It's April 6, 2020: Checking In on Germinating Tomatoes

The first sixteen varieties are up! The ones we started on March 26 are already developing a second set of true leaves; I'm sold on the T5 growlights so far, even though I've always had very good results with inexpensive shop lights.

Most years I tend to focus on unusual varieties, especially those with an Appalachian background, no matter how temperamental or lackluster the yield as long as they taste good. This year, however, I need to focus on canning tomatoes to maintain my family's own food stores, so I've planted open-pollinated varieties with the yield and disease levels of many super-bred hybrids. I've also planted at least one landrace, Placero, a small, seedy, fat red tomato with great taste that hails from Mexico.

I admit I planted some of my heirlooms: Depp's Pink Firefly, Butler Skinner, Rose Beauty, Queen Aliquippa, Maruskin's Andes.

But I also planted two of the first heirlooms I ever got my hands on, thanks to Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Virginia, back in 1988: Heinz 1350 and Yellow Bell. Heinz 1350 is a red salad and canning tomato that throws 4-7 ounce fruits in clusters. Yellow Bell is a yellow paste tomato from east Tennessee that has no idea when to stop putting out sweet fat pear-shaped tomatoes a little bit bigger than a Roma.

This is the first year for Moneymaker, an English heirloom from 1913, and several others like Homestead 24. The latter is certainly eager to get started - both flats that I've started were the first to germinate, coming up in less than four days from seeding.

I'm trying two new paste tomatoes, San Marzano Short-Vine and Rio Grande, as well as a very short (but not dwarf) paste tomato called Martino's Roma, which was heavily productive and very good tasting fresh in salads when I first grew it a few years ago. 

My big surprise this year? My husband John loves Jaune Flammee, one of the most beautiful and productive heirlooms of all time. It's a beautiful golden orb of a salad tomato that glows like the sunrise and tastes like heaven, and it's another heavy producer, throwing 3 to 7 salad-sized four-ounce fruits in tresses. Here's the surprise - I started seed I had saved back in 2012. Not in the freezer. Not in the fridge. In a paper packet in my office - and it looks like they'll all germinate. Now that's what I call a survivor...

Join me at the YouTube clip below for more information about what to do when your tomatoes germinate, how to water, and how to use chamomile tea to prevent fungal and bacterial diseases before they get started.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ8WnInTXn0

2020 Victory Gardening in the Year of COVID-19

For several years I studied what are termed, by some "Defiant Gardens", or gardens that crop up everywhere in times of war. During the First World War, Charles Lathrop Pack designed the first comprehensive, nationwide plan for backyard gardeners to support the US's food supply. He published a book titled The War Garden Victorious, which was used during WWII to develop the War Garden into the Victory Garden.


In March of 2020 Victory Gardening burst forth with renewed vigor as Kentuckians were led by Governor Andy Beshear to stay #HealthyAtHome and practice extreme social distancing in order to stem the tide of COVID-19, a frightening and fast-moving viral infection capable of killing in a few days time.

Overnight, having workshops in a library setting became unthinkable. Gardeners are a friendly, open group - social distancing is a foreign concept unless there are only two of us and we're each working on the opposite end of a field. As the disease blazed toward Kentucky from several hard-hit areas, our library closed quickly, racing the spread of COVID, especially to our large high-risk population of library users over 50, or those with chronic diseases such as diabetes. And so our entire program of garden workshops were closed, vanished in an instant.

Nonetheless, we still need Victory Gardens right now. The Governor has charged us with maintaining our best health practices, including emotional and mental health. Gardening -- even tending to a few pots of herbs and flowers on the porch -- increases our exposure to healthful amounts of full-spectrum natural light and fresh air.

So we hope you'll join us in virtual gardening in the Year of COVID-19 - gardeners can't be kept apart for love nor money.  Here's the first in our Clark County Public Library Victory Garden YouTube series. And of course, I'm starting with tomatoes....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QspjPysUCo

'Mater Sale: Monday, May 11, 2015

On their way to the library tomato sale, May 11, 2015. Butler Skinner on the left, and Depp's Pink Firefly on the right....and many of their little friends (Black Cherry, Pike County Yellow Beefsteak, Jaune Flammee, Rose Beauty, Purple Bumblebee, Livingston's Beauty, and Dwarf Purple Heart) bringing up the rear.

The tomatoes made the Fish hot peppers ride shotgun....this is the first year we've had peppers for sale, too.

Germination and Transplanting 2015

So far Jennifer "Spoon" Mattern and I have transplanted about 500 tomatoes and peppers, including the following varieties:

'MATERS
Livingston's Beauty
Rose Beauty
Dwarf Purple Heart
Black Cherry
Butler Skinner
Depp's Pink Firefly
Placero
Jaune Flamee
Pike County Yellow
Andes Maruskin
St. Columbe
Giant Italian Paste, Gran Sasso Strain
Slavic Masterpiece

PEPPERS
Paradicsom Alaku
Fish
Syrian Three-Sided
Tunisian Baklouti

Starting April 10, we've transplanted all of them between then and April 17 - all of this set were sown on March 16, 2015, and most of them could have been transplanted on April 05.

I just sowed the following on April 18, so who knows if we'll have them up and hardened off by May 16 or not:

MATERS
Lena Mae Nolt's Holy Land
Yellow Cookie
Egg Yolk
Honeydrop
Sweet Adelaide (dwarf)
Olive Hill
Vorlon
Rosella Purple (dwarf)
Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag
Chocolate Pear
Old Virginia
Yellow Oxheart

PEPPERS
Puppenpepper (my seed, probably a cross of Fish and Matchbox, from 2013)
Jimmy Nardello (fresh)
Joelene's Red (fresh)
Peter Pepper (very old seed)
Matchbox (Fedco seed, older)
Hinkelhatz (older seed)

Late July 'Mater Update

Maruskin's Andes in the Front Farm beds. The two in the front beds are setting fruit faster and more furiously than their elder sister back in the 'Mater Patch, who was heeled in three weeks earlier. All three plants are from the same initial sowing and were transplanted at the same time into larger seedling containers. The only difference besides location is the three-week difference in planting times.

 Maruskin's Andes in the 'Mater Patch. This plant was heeled in about three weeks before the two Andes in the Front Farm beds, and she's slow, slow, slow setting fruit this year, unlike her sisters in the Front Farm.

The Andes  in the 'Mater Patch again. Plenty of flowers - she's just not interested in setting any fruit. The 'Mater Patch plants were almost all planted in 2nd quarter Sagittarius.

Livingston's Beauty doing her beautiful thing - being a short indeterminate vine and setting fruit at the core of the vine like crazy. Great plant. Not completely resistant to blight, but very resistant to seedling stressing, drought, and can set fruit at temperatures about 90 degrees F.

Two of the four monster plants in the 'Mater Patch: on the right is Black Cherry. Costoluto Genovese is on the left. These things are HUGE. The runners-up for huge plants are Rose Beauty and Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag. Costoluto Genovese is massively productive, so if the fruits are good-tasting, this will be one of the essential tomatoes in any bed from now on.

Black Cherry. Seriously, this plant is a monster, and very productive. The last time I grew this variety I was growing it in the now defunct Hackberry Beds, where its performance was lackluster at best. I am convinced that hackberries have allelopathic tendencies simply because nearly everything was stunted in those beds regardless of new soil, annual compost, fertilizers and mulch - and the beds actually weren't shaded by the gigantic and beautiful tree itself.

Yes. It is a gigantic plant - and it wants to send vines everywhere. Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag is another surprise this year, but the last year I grew it out - maybe in 2008 -  it was situated  in a somewhat depleted part of the 'Mater Patch, and planted way too close to its neighbors. I used to plant tomatoes 18" apart in rows, sandwiched between layers of cattle panel. It's a testament to the weedlike perseverance of Lycopersicon esculentum that they produced enough tomatoes to can - but they did!

Bull Bags on the vine. I believe these will top out between one and two pounds apiece this year due to all the rain.

Butler finally looking like a proper tomato plant and thinking about producing fruit. Bless Butler Skinner's little heart, he's slow but worth the wait.

Chapman with fruit - seems to be a really productive variety. Big sturdy plants - not quite as monstrous as the four giants in the 'Mater Patch, but very robust. Seems to be pretty prolific for a big tomato. Hope it's a good one! (I grew it mainly because our sweet Bubby-dog's real name is Chapman.)

Chapman looking just pretty and problem free.

Costoluto Genovese being huge and productive. There are easily twenty fruit already on this one plant, and they will all probably top 8 ounces from the look of it.

Cuneo Giant Pear - which may be the same tomato, according to Dr. Carolyn Male, as Coeur d'Albenga, Piriform, and possibly Liguria. From Tatiana Kouchnareva in British Columbia.

DePinto paste is reportedly from the DePinto family in Long Island. Brook Elliott has nothing but praise for this small tomato - apparently about the heft of the average Roma but shaped very differently. I have yet to taste one, so I'm looking forward to the experience. From Marianne Jones, I believe - or Bill Minkey. Honestly, I can't remember, and I don't think I wrote it down!

Depp's Pink Firefly. There it is. It makes wonderful tomatoes, and its performance can vary from year to year - typically does best in a drier year. However, I don't think Depp has done well outside the Southern Appalachian states, and it has fallen off the commercial seed lists this year. So even if I hated the taste of the tomatoes I'd have to grow it every year, just to ensure that the variety sticks around.

Doing very well - took a while to set fruit, but Emerald Evergreen is throwing them right and left now that she's decided to do it.

Two Ernie's Plump (from Marianne Jones this year.Marianne  was my original source back in 2001 or 2002. I realized I had no fresh seed for this variety.  I stopped growing this tomato because I ran out of room AND because I'm an idiot.) The Ernies are growing side by side in the Back Door Beds. Both plants looked identical as seedlings, although fuzzier and more blue-silver than I remembered the plants from ten years ago. Now, however, there is more of a difference in the foliage than there was originally. The proof of the pudding is in the fruit - and the smaller plant is the one producing the most fruit - nearly three times the production of the other.

Just letting Granny Carville's Yellow Roma sprawl this year, I guess. I should just get straw and put underneath her. She's having a little trouble with all the rain, but I think she's going to be quite productive. This is a variety that I got originally from Bill Minkey, but there's no one listed growing it in Seed Saver's Yearbook this year, 2013. I reckon this is going to be another one of my lost tomato children, and I will have to buy another acre to serve as the Maruskin Memorial Home for Orphaned Tomatoes. Granny is very productive, and makes trusses of fat and slightly pear-shaped paste tomatoes. A little mild for my usual taste, but they have a very fresh and subtle flavor fresh that is really lovely in a summer pasta dish with thyme and tarragon.

Jaune Flammee isn't a tomato orphan, but she is a mainstay of our garden - every year without fail.

Kenosha Paste is showing a little BER on the fruit on the left. I've just fertilized with a combination crushed eggshell, kelp, and magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) last week, so this week I'll add some seabird guano and, if I can get them, llama droppings - or just a plain 4-3-3 organic from Espoma.

Kenosha Paste is another plant like Prue that has the sparsely-foliaged, morose appearance of a tomato grown by Morticia Addams - common in lots of pastes and oxhearts, but these two varieties seem to be especially stringy. Kenosha comes from Bill Minkey. I'm guessing that Bill got the seed from Curzio Caravati, a market grower from Kenosha, WI, who states on his website that the Italian families in Kenosha have collectively grown this variety for many years.

Love Lena Mae Nolt's Holy Land. Got it last year at Homestead Gardens Nursery in Casey Co. (Liberty), Kentucky. Talked to Lena Mae when I bought the tomato, who said she got it from a customer who said  - same story about all the Holy Land varieties - the customer got it from someone who had been on a trip to Jerusalem / Palestine / Hebron, was served the tomato at a meal, and then saved the seeds in his/her napkin. This Holy Land is a productive, beautiful oxheart - wispy leaved, but vigorous. Taste is everything a ripe red homegrown tomato should be - and I wish I could grow at least a dozen of these every year!

Martino's Roma is rather obviously a determinate and a real shortie, at that.  Martino is not quite as fat and bushy and short as the Cross-Hemisphere varieties Tasmanian Chocolate and Rosella Purple, but he's a nice little chunky guy all the same. He really didn't need that cage after all.

Peacevine Cherry taking up a lot of space, which is okay, since she's also busy making a lot of tomatoes. One of the most flavorful cherry varieties I've ever tasted - and a beautiful roasting tomato, especially as a bed under chicken thighs, tossed with good olive oil, whole garlic cloves, lemon juice, kalamata olive slivers, and a few twigs of fresh rosemary and thyme.

Prue, still looking like Carrie's "Before" picture at the Thomas Ewen Memorial High School prom. The tomatoes are worth having people raise their eyebrows at your apparent inability to raise a healthy tomato plant. Prue is named after the man who grew this variety for many years - and I seem to remember that it was another Dr. Carolyn Male introduction, but I could be wrong about that.

Rose Beauty is just that. Beauty by name and Beauty by nature - but she's NOT rose-colored..she throws big creamy-yellow beefsteaks with a pink heart and a pink thumbprint on her little blossom-butt. She hails from the Rose family in Estill County, KY, out on Happy Top Road.

Rosella Purple in the Front Farm beds. She's cute - and there are some tomatoes buried down in all that foliage somewhere. Rosella is one of the products of Craig LeHoullier's Cross-Hemisphere Breeding project.

Tasmanian Chocolate is another Cross-Hemisphere Breeding Project variety - there are two of these next to the lone Rosella Purple in the front farm beds. So far the plants seem to be happy and productive, but they're not much taller than the French marigolds planted in their beds.

Thessaloniki is a Greek introduction from the 1950s. Supposedly heat and drought tolerant, but this year I think it's been a little too moist and a little too shady for this variety. It's supposed to be an extraordinarily productive variety, which is not how I would describe the variety so far.

Thessaloniki is the east corner plant of the new row in the 'Mater Patch. This is a shot of the new row looking west. I didn't get all the clods picked out of the new bed, and have not put down ample mulch, so we have a row of wild sunflowers running down the back of this row. 

Yellow Cookie is a bit puny this year; a beautiful-tasting orange-yellow oxheart, but I think I'm going to miss my Verna Orange. The latter can be very difficult to grow out, but the fruit is one of my very favorites, and well worth growing for even two or three fruits per plant (and some years that's what you get). Yellow Cookie is another wispy-foliaged oxheart plant that doesn't look like much even in a good year, and it's another that I'm afraid will not be listed in Seed Savers' Exchange Yearbook if I don't keep growing it.

June & July Tomato Comparisons

Our first nearly-ripe tomatoes made themselves apparent yesterday: Black Cherry and Peacevine Cherry, one fruit each. But while waiting for them to ripen, here are the other comparison pictures for the 2013 grow-out varieties. All of these pictures were taken a month ago.

Maruskin's Andes up in the new Front Farm beds.

Second Andes in the new Front Farm beds.

Third of three Andes: this one is planted in the Mater Patch out back.

Livingston's Beauty in the Mater Patch.

Younger Livingston's Beauty in the Front Farm beds.

Monstrous Black Cherry in the Mater Patch. Black Cherry, Costoluto Genovese, Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag and Rose Beauty were the most gigantic plants in the garden - but the two Front Farm Andes plants were giving them a run for their money.

Black Cherry's first truss of fruit.

Butler Skinner is slow, as usual - and rather whiny this year. Butler is planted where there is some afternoon shade, and in a corner where there will be more than adequate circulation. The plant is prone to some blight problems.

A monster of a plant - quite healthy in all respects - and keen on producing tons of beautifully fluted fruits. Can't wait to taste the tomatoes. It's been a joy to grow out so far.

Cuneo Paste aka Liguria was planted to replace a Christopher Columbus that was broken by an animal intruder.

Can't wait to try DePinto - I believe that DePinto was the first to set fruit this year.

Depp. Enough said. Usually a whopper of a plant that makes a whopper of a fruit - but this year Depp is planted in the newly-expanded section of the Mater Patch, where the fertility may not be as high as the older part of the bed.

Very slow to set fruit - but I've tasted this variety, and it'll be well worth the wait. I couldn't stop eating slices of this variety when we were cutting it up for Tomato Jamboree last August 2012. The ripe fruit were glorious, courtesy of Mark Henkle in Nicholasville, KY.

Two baby Ernie's Plump sharing the beet and sorrel bed together. A favorite variety from Marianne Jones.

Nobody's growing this variety in Seed Savers the last few years - figured I needed to keep it going. It's a great variety, and very trustworthy with production and quality.

A standby - these are planted in the old Kitchen Garden just off the porch.

Kenosha Paste is much acclaimed among the tomato-growing Seed Savers with similar taste.

I wish I had enough property to grow a dozen of these beautiful Lena Mae Nolt's Holy Land oxhearts!

Via Dr. Carolyn Male. Not remotely like Roma - but a Roma-sized fresh-eating paste from an Italian family.

Peacevine Cherry will eventually fill this extra-tall cattle panel cage. .

Prue takes the prize for stringiest, most pitiful looking plant - and this is a well-grown specimen! But the fruit are a real treat, in spite of the Addams Family demeanor of the plant.

It's been a while since I grew this out - and I must say that I'm shocked all over again by the size of the plant. Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag has other peculiar traits besides its octopus-like growth habit; it produces a wild cluster of up to ten buds but will set only one or two fruit from each cluster. And the fruits are gigantic, living up to the name that Mrs. Sebastian's father gave them.

A keeper from Estill County. Named for the Rose family on Happy Top Road.

One of Craig LeHoullier's Cross-Hemisphere Dwarf Tomato Project varieties. No cage required so far.

Another dwarf from the breeding project.

Supposed to be heat resistant and extremely productive. We'll see. I just hope it tastes good. Introduced from Greece by Glecklers in the 1950s.

The Mater Patch.

Growing Yellow Cookie instead of Verna Orange this year; I miss Verna Orange, but I was out of seed this year and didn't have time to order before planting.