pinched them back. It has now been almost three weeks and there is no sign of blight. I finally clipped off the few dark areas that I had left on, just to ensure it wouldn’t spread again. There is a ton of new, healthy growth but again, no sign of new blight. The plants are thriving and looking beautiful. Still a bit naked toward the bottom, but I have to say, this treatment does work!

Healed Brandywine

Naked Stems With New Growth

Brandywine After Treatment

Another update in my container grown tomatoes.

It’s been a while since I showed my first tomato, but it hadn’t grown much ‘til lately. I realize it is a late season variety, but I had hoped it would grow a little faster. It is currently growing noticeably each day. Below are pictures at different stages.

1st Tomato Update

Also, I wanted to give an update on those rooted tomato cuttings. As you can see, both are doing quite well. They are still developing their root system, but they are also perked up and growing to boot. Not too bad for about 3 weeks from cuttings stage. Soon, I’ll place them in a bucket of their own. I just wanted to be able to compare them side by side.

Update on Tomato Cuttings

Well that’s about it for now. However I do have beans sprouting! I’ll post some pics shortly on those wonderful heirlooms.

It will be another long planting weekend, starting today and hopefully I’ll have another "Sea Of White" to share. I still have more than 200 plants to get in not to mention all the other veggies. So off to planting.

Happy Gardening!!!

It was a great weekend for getting many of those wonderful heirloom tomatoes in the garden. Though I walked through some of my steps in my previous posts, I thought I would share my routine on transplanting those plants into the buckets.

After acquiring over 150 4 and 5 gallon white buckets, I began the process of drilling holes in the bottoms for drainage. After drilling a batch of buckets, I’m ready to start filling them up with planting medium. Each bucket receives 2 shovels full of a great organic soil mix with about 20% sand. Our soil tends to be heavy in the clay end of things, so the sand mix is something the plants seam to just love. After the shovels of soil mix, I placed a shovel of well aged horse manure in, then another 2 shovels of my soil mix. Now I add about one shovel of peat moss or sphagnum and mix the top ingredients together. I top it off with a sprinkle of bone meal and mix again. My buckets are now ready for planting.

I realize that many folks just love those husky short tomato plants. While I agree they look much healthier than the taller slim ones, I actually prefer transplanting the tall and more spindly ones and for a very good reason.

As I’ve mentioned, I like to trench my tomatoes when I plant in the ground, however planting in buckets doesn’t give me that option. It does, however, give me the option to plant deep. As long as the buckets have good drainage, they will grow roots all the way up to where the soil stops. So planting the husky, stubby plants doesn’t enable me to do this. So, if you’re working with spindly more tall and leggy plants, don’t fret, they will grow a wonderful root system if you enable them to do so.

So we’re off to planting. After choosing the tomatoes I want to plant, as you can see from figures 1, 2 and 3, I pinch off the lower leaves and branches, giving me a nice long stem, below the last branch.

Using my trowel, I dig a deep hole large enough around that my tomato will simply slip right into it. Gently, I take my potted tomato (I use drilled plastic cups, simply because they are cheap and smaller around, giving me more space per tray) squeeze the cup around the sides and slide the tomato out. When root bound, I like to carefully separate the roots a bit and then I slip the root ball down into the hole. Firm the soil in around the plant and cover the stem up past the last pinched off leaf or branch.

After transplanting, I give them a healthy watering, a feeding of fish emulsion and then let them go. I rarely have shock from transplanting and if I ever do, it’s typically from not being fully hardened off. Sometimes I tend to get excited about getting my hands in the dirt, so I’ll jump the gun a bit. Not to mention, here in the Pac NW, we make hay when the sun shines, cause if we don’t, we’ll drown trying.

I’m now up to these varieties that are planted out and enjoying the space…

Andes Paste, Banana, Baylor Paste, Bear Creek, Big Italian Plum, Bisignano #2, Black Aisberg, Black Elephant, Black Ethiopian, Black Oxheart, Black Pear PL, Black Russian, Black Star, Break O Day, Buckbees New 50 Day, Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Purple, Chico III, Chinese PL, Copia, Dads Barber Paste, De Barrao Black, Elfin, Giant Italian Paste, Giant Sicilian, Japanese Black Trifele, JD's Special C-Tex, Marglobe, Marizol Purple, Mexican Paste, Morado, Mortgage Lifter, Mule Team, Myona, Paul Robeson, Pink Accordian, Prudens Purple, Rento, Rio Grand, Romeo Paste, Sara Black, Super Sioux, Tim's Black Ruffles, Vorlon PL, Winsall RL and Wuhib,

I’ll update on varieties as I plant more, cause there are PLENTY more to get in buckets.

Some tomato plants really don't need staking, due to being bush type or determinate plants. However, when you grow some of the mid to late season heirloom tomatoes, which are, quite often, indeterminate or semi-determinate, you’ll find that the plants will grow to amazing heights and begin to sprawl all over the place.

So in order to keep those precious tomatoes up off the ground, we need to stake them up and train them to grow where we want them to. There are many reasons for staking and of those, first and foremost, is that it keeps your tomatoes in a smaller space rather than sprawling all over the ground. Another very important reason is that while keeping your tomatoes up off the ground, this keeps them cleaner and ground critters - wood lice, pill bugs, as well as rodents etc are less apt to nibble on them. It also prevents your tomato plants from retaining water beneath them and rotting the fruit before it's ripe. The other very important reason for staking is that when your tomatoes grow, they become heavy. Higher tomatoes can break branches from the plant. So if they are resting on or tied up to another support rather than your plant itself, you don't run the risk of losing that prized tomato.

There are a number of ways to do this, so I'll give you some ideas on the different methods.

Tomato Cages

Of course, if you used my soil warming technique, you should have a tomato cage or two. These round ringed cages are pretty simple to use, however they can be a bit flimsy to use alone. What we do is use a piece of rebar or a wood stake and weave down through the rings on one side, pushing the stake into the soil until it becomes sturdy. Sometimes this may require tapping the stake with a hammer or other tool. This will keep the tomato cage rigid and will keep it from falling over with the weight of your plants.

As your tomato plants grow, simply coax the branches up and over the wire rings.

Wood or Metal Poles

This is another method of staking that I use, usually when the tomato is too large to place a tomato cage over. Okay, so I’m admitting that my staking is sometimes neglected, but for a very good reason….I like doing other things besides staking. Anyway, I pick up slat material from the hardware store, in 4 foot lengths. It’s usually about $25 for 100 pcs. So it’s pretty reasonable in price. You can also use bamboo poles, which are strong and pretty reasonable in price, depending on where you purchase them and how many you are buying. The slat material can be purchased in single pcs for around $.45 each at the larger home improvement centers.

With this method, the branches will need to be tied or clipped to the stakes. When using bamboo rounds for staking, you can purchase plant clips that will hold the branch tightly against the pole. However, if you use the slats as I do, they are almost 2 inches wide, so you will need to use some form of tie.

To avoid damage to the branches, I like to use strips of either cotton sheets, torn into 1 inch strips, or 1 inch strips of torn cotton T-Shirt material. Either choice works well and depending on what I have around the house factors in which I use.

When tying the branches to the stake, always make sure the branch is only wrapped with the cotton strip, loosely and not a complete wrap. Then take the ends and wrap each end around the stake and tie on the opposing side of the tomato branch.

Ranch Fencing or Concrete Reinforcing Wire Tomato Cages

You can also use Ranch Fencing or concrete reinforcing wire, to build your own tomato cages. Just remember to find fencing that has large enough holes to get your tomatoes through. It comes in heights of 48 inches as well as taller and to use it, simply cut a piece about 36 – 37 inches long. This will make about a 12 inch circle to fit over your plant. Twist the cut ends together and create a circle. Place around your tomato plants. You’ll probably need some reinforcing sticks or bars to keep them upright, but they do work quite well and help to keep larger critters from munching on your precious tomatoes.

Wood Ladder Style Frames

Wood ladder folding style Tomato frames are unique. They actually form an A frame over the top of the tomato. They can be folded up at the end of the season and stored in a very small area. Mother Earth News has a nice how to on building them which is located here.