Busy potting up tomatoes and getting ready for Baker Creek

I have been extremely busy potting up over 100 tomato plants this week.

I had to transfer them from cell packs to individual peat pots or plastic cups. I wasn't planning to transplant so many, but lots of my friends and family are interested in my crazy heirloom varieties. I should have stopped saying "sure you can have a few of them" a long time ago. I was hoping to be able to speed things up this year by using soil blocks, but abandoned that effort early on. I don't have the larger 4 inch block maker yet which I would like for these tomatoes. I try to give these precious little tomato seedlings a lot of room to develop into strong healthy plants. I hope to get the larger soil block maker for next year.

As for this year, I have a few more varieties left to transplant today before we leave for the Baker Creek Spring Planting festival in Missouri that I wrote about in the last post.

I'm taking my laptop with me so I may still have Internet access. Email me or comment here if you will be at the festival too. My family and I are looking forward to it. See you in Bakersville!

Big Grow Light Stand Annex

Much has been going on in the garden lately. I have planted broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, chard, peas, potatoes and my first installment of extra-early tomatoes outside. Inside has been even busier. I now have peppers, cucumbers, zucchini and over 100 tomato seedlings under the lights. The problem is that I still have 10 giant extra-early tomato plants also under the lights. Things were getting pretty crowded!

I couldn't fit everything in and I couldn't get the lower lights to go any higher. The plants were growing into and over the lights.

The only way to fix this without abandoning my extra-early tomato plan was to build a light stand annex. I rounded up another old table, some more hooks chains and shop lights and presto - a lovely annex on the other side of the room!

They are already growing up to touch the lights, but I can keep moving the lights up higher now.

Moving these plants around has reminded me that I never shared with you my creative container choices. Anything goes when I get into the larger pot size.

I won't be able to use these double pots again since I had to cut out the bottom. I have already planted some of these out in the garden and I had to completely cut away the pot to get the plant out. The sand pail is a better idea. Just remember, if you use something that wasn't originally intended to be a planter, you need to drill holes in the bottom for drainage. This sand bucket won't hold water anymore!

I have already transplanted five tomato plants in the prepared outside bed. Soon I will have pictures of them. They were Early Girl, New Girl, Orange Blossom, and two 4th of July plants. I did manage to put black plastic down over the bed to heat up the soil but I have not yet built my makeshift lean-to greenhouse to go over them. I haven't had to yet because it has been unseasonably warm this week in the mid 80's! Next week's weather will not be so tomato friendly though. It is supposed to only get to about 50 degrees with overnight lows in the 30s - yikes! That is why it is crazy to plant tomatoes outside here in April. I hope I can get my plastic up soon and it works!

In the meantime I will be potting up the inside tomatoes to even bigger containers. They are looking very happy in their cozy warm indoor environment.

Too bad I can't grow them to fruit stage inside. Sooner or later they have to brave the elements outside. I am still dreaming of ripe tomatoes here in northern zone 5 by June 1st! Wish me luck!

How to Plant Leggy Tomatoes with the Trench Method

I wrote in my "how to grow healthy seedlings" post that you should be careful not to plant under the lights too early. My example was tomatoes. Kimberley from The Life of a Garden and some others have expressed concern now that their early-started tomatoes might get too big and leggy before planting time.

I didn't mean to scare anyone. If your tomato plants do get leggy, don't worry. You can always correct that at planting time by burying more of the stem.After the danger of frost in your area has passed, you should plant too-tall tomatoes very deep in the ground. This encourages adventitious roots to develop along the buried portion of the stem. Its also okay to snap off the lower branches if necessary.

If you can't get a deep enough hole, you can plant the tomato sideways in a trench and carefully bend it upright so the above ground portion is straight. Even if it isn't all the way straight, the plant will adjust itself later.

When planting this way, you can't even tell the tomato plant was too tall when you're finished. Look at how much taller the plants are in the cell pack than the one that from that same pack that was planted with the trench method.

Just be careful not to bend it so far that you snap it in two! Also, when watering it early on, remember where you buried the root ball portion on the plant.

Happy planting!

White Tomesol Heirloom Tomato: Excited, Upset, Exited!

When I wrote last month about the heirloom tomato varieties that I plan to grow this year, the white tomatoes got the most attention. I had several emails and comments about White Tomesol in particular. I think it drew the most interest because it is really white. Many other white tomatoes are more of a pale green. I picked White Tomesol specifically because it is so white in color and I was excited to see how it grows.

Finally I got my seed order from Baker Creek and wouldn't you know, there was a note that they were out of White Tomesol! They did give me my money back AND a free pack of Furry Yellow Hog tomatoes. Has anyone ever heard of Furry Yellow Hog?

Anyway, what would I do about this? I already told everyone that I would be growing White Tomesol! After searching the net a while, I finally found another seed company in the US that had it - Amishland Heirloom Seeds. I placed the order and waited impatiently. Today, they arrived!

In addition to the White Tomesol, I bought Glick's Brandywine from them. They also included a free pack of tomato seeds - Pink Flamingo Ukranian heirloom tomatoes. Of course I have to plant them too, but this is getting ridiculous! To recap, here is the list of the heirloom tomatoes I will be attempting in 2008 (in alphabetical order so as to not indicate favoritism):

Aunt Ruby's German Cherry
Aunt Ruby's German Green
Black Cherry
Black Krim
Brandywine
Brandywine (Glick's strain)
Caspian Pink
Delicious
Dixie Golden Giant
Egg Yolk
Furry Yellow Hog
Great White
Green Moldovan
Green Zebra
Kellogg's Breakfast
Kentucky Beefsteak
Pink Flamingo Ukranian
Principe Borghese
Prudens Purple
and of course, White Tomesol!

To make my tomato growing production even more crazy, I will also be growing a number of hybrids. I love the heirlooms, but since there are pros and cons to growing them, I want to include some excellent hybrids too.
To make the list complete, here are this year's hybrid tomatoes:

4th of July
Burpee's Supersteak
Celebrity
Early Girl
Golden Girl
La Rossa
Lemon Boy
New Girl
Orange Blossom
Park's Whopper
Roma
Siletz
Sub Artic

In case you weren't counting, that's 33 different tomato varieties. Yikes! I know I should edit some out, but I could tell you a good reason for all of these. I wrote about why I grow so many different tomatoes last year when I thought 20 varieties was a lot. In a nutshell, some of these are early types, some are cherry types, some regular types, some beefsteaks, some paste types, and of course we have the many different colors to aim for.

I know, I know, call me obsessed. I wonder what my wife will say when I tell her that we are doubling the size of the vegetable garden to accommodate over 60 tomato plants.

It's an addiction, I know - but won't the White Tomesol tomatoes be cool? (the original reason for this post)

More Heirloom Tomato Discussion

Tomatoes are fantastic! They are always worth writing about. They are always worth discussing, especially if you are discussing heirloom tomatoes.

If you have visited this site before, you know that I am overly excited about trying new heirloom tomato varieties this year.

Last year I wrote about my observations on growing heirloom tomatoes. I listed the pros and the cons as I see them. You can read it here, but the quick version is that compared to hybrids, heirloom tomatoes can be more flavorful, more interesting and have a sense of heritage or history behind them. Unfortunately for many gardeners, they also are more susceptible to disease and pests and can have lower yields.

Well it seems that Patrick from Bifurcated Carrots disagrees with me. He wrote an interesting post refuting my observations. I have to say however, that he was very polite in his disagreement. Patrick is a gentleman. He is also very knowledgeable about vegetable gardening, so if Patrick writes that you're wrong about something, then it should be carefully read and considered. If you are interested in heirloom tomatoes, you should read Patrick's post.

He brings up some interesting points. One of which that I had not thought of before is that heirloom varieties by the same name sold by different companies are not equal. He explains how a variety needs to be "grown out" to perpetuate the desirable qualities of a variety. This means that as we gardeners read about which varieties work for others and which ones don't, it never means that we can expect the same results in our garden.

It is fun to find out what varieties others like, but maybe we should be focusing more on where they got the seed that worked well for them (and where the seed came from that didn't work).

So am I right or wrong about the pros and cons of heirloom tomatoes? I would have to say yes. The point is that gardening is a great activity. Writing about it is also great. We garden bloggers should continue to report on our observations about our gardening but beware over-generalizing - about tomatoes or anything else.

Most of all though, we should continue to experiment in our gardens and document things. We should continue to read from good sites like Bifurcated Carrots, and we should continue discussing things that we are interested in. Most of all, we should continue discussing heirloom tomatoes!

Heirloom Tomatoes for 2008

For years I grew only hybrid tomatoes. Then, a few years ago, I added the Amish Heirloom Tomato Brandywine. Wow, what exceptional flavor! I was hooked. Last year I expanded my heirloom tomato trials and now I have two new heirloom tomato favorites, Black Krim and Aunt Ruby's German Green (pictured below).

Not only had I discovered two new great tasting tomato varieties, I also found out that there can be great tomatoes in colors other than red!

I also tried other new heirlooms of different colors last year; Dixie Golden Giant (yellow), Prudens Purple, Kellogg's Breakfast (orange), Caspian Pink and Kentucky Beefsteak (orange). These varieties didn't do as well and I really only got to sample them. They at least earned a second chance for this year's season. Only the Brandywine, Black Krim and Aunt Ruby's German Green were successful. We did have a terrible drought last summer and as I documented in my post "Pros and Cons of Heirloom Tomatoes", heirlooms can be tricky to succeed with.

Below are the seed company pictures of these heirloom varieties.

The only heirloom that I tried last year that will not be invited back is Homely Homer. It was a fun novelty marketing tomato, but lacked in performance and flavor. I have to cut somewhere, don’t I?

So now for this year, 2008!

I absolutely loved last year's alternative colors with the ripe green and black tomatoes. This year I want to expand the tomato color pallet. Something new and cool that I discovered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds is white tomatoes! I don't know about you, but I have never eaten or even seen a white tomato. I have to grow some in 2008. I selected the cultivars Great White and White Tomesol. Look how white the White Tomesol is!

I really enjoyed Aunt Ruby's German Green last year so I also wanted to add more varieties that stay green when ripe. New for me this year will be Green Zebra and Green Moldovan. Green Moldovan looks neon even!

Another area that I want to expand is the heirloom Cherry Tomatoes. Last year I grew hybrids Sun Sugar and Gardener's Delight but no heirlooms. This year I will turn to Aunt Ruby again for Aunt Ruby's German Cherry. And since Black Krim was a hit, I will add a black cherry variety simply called Black Cherry.

Another odd variety that caught my eye was Egg Yolk. I don't know if it can be called a cherry tomato but it is a tomato the exact size and color of an egg yolk?! The other heirloom pictured above is Principe Borghese which I have grown before. Principe Borghese is considered the leading variety to use for sun drying.

So to recap, my complete 2008 Tomato Heirloom Team is:

Red:

• Brandywine
• Principe Borghese

Pink:

• Caspian Pink

Purple/Black:

• Prudens Purple
• Black Krim
• Black Cherry

Yellow:

• Dixie Golden Giant
• Egg Yolk

Green:

• Green Zebra
• Green Moldovan
• Aunt Ruby's German Green
• Aunt Ruby's German Cherry

Orange:

• Kellogg's Breakfast
• Kentucky Beefsteak

White:

• Great White
• White Tomesol

Wow! That is quite a list isn't it? A rainbow of delicious and interesting heirloom tomato excellence!

I'll keep you posted on how they all do throughout the 2008 season. I am really excited!

Valentine's Day reminds me of.... Tomatoes!

What's red that you think of on Valentines Day? - Hearts? Roses? Not Me! Valentine's Day makes me think of Tomatoes!

Early Tomatoes to be exact.

Around here, folks use holidays as reminders of when to do things in the yard and garden. They say to set out peas and potatoes on St. Patrick's Day, set out tomatoes and peppers on Mother's Day, open your pool on Memorial Day and close that pool on Labor Day. Call me strange, but I add "start tomato seeds on Valentine's Day" to that list.

Last year, I started extra-early tomatoes with the goal of getting ripe ones by my birthday on June 24th. I actually picked the first ripe red tomato on June 15th!

This year I'm putting more work into it and setting the goal at May 31st. If I'm really lucky, I could have a ripe tomato by Memorial Day!

How do I plan to achieve this here in Northern Zone 5 where most ripe tomatoes are harvested in Late July and early August? Much like I did last year by planting early under grow lights and potting up multiple times until I transplant the monster-huge tomato plants outdoors in April. What I will add to the strategy this year involves the outdoor planting site. I will put down black plastic to warm the soil, and I will wrap the new plants with plastic cages and possibly construct a temporary hoop house over the early plants.
I will let you know all the details in these pages as we go along.

Last year, my extra-early tomato plats were the Early Girl variety. They did well but this year I will be planting 4 other extra early varieties to give Early Girl a run for the money!

The GardenDesk newcomers are: Hybrids New Girl and Orange Blossom from Johnny's Selected Seeds and Heirlooms Siletz and Sub-Artic "World's Earliest" from Baker Creek. Both of these companies are amongst my favorites. More details to come!

Getting back to Valentine's Day - before I get any angry email accusing me of not being a romantic, I want to state that I DID give my wife and daughters the real red of Valentine's Day - Roses.

Now they will lovingly let me start tomatoes tonight! Yum!

Odd sandwich and late season tomatoes!

Earlier in the month, I had the best tasting and strangest looking BLT ever!

Yes those are green tomatoes, but they are ripe tomatoes. They are slices from the heirloom tomato, Aunt Ruby's German Green and they were delicious! This was the first year for me growing this variety, and it has earned itself a spot in next year's lineup! This first year was hard for me since I never knew when the tomatoes were ripe. I kept waiting too long to pick them and the raccoons and groundhog would get them instead. Finally I was able to harvest some late in the season and made these funny looking but great tasting BLT sandwiches.

The weather has been unusual all of 2007. January and February were warm but then we had a record cold March and April with much snowfall. Since then we've had the worst drought in my lifetime and the hottest Summer and Fall. It was difficult to keep the garden watered, but the tomato plants that made it have still been giving me ripe tomatoes even in October! Here is my most recent Fall tomato assortment:

These are slices from three of my heirlooms; Caspian Pink, Black Krim, and Aunt Ruby's German Green. I planted many heirloom tomatoes this year but not all of them did well. Soon I will post a 2007 report card for each veggie variety I grew. A tomato that I know will get a positive grade is my extra-early Early Girl tomato. Not only did I pick the first ripe tomato on June 15th, but these plants kept producing all year. Today, on October 21st, I was able to pick a few last Early Girls!

Thats over four full months of Early Girl Tomato picking! Maybe I even could have gotten more since frost is still not in the 10-day forecast. The only reason October 21st is the last official day is because I worked in the garden today and cleared out all of the tomato plants. I also built a makeshift compost bin and planted garlic and Kenny's Potato Onions today. I will tell you more about all of that in other posts this week. For now, I am just happy to be back in the garden and back to blogging.

More Black Krims, and More Watering!

We have really been enjoying the Black Krim tomatoes. It may be my new favorite tomato. The Brandywines are coming on strong. I think they are determined to remind me why they are the current favorite. Here is a good picture to show the Blak Krim's unique look:

Here is a bowl of Black Krim slices next to a bowl of a sliced up Early Girl. Notice the drastic difference in color.

The vegetable garden is looking good again because we have been watering it day and night:

Unfortunately, now that the garden plants are greener and healthier than the surrounding plants, the deer are visiting!

I guess that's what gardening is - solving one problem after another. Why do we do it to ourselves? Oh yeah, its to get to see the beauty and eat the bounty!

More Drought and Heat Wave!

With no rain and temperatures above 100 degrees all week, it is surprising that the perennial and annual flowers are still doing well.

It is NOT surprising however, that the vegetable garden looks pretty stressed. I just can't keep it watered enough. When the plants were young, I successfully used drip jugs next to each plant but I can't use them anymore now that the summer season veggies are so big.

How are other gardeners doing in the watering department? Do you water daily, use soaker hoses, drip irrigation or some other method? Maybe you don't have the drought problem at all. I know our friends in England has had the opposite problem of late.

Anyway, what follows are some painful pictures of the stress that most of my plants are in. These will not win me any "gardener of the year" awards, that for sure.

A new problem that I am having that I don't remember from years past is that tomato branches are splitting or buckling under their own weight. I assume this is due to lack of water inside the branch. Here's one I noticed as I was watering:

Here's my daughter surveying the stress in the vegetable garden:

Not everything is doing poorly. I don't mean for this to be a depressing post so I will end it on a good note. After all of the watering was done last night (I watered again this morning), I ate a late supper consisting of a Brandywine BLT and some fresh Bread & Butter pickles!

After I ate, my daughters and I made some more pickles with cucumbers we had just picked. Here is a picture of the sliced Brandywine, along with those cucumbers:

And since I've already put too many pictures on this post and since I have begun to ramble, I will post one last proud picture of my first heirloom Brandwine tomato!

Gina from My Skinny Garden wrote a great post about tomatoes being the most photographed of all vegetables. She pondered if we have reached our quota on tomato posts. She is right that we garden bloggers are crazy about our tomato photos. They are like pictures of our children and grand children. So just like you do with kid pictures, look at the blogger's tomato pictures and politely say "Oh wow, how nice."

I just hope it rains soon so I have more tomato photos to show!

They're Baaaack... Blister Beetles Attack!

For the most part I have been lucky over the years to not have much of a problem with pests in the garden. I have an occasional loss to a deer or some other animal and I have a few minor bouts with insects. None of the pests really make much of a difference in the overall outcome of the harvest - EXCEPT FOR THE BLISTER BEETLES!

Last year they wiped out my Brandywine tomatoes. They are the nastiest of garden insects. I don't even want to go into the details about how awful they are in this post. If you are interested in learning more about the Darth Vaders of the garden you can read about them from one of my previous posts.

In that post, I wrote about how I was going to grow horseradish next to my tomatoes to keep the blister beetles away, which I did. You know, I think it actually works! You see the important thing is not were the beetles are in the garden, its where the are not! I found the beetle in the above picture on my early tomatoes which is on the other side of the garden from the horseradish. The heirloom tomatoes next to the horseradish are doing great, with no signs of insects on them.

So even though this post appeared to be a negative report, it actually is a positive one. I only found (and extinguished) three blister beetles on my Early Girl tomatoes and my Brandywine and Prudens Purple tomatoes that live next to the horseradish are doing well. Having those two kinds of tomatoes together look odd. Both of them have the unique potato-leaf look to them. Here is a leaf from the Prudens Purple:

So at least for now, I guess I'll say thank you to the horseradish. The odd thing is that the horseradish is there to deter insects from the tomatoes but the horseradish itself is taking the worst damage from insects out of all of my plants. There are some new bugs on them that I hadn't seen before. I will be writing a whole post strictly about the new insects. For now though, I will leave you with a picture of my Super Hero Horseradish plants.

Keep up the good work guys!

How Do You Support Your Tomato Plants?

Many of us are just entering one of the most favorite times of the year for gardeners; The Tomato Harvest!

The tomato is to the vegetable garden what the lion is to the jungle - The King! Many gardeners who don't grow any other vegetables still raise a few tomato plants.

There is more written in the blogosphere about tomatoes than any other vegetable. Ottawa Hortiphilia documents this well with an Ode to the Tomato. Further proof is the fact that Veggie Garden Info has had 74 posts about tomatoes in just the past two months. Bloggers like myself write about harvesting and eating tomatoes, growing tomatoes, types of tomatoes, early tomatoes, tomato pests and heirlooms versus hybrid tomatoes among other tomato topics. The topic we seem to leave out most of the time however is how we support those massive tomato vines. Moving back to our King of the Jungle analogy, tomato plants without the right kind of support can turn into a jungle!

So how do you support your tomatoes? Stakes or cages? Stake and Weave or some other system? Do you tie them up or use a trellis? Do you have your own creative way of keeping those tomatoes off the ground? From what I've seen so far, my vote for the nicest looking tomato support goes to Skippy's Vegetable Garden's Tomato Tepees.

I grow over 40 tomato plants each year. They are all spread out in my garden so I end up trying many different means of support. With some of the plants, I lazily plop down a store-bought cage around them. Except for determinant plants or bush patio types, this is a bad idea. They tend to eventually fall over like the one below on the left!

So other than store bought cages, I use three different types of support: The Florida Stake-and-Weave, Wood topless tomato tables, and a tie up each plant to a trellis method.

The Florida Weave is probably the easiest to do.

You put stakes in between each plant or every few plants depending on how closely spaced you tomatoes are. You then tie twine or clothesline from post to post, weaving in and out of the tomato plants. With subsequent twines above one another weaving the opposite direction, you can easily "suspend" your tomato plants.

My main advice here is to put the system in while the plants are still small like Steven from Dirt Sun Rain did. I waited till the plants were about to fall over and it was much harder to "weave" the plants.

Probably my favorite tomato support to use is my home-made "topless tables".

These don't look pretty, but they keep the tomatoes off the ground without any pruning, staking or tying. You could call them wood tomato cages. They are basically like frames for a table without a solid top. The tomato plant grows through the middle and the branches sprawl over the sides. I have experimented with making them double-decker like the one on the left, but I don't think it is necessary.

Lastly, I have what my family calls the tomato tower.

It is basically a very tall trellis in which you tie twine or clothesline from the top and then loop the other end around the base of the plant (you do not tie it to the plant). You then wind the twine around the central stem as the tomato plant grows.

This keeps the plant growing straight and upright. It works best if you keep the suckers pruned off of the central stem. I have used this method for years, but you can only support a limited number of plants this way.

Hannah from This Garden Is Illegal is using this method this year. In May, she posted a very nice (and entertaining) video about building the structure. You can find it HERE.

Well there you have it. This post ended up being longer than I expected but when it comes to tomatoes, I just can't stop writing about them. If you are still reading, chances are you too are a tomato gardening fan!

So I would love to hear from you. How do you support your tomatoes? What are some ways you have tried that worked or didn't work? Let's make this a poll of what kind of support is most used by gardeners who blog or read blogs.

Thanks and Happy Tomato Picking!

Black Krim Wins For First Main Season Tomato!

We have picked over 100 Early Girl tomatoes so far from the extra-early planted tomatoes, but finally we had another variety ripen!

Black Krim, one of my new heirlooms is the winner for the earliest main season tomato.

I am growing over 20 different types of tomatoes this year, and a number of them, like Black Krim, are heirlooms.

So does Black Krim make the grade?

I'm not going to give it a exhaustive evaluation like Hanna at This Garden Is Illegal does with her Hanna's Tomato Tasting, but giving Black Krim a pass or fail grade, it passes!

I do have to report that Hanna's 2006 Tomato Tasting entries did inspire me to try more heirlooms this year.

So what are my observations about Black Krim so far? It IS a darker tomato, but it was difficult for me to tell when it was ripe.

I had two ripen at the same time and I think I may have left them on the vine longer than I had to. The shoulders were still pretty green though.

The plant is still fairly small, but seems healthy. After slicing the Black Krims, I noticed that they are pretty meaty and the outside ring is almost black.

As for the taste, they were pretty good. Far less acid than the Early Girls we have gotten used to (have become almost sick of). The flavor reminded me of the Amish Brandywine. I wish I had a Brandywine right now to do a side by side comparison. We ate both Black Krims in our taste test and all four of us in my family wanted more. I say that is the sign of a good tomato!

I will report more at the end of the season about yield and comparison with the other varieties. I wonder what variety will ripen next?

Birthday Tomato Update for Green Thumb Sunday!

Well today is June 24th - my birthday. I'm not usually focused on my own birthday, but this year my #1 gardening goal was to have ripe tomatoes by now. June tomatoes are unusual for me here in the Cincinnati area. Last year it was August before I got ripe ones.

Not this year!

A wonderful birthday present. Actually the tomato pictured is the 6th Early Girl tomato this year (and actually is much smaller than the others). The first one was on June 15th. Next year, my family wants to shoot for a May ripe tomato!

I said "my family" instead of just me because it really has become a fun family thing working on reaching the goal. My daughters even wanted to protect our early plants from hungry or thirsty animals so much that they encouraged me to fence the plants in.

Usually animals don't bother tomatoes, but in the midst of our drought, animals might go after ripe tomatoes for the water content.

We have been seeing many foxes and raccoons lately so this fence will keep them out.

Soory, only humans are permitted to enjoy these garden fresh, vine ripened organic birthday tomatoes!

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As dry as it gets!

We still have not had rain. This is the driest June ever for my garden. There are places in the yard that have such big cracks that you could almost turn your ankle stepping in them.

For visual reference, here is a picture of my daughter's foot by the cracks:

She tried to fill in the crack with water from the hose, but any water she put in it just disappeared far into the ground.

I have been keeping up with watering everything pretty well until this weekend. Everything got really dry since I wasn't home at all from Wednesday until Sunday because I was spending nearly every waking moment with my Dad at the hospital.

He is still hanging in there but we are taking it day by day. Thank you to all who wished him well.

Today I took the day off and stayed home. I was able to catch up on the watering enough for everything to still stay living. The vegetables look pretty good but some of the flowers got pretty crunchy. Despite the heat, we are still getting good tasting lettuce from the garden. Today we ate huge chef salads with our lettuce, a hot wax pepper, and a few more tomatoes from the garden. The first ripe tomato was eaten on sandwiches on Father's Day. It was soooo good.

I sure hope it rains soon, so the rest of the tomatoes and other veggies can keep growing well.

First Ripe Tomato on June 15th!

Hooray! We picked our first ripe tomato this morning, June 15th! It was my goal to be able to harvest the first ripe tomato by my birthday on June 24th, so It looks like we made it!

My daughter has been watching it all week.

She wanted to pick it on Wednesday, and we probably could have, but I wanted it to turn all the way red on the vine. When we picked it this morning, she was happy to hold it.

As for my goal, I still want to eat garden fresh BLTs on my birthday. I'm pretty sure we will be able to because many other tomatoes are almost ripe.

I wanted to write more about my tomatoes and many other things going on in the garden, but I haven't had much time lately. My Dad is in the hospital. He has been battling cancer for some time now, and earlier this week he had a stroke. I am leaving to go back to the hospital now, but first I wanted to share with you my wonderful early tomato. I feel like a proud parent!

Isn't it beautiful? Maybe I can eat it for Father's Day!

Store Bought Tomato Cages not Good Enough

On my last post about my extra early tomatoes, Italman asked if I was happy with the tomato cages in the photo. They were just the average four ring "cages" that you can buy at most garden centers, hardware stores and even grocery stores.

Well Italman, since the cage on the left just fell over, the answer is NO!

At least my curtain rod stake (gardeners will use anything) kept the cage from falling all the way to the ground.

I was able to repair the problem by securing some other collapsible tomato cages to the outside of the flimsy cages.

Now that these early girl tomato plants are upright again, they are over four feet tall!

I have about 40 more tomato plants that are still small. They will all need some kind of support as well. The store bought cages WILL work for some varieties if they are bush type or determinate. The indeterminate tomatoes need something better. My favorite methods are the "Florida Stake and Weave", "Topless Tables" and my own special "tomato trellis". I will write about all of these more as the season goes on. I wrote a post last year about my tomato trellis and topless tables if you want to know more about them.

As for now, I'm just glad that my extra-early tomatoes are still growing. My goal is still to have ripe ones by my birthday on June 24th. That date is coming up soon. Here is what the tomatoes look like right now:

Do you think they will make it in time?

If so, maybe I could claim to have a green thumb after all!

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Come on Early Tomatoes, Ripen Up!

Part of Wordless Wednesday

These are my extra early Early Girl Tomatoes that I'm trying to get a month or two early!

For the rest of the story, Click Here!

Extra Early Tomato Update!

As you may already know, I have a goal to harvest ripe tomatoes from my Early Girl tomato plants by June 24th. I haven't done all that I planned to do in order to help that occur, but the tomatoes are doing pretty well.

There are a dozen or so tomatoes coming on, and the bigger ones are a bit larger than a golf ball. I wrote extensivly about this in some previous posts. If you want to get caught up you can read them HERE and HERE.

Ripe tomatoes in June may not sound very impressive to you southern gardeners, but it is here in northern Kentucky. To put it in the proper perspective, I picked my first ripe tomato last year on August 5th.

I didn't put down the black plastic that I planned to, so I hope these cool nights are not slowing down the tomato growth too much.

Keep your fingers crossed for me! I'll let you know how they did in about six weeks!

The Pros and Cons of Heirloom Tomatoes

This year I have decided to grow a number of open-pollinated Heirloom tomatoes.

These are my 2007 selections. The photos came from Totally Tomatoes with the exception of the Homely Homer photo, which may or may not even be an heirloom. Totally Tomatoes is where I bought most of this years seeds.

I am a tomato fanatic. I love the taste of tomatoes! To me, organic garden vine-ripened fresh tomatoes are like candy is to a child. Not just any candy either. Tomatoes are like special Christmas candy that you can only get one time a year. When most people think of tomatoes, they think of plain red tomatoes. Possibly a beefsteak type. Today's "normal" tomatoes are hybrids that have been bred for disease resistance and good looks. I like the "normal" hybrid garden tomato very much. Let's think of it as the Christmas candy cane - special but common and abundant.

I don't know about you, but at Christmas when I was a kid I wanted more than just candy canes. There were always many other "special" candies like creme drops, ribbon candy, chocolate Santas, orange slices and more. By comparison, if you want "special" tomatoes, you need to grow heirloom varieties. There are so many different flavors and colors of heirloom tomatoes.

So what are the pros and con's of growing heirlooms?

Pros:

Exceptional flavor

Highly unusual and interesting

Sense of heritage and history

Cons:

Not disease resistant

Pests prefer them

Lower yields

The first pro is what I described above with the candy reference - superior and varied flavor! Last year I grew Brandywine, an Amish variety dating way back to the 1800's. Brandywine was by far the best tasting tomato I'd ever eaten! That's why I'm trying so many heirloom varieties this year. I'm growing another Amish variety, Dixie Golden Giant from the 1930's that is said to have "delicious, fruity flavor with few seeds." I also chose Caspian Pink, originally grown in Russia in the area between the Caspian and Black Seas. According to Totally Tomatoes, it was the only tomato that BEAT Brandywine in taste tests!

The 2nd reason to grow heirloom tomatoes is because some of them are very interesting! Look at the pictures of Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes, Kellogg's Breakfast, and Black Krim. Aunt Ruby's German Green is described as an "Heirloom green beefsteak with a deliciously sweet flavor that's enhanced by a spicy undertone." Okay, that's different. Totally tomatoes calls Black Krim "A most unusual novelty that is sweet and tasty".

The uniqueness doesn't stop at the tomato fruits either. Some heirlooms like Brandywine and Pruden's Purple have old-fashioned leaves that look more like potato leaves and tomato leaves. Here is one of my Pruden's Purple seedlings:

The third "Pro" is that it is fun to look up the origins of each heirloom variety. Each one has a special heritage of its own. There are varieties available from many different time periods and from all over the world. You may even be able to find a variety that is hundreds of years old from your home town! I am growing Kentucky Beefsteaks which are enormous orange beefsteaks that began right here in my home state.

Okay, enough of the "fun" talk of how great heirloom tomatoes are. Let's get into the "cons " or drawbacks of growing heirloom tomatoes.

First of all, true "heirlooms" are more than fifty years old and are still true to their parent plants. That means they have not been altered in any way like hybrids have. So the same thing that makes heirlooms great also make them very susceptible to disease and pests. Hybrid varieties many times have a series of letters after their names, like VFNT. This means the plants are resistant to verticillium and fusarium wilt, nematodes, and tobacco mosaic virus. Many heirlooms can be wiped out by these diseases. Hybrids are not necessarily bred to be resistant to insect or animal pests but it has been my experience that garden pests prefer the heirlooms (that's no surprise). My Brandywines last year were heavily attacked by Blister Beetles, Tomato Hornworms, and all of the low fruits were eaten by turtles.

The third drawback with heirloom tomatoes is that many of them don't produce as much fruit as a hybrid tomato plant. Mel Bartholomew of Square Foot Gardening" is always saying, "you only need to grow one tomato plant per person in your family". With heirlooms, I don't agree. When growing heirlooms, you should grow several plants as insurance against pests, disease and low yield. This is also why I am still growing 12 kinds of hybrid tomatoes.

So it comes down to exceptional flavor, being unusual and interesting with a sense of heritage versus being susceptible to disease and pests with possible lower yields. Do the pros outweigh the con's? For me they do. Bring on that yummy "candy-like" flavor! Bring on the strange and interesting qualities. Bring on the rainbow of colors!

And bring on the pests. I'm ready for a good old-fashioned battle of good versus evil. Heirloom tomatoes are worth fighting for. Wish me luck!