In The Red

Last June I was in the black. Most of my tomato plants got blight very early in the season and went black. It was really bad so I pulled them, tossed 'em, and craved tomatoes the rest of the summer. The other tomato plants went black (actually brown) in September.

This summer I'm in the red! My heirloom tomatoes are in full production, particularly these German Johnson beefsteaks.

German Johnson tomatoes harvested this evening. The largest tomato weighs 22 ounces.

There are at least 15 more impressively large tomatoes hanging on my German Johnson vine in varying stages of growth and ripeness. I also have two Hillbilly vines in heavy bloom, three Black from Tulas started in May, a Bush Beefsteak, and one Sungold hybrid tomato in the ground.

If I could only plant one variety it would definitely be Black from Tula. But German Johnson is a close second. And I'm not complaining after a 13-month tomato drought in my garden.

What's everybody growing out there? What are your favorite varieties of heirloom tomatoes? E-mail me some pictures (vaplantman@yahoo.com) and I'll post the best looking tomato of the bunch.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

We've had rain here in Newport News for the past week. I'm talking lots of rain. Morning, noon, night.

The rain has been a bad thing and a good thing. I'll start with the bad. My last few precious tomatoes from a generally measly summer crop were ripening on the vine last week. I was hoping for one last harvest. Then the rain moved in. It split the skins of my Black from Tulas and they quickly went downhill from there. See for yourself.

Black from Tula tomatoes after a week of relentless rain.

The rain brought somewhat cooler temps for a day or two, but then the temps climbed back into the 80s as the rain continued to fall. The warm, wet conditions weren't great for the tomatoes, but it was ideal for MUSHROOMS. I woke up last Friday morning and there were mushrooms as far as the eye could see!  I'm talking hundreds, if not thousands, of mushrooms in my backyard.

Cluster of small tan mushrooms in the garden.

There seemed to be two different varieties of mushrooms, and it was interesting to note that they grew wherever I had spread wood mulch earlier in the spring. I guess the wood chips contained the spores even before I spread them in the yard, or the spores found the moist wood mulch an ideal environment for growing. Either way, .09 Acres turned into a mushroom farm overnight. I don't know much about mushrooms, but I wasn't taking any culinary chances. I took my cues from my dogs and the neighborhood wildlife. Since they wouldn't eat them, I wouldn't either. There were so many mushrooms that even the resident Smurf population had a hard time navigating their way around .09 Acres.

Papa Smurf navigating his way around a morass of rogue mushrooms.

Rotten tomatoes and a plethora of mushrooms were two ill-effects of constant rain. But the upside of all that moisture was ideal seed-starting conditions. Before the rain, I planted a variety of seeds including broccoli, kale, beets, carrots, onions, Swiss chard, spinach, and lettuce.  Almost all of the seeds germinated, and I'll provide a detailed update about my fall garden in an upcoming blog post.  

Stay dry and keep your fingers crossed for cooler weather.

Early June

I'm back.  It's been almost 2 months since my last post.  Too long. Figured I'd do a big pictures post from the yard.  It's been an interesting and productive Spring, with a few setbacks as well. Generally speaking the garden is doing great.  Let's start with the good then I'll move on to the bad and ugly.  I successfully saved seed from my Vates kale and two varieties of Swiss chard.  They get tall when they bloom.  I'm talking 6-feet tall!  I added about 4" of fresh compost to each bed and built a small extension designated for herbs. Cucumber production has been nothing short of amazing.  I've got 5 Burpless plants in the ground and I'm pulling about 8 cukes/day.  I planted borage as a companion plant to my tomatoes, and it  is growing very well.  Beautiful flowers and they are edible too.  Peaches are hanging from the tree, the pomegranate is still in bloom. Raspberries were a tasty treat for about 3 weeks and are slowing now, but the blackberries are starting to kick in.  Figs have also put on new growth and, more importantly, many figs.  Not as many as I hoped for, but I pruned them back in early spring to encourage more branching for larger future harvests.  The fig espalier is developing fairly well.  I also just finished harvesting approximately 50 heads of Inchelium Red garlic and they are drying in my shed.  That's a short version of the good.

Now for the bad.  My precious, beloved, sacred, and coveted heirloom tomatoes are taking a beating.  They grew well for the first 6 weeks after I transplanted them into the garden, and they grew large.  I'm talking appx. 4-5 feet tall.  Then I started noticing what I believe to be blight.   It first appeared on a few leaves, then a stem, a truss of tomatoes, an entire stalks.  I quickly pruned those areas, sterilized my pruners, and then moved to the next plant.  But it kept moving.  So this past weekend and evening I ripped out 5 of my 7 in-ground tomatoes.  2 German Johnson, 1 Black from Tula, 1 Bull's Heart, and 1 Marvel Striped. I don't know why it hit so hard.  I immediately tossed them in the garbage bin.  I've been careful about watering, 2 doses of organic foliar feed (spaced 4 weeks apart) in the early morning, etc. etc., but I guess a large harvest like last year wasn't meant to be.  I'm planning on purchasing a few more plants and probably dropping in a few seeds as well, but I'm flat out bummed.

And the ugly.  Despite my best attempt at smothering the grass, it's back.  And lots of it.  Multiple layers of cardboard, 4-5 inches of mulch, periodic hand weeding of the errant shoot of grass, all for nothing.

Alright, enough gibberish!  Let's do the photos, shall we?

This is a mix of the good and the ugly.  Figs down the left, raised beds front and center, berries/peach/pomegranate on the right.  Oh yeah, and grass everywhere...son of a...

Row of figs down the left wall of the yard.  They are all fairly small, but are adapting well to their permanent location.  I grow a mix of brown, purple, and green figs.   If you look closely, you can spot Scout.  She's the hairless wonder dog.

Peter's Honey fig.  In some areas this plant is putting out 2 figs per leaf, and I don't think that's very common. I'm not complaining.

Violet de Bordeaux figs.  I will pick individual ants off the tree to protect these, partly because I'm crazy but mostly because these things are heavenly.

The Red Haven peach tree is getting very large.  I pruned it heavily this winter and again about 3 weeks ago, and it keeps on growing.  I also thinned the fruits a while ago, but it's still hanging about 25 peaches.

Overhead view of the Red Haven peach tree showing the main scaffold limbs.  I'm trying to maintain an open center to allow light in and air to circulate.

I haven't sprayed this tree with a single thing this year and it still looks healthy.  I hope that holds up for the rest of the year.

The Russian Pomegranate also likes its sunny but sheltered location.  It's approximately 7' x 7' and was covered in blooms for 3 weeks.

A tiny pomegranate and a few blooms in the background.

This is a young Haku-Botan pomegranate tree, courtesy of Sybil Mays.  It will eventually produce yellow/gold pomegranates.  Sybil, this is the little plant you dug up from your side yard.  It has recovered and grown ALOT!

It's a cucumber jungle out there.  By now they've established very deep roots and don't show much wilting during the hottest (98 degrees) driest weather this year.

These beasts make a mean cucumber salad.

Ouachita blackberries beginning to ripen.  I'm not sure exactly what happened (or didn't happen), but I think poor or incomplete pollination led to irregularly shaped berries.  Look closely in the picture and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Almost ready.

All the literature says that borage flowers have a cucumber taste.  I disagree.  They taste like borage flowers.  Not really cucumbery, but just a general leafy green pleasant flavor.  I grew these as a companion plant for the tomatoes, but it clearly hasn't helped this season.  

Don't ask me how this partially ripened black cherry tomato tasted.  I wouldn't know.  My dog Diego ate it so you'll have to ask him.  

When most people draw a picture of the devil, they draw a red devil.  The devil is NOT red.  The devil is green.  Check out this mix of Bermuda grass and some other green beasts that are growing well despite Operation Smother.

Bermuda grass a-creepin'.  This is the aforementioned ugly.  I plan on pulling everything I can by hand rather than using some ineffective organic herbicide or crazy poisonous herbicide.  I do not want to mow this back yard ever again.  

I'll post again soon with pictures of the garlic harvest as well as the fig espalier.  How are things growing in your gardens?  If you are fortunate enough to have a bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes later in the summer, I'll likely be begging at your front door. That's a promise.

Seedlings and Cuttings

I got my seed starting operation off to a late start this spring.  It's now been a few weeks since I started them in trays over heat mats in my shed.  Here are a few pics:

Tomato seedlings with condensation inside the plastic domes.

Borage.  It's a good companion plant for tomatoes and has edible flowers.

A variety of very young pepper seedlings.

I know, I know, plastic is bad for the environment.  But I prefer using plastic trays and cells rather than peat because peat always dries out and gets crusty.  I just clean the plastic and re-use it each year.

I also started a TON of cuttings thanks to much assistance and information from Sybil and Rob.  I am attempting to root approximately 100 fig cuttings of the following varieties: Celeste, Blue Celeste, Hardy Chicago, Alma, Italian Golden Honey/Lattarula, Osborne Prolific, Magnolia/Brunswick, Strawberry Verte, Violet de Bordeaux, and Panache/Tiger.  I am rooting the cuttings in plastic cups (with drainage holes) filled with perlite and a pinch of potting soil.  Sybil recommended a mix of 50:50 perlite:vermiculite, but I was in a pinch for time and money and opted to use what I already had in my shed. Aside from some moisture management, there isn't much for me to do until they start to root in a bunch of weeks.

Assorted fig cuttings in cups of perlite.  I placed them in trays to make it easier to move them outside for watering.

If you look closely you can see some green growth emerging from the tips of the cuttings.  I'm less concerned with top growth and more concerned with root growth at this stage.

Sybil also presented me with cuttings of loquat (interesting evergreen edible) and che (relative of mulberry).  Although I've never eaten these fruits or attempted to grow them, it's a new opportunity to branch out of my comfort zone and try something new.  So I've got them in cups too.

Loquat cuttings with the leaves trimmed to reduce transpiration.

Che cuttings from a beautiful shrub/tree that looked similar in structure to a Japanese Maple.

I have no idea what I'm going to do with this many cuttings.  Even if I only achieve a 75% success rate with rooting I'm still going to be dealing with about 75 new plants.  Yikes!  Looks like I've got birthday and holiday gifts covered for a while, as well as a few extras for a plant sale.

The Summer of Tomatoes

I guess you could say I went tomato crazy this summer.  I grew close to 100 heirloom tomato plants from seed and ended up planting 6 different varieties in the garden.  I selected plants that could stand up to the high heat and humidity of my region (7b) -- German Johnson, German Giant, Black from Tula, Black Cherry, Eva's Purple Ball, and Virginia Sweets.  So how did they do?

The Germans, Black from Tula, and Black Cherry were without question the most productive.  Nonstop blooming and ripening from mid June continuing into August.

You just can't beat the shape, color, and flavor of heirloom tomatoes.

What about size?  I harvested three tomatoes over 2.5-pounds, and one German Giant was just 3-ounces shy of the 3-pound mark!  I saved seeds from these monsters and I'm already looking forward to planting them next spring.

Clockwise from top left: Virginia Sweets (41.0 ounces), German Johnson (42.2 ounces), and German Giant (45.1 ounces).

My wife and I have been eating freshly sliced tomatoes, tomato salad, BLTs, pasta sauce, and every other tomato recipe you can imagine for the past 3 months.  I think I'm starting to turn red...

Note the quarter placed on the top-right tomato for scale.

Enjoy the pics as much as we enjoyed the tomatoes.