It's Wednesday Again: June 27

Babies in the garden - May 25, 2012

'Maters three and a half weeks later, Wednesday, June 20, 2012.

Here's everyone with their skirts up above their heads for the pictures.... five weeks after planting, on Wednesday, June 27, 2012.

Depp's Pink Firefly, the brawny young cuss.

The Depp finally has blossoms setting. If the temps go up to 100 F or more, we'll see who can take it and who shrivels in the heat. I'm betting on the Depp, the Kenny, Lusignan's Special and the Beauty girls - Livingston's and Rose.

Butler Skinner - honey, suck it up and make some fruit. We know you're pretty. Butler will be late to his own funeral - but he's a big, good-lookin' country boy no matter what, so we forgive him.

Lord ha'mercy. Greenbush Italian is splitting her skirts - and she's already got a fruit the size of a ping-pong ball that was just barely there last week.

Hartford is a little puny this year, but has a whopper of a fruit already. She needs a good feeding and a little more humidity.

Hartford's first fruit.

Holy Land is another one that's just busy making pretty green foliage and not a bit interested apparently in making tomatoes. She's loaded up with blossoms, but I think the heat is keeping her dropping the blossoms after they open. Aphids absolutely love this one - and she needs a good airing - so I didn't fold her skirt back down last week.

Holy Land blossoms. Still have no idea what this fruit is going to be like or even if I'll ever get any fruit at this rate!

The Lone Jaune Flammee. Still hanging in there.

Jaune Flammee in the front kitchen garden bed. (Look at this; somebody get out there and kill those nasty morning glories. It is a pure abomination that anyone would be able to sell Rose of Sharon, morning glories, and lantana. Just throw in some kudzu while you're at it.)

I admit it. I can't stand to compost them. Yes, I still have the remaining Jaune Flamees in the compost bucket. Stop me before we're up to our keisters in tomatoes. Oh, wait, that's the point, isn't it?

Look at him. Isn't he a purty boy? And he's got himself some flowers, too.

The Kenny: a monstrous polycarp flower right off the bat.

Livingston's Beauty, being beautiful.

Livingston's Beauty's first humongous fruit. A polycarp....you can see that this should have been three individual tomatoes.

Livingston's Beauty, being prolific.

Lusignan's Special hanging in there. Actually put on a lot of growth this week. For those of you who are fond of useless information, Lusignan is one of the places in western Europe heavily associated with Melusine, the snake-mermaid fairy. Sort of like the fox people in Japanese folk tales - cute, but spooky, and whatever you do, don't make them mad. The added folklore makes me want to hang on to this extremely endangered variety all the more...wild snake fairy tomatoes! 

Lusignan's first flowers.

Maruskin's Andes put on quite a bit of growth, but is still fooling around with those blossoms.

Maruskin's Andes flowers.

Peacevine Cherry - a large, fragile-looking, multi-branched plant. The branches are actually as tough as wire and not fragile at all. A cherry with a very open and sprawling habit. I anticipate eight to ten foot vines even in a drought year with this one.

Peacevine fruits, second set.

Polish Linguisa has also put on quite a bit of growth.

Polish Linguisa with the typical wispy-leaf foliage in tight curls.

Polish Linguisa flower cluster; the fruits are usually borne in trusses of three to seven. The fruits are oddly spaced within the truss, and without the symmetry and order of cherry tomato trusses.

Rose Beauty, being her beautiful self. I love this plant. It's another rare gem.

Rose Beauty's incredible first polycarp fruit. This fruit will probably weigh close to two pounds at peak of ripeness.

Even Rose Beauty's single fruit are large and fat. I love these - the fruit is so pretty, just like a fat creamy satin pincushion. Looking forward to that pale golden tomato bisque in late summer....

Stupice is still out in front....

Stupice's first fruit truss. These will taste for all the world like a large red beefsteak.

Stupice's first and second truss of fruit.

Verna Orange, bless her little heart.

Verna's first baby! Even though her foliage growth seems to be a little slow this year, Verna is hanging in there and putting out blossoms and fruit.

I love these crazy shoes, but I keep having to floss the clover out of my toes.

The Package of Seeds / Edgar A. Guest, 1926

Guest's Package of Seeds

A Spare $4 Million?

When I walk to work, I like to walk through downtown - this morning I found a toy tire, a four-leaf clover, a five-leaf clover, and a daydream.

Sphar's Feed Store is located on Main Street in Winchester, and until a few years ago, you could still buy seed, ducklings, chicks, fertilizers, pesticides and such at Sphar's. (That's pronounced "Spaaaah", by the way, for those of you who aren't from around here. )

The north side of the former Sphar's building is a beautiful tangle of Virginia creeper, some kind of flowering ivy and, oddly enough, ferns growing up the length of the chimney.

Now the building is abandoned and in sad disrepair. It would probably take approximately (if our library building projects have been anything to go by) $3 to $4 million to completely revamp the building. But what a wonderful place to have as a seed and garden supply center complete with workshop and nursery space....and a huge part of Winchester's agricultural history.

A metal advertisement sign still hanging in there on the Main Street side of the building.



Check out the beautiful rounded brickwork on the arched entry to Sphar's on Main Street. I think this was a loading door for buggies, trucks, wagons and the like in the heyday of the business.

Once we get the seed stock in place, we could sell poultry, too: I was walking by the room that used to serve as a duckling and chick nursery and caught a faint whiff of eau de petit poulet emanating from the broken windows.

One of the saddest things I could see through the windows was a five-pound bag of an unknown variety of white seed beans, lying next to a 1980s vintage computer printer.

Tomato Acidity Vs. Sweetness

...and this is the chart I reference when I teach workshops and we talk about the mythical low-acid tomato. Annie, get your refractometer!

Heirloom Tomato pH and Brix Chart: University of IL, 2004

Jaune Flammee: Catching Up

These were the two strongest surviving Jaune Flammee seedlings two weeks ago. The one shown in the photograph below eventually proved to be the strongest of the the original trio, and so the one at left was removed this week to leave room for the other plant.

I hate to rogue out seedlings, but this year I promised myself I would try Steve Solomon's New Zealand drought-proofing method. Solomon is truly a self-sufficient gardener who recommends spacing plants out widely to combat drought and supplemental water use, and the author of Gardening When It Counts.His methods are exactly the opposite of current po pular container gardening / French intensive / raised bed gardening methods, but his works are very convincing. 

As a result of reading Gardening When It Counts, I decided to try spacing tomatoes and other heavy feeders  at least four to six feet apart in combination with a) the Shaker "dust-mulch" method, which involves hoeing lightly every day, b) light straw mulch, or c) an infrequently-mown ground cover like Dutch white clover.

Since we have a lot of trouble finding a tiller in the spring I decided to use a light straw mulch combined with periodical hoeing and cultivating. I like the idea of green mulches but it's very likely that they would get away from me entirely and I'd end up having to till in the end anyway, which I'd like to avoid for several reasons.

Jaune Flammee is an indestructible variety - I ended up with several survivors of the composting bucket, and so there is another one up front in the kitchen garden bed as well as this one. I use this plant almost every year as a transplant seedling in the workshops, and I have several converts to it in spite of its color and size (it's a glowing Orange Crush-orangey yellow, and it's a little smaller than a Rutgers). Most Kentuckians want a RED tomato, and they want a BIG tomato, so when I tell them that Flammee is an orange salad tomato they make a face and shake their heads.

Some Kentuckians do want a yellow tomato because it's a "low-acid" tomato, and I've stopped trying to tell people that there's no such thing as a low-acid tomato.

High sugar and bland, yes; truly low-acid, no. The fruit simply tends to be acidic and that's all there is to it, hovering right around a 4. The Brix, or sugar content, is another story. Brix may range from 3.5 to 8, according to test results on various individual and university websites. The sugars buffer the acids, while the solids may also play a part in the perception of fruit acidity. The link below offers a few results of testing:

http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/tomatoes.htm

Anyway, to get back to Jaune Flammee, people who want a "low-acid", or bland, tomato will not want  this variety because it has a stunning balance of sugars to acids and a complex array of flavors that need nothing for taste enhancement.

Wednesday Glamour Shots

I first took pictures of all the plants in the isolation bed on May 24 just after heeling in; the second set of photos were taken two weeks later on June 06. It's hard to believe that another two weeks have passed and it's time to post the update on the growth of these 14 varieties, but here they are.

Everyone ready for glamour shots first thing this morning.

Maruskin's Andes - see the "wispy" foliage? But compare this plant's foliage to Lusignan's Special. This year there are several in this bed with wispy foliage - Andes,  Lusignan's Special, Polish Linguisa, Hartford, Verna, and Nolt's Holy Land.

Maruskin's Andes blossoms.

Butler Skinner. I cut the cattle panel sideways to make this cage, so the height of each opening is 8" rather than 6" on this cage. Butler is always one of the giants in the tomato bed.

Butler Skinner blossoms: Butler is slow about doing everything (except putting on huge growth). Slow to germinate, slow to flower, slow to ripen. But truly one of the most beautiful and tasty tomatoes I've ever grown.

Depp's Pink Firefly. The Depps were very slow to put on any kind of growth this year in the seedling beds. I did not fertilize them as they like to be - they are really big eaters that thrived the year I actually killed some varieties by making a mistake in the feeding schedule. Depp loves lime, calcium and phosphorus supplements.

Depp's Pink Firefly blossoms - looks like it's going to be a stellar crop. I make sure to shake these plants at least once a day, including directly stimulating the blossoms to ensure good fruit set since they won't have as much help from insects this year due to the tulle isolation barres.

A typical Depp leaf - this type of gigantic, tropical leaf is very typical of almost all the potato-leaf varieties. Huge growth, robust cell structure, and fewer crenellations in the leaf mean better disease resistance, as well as cold and heat tolerance. They're long-lived and generally healthy although not necessarily any more resistant to early and late blight as a group.

Greenbush Italian is the monster this year. It's already nearly up to the top of it's cage, and seems to be thrilled to be alive. Very healthy, strong seedlings, quick germination. If the fruit is anything to write home about I'll be using this one as a transplant tomato for spring programs. Had absolutely no trouble with this as a seedling. Tough as nails, big eater, and does a lot with the food it gets.

Greenbush had a baby and I didn't even know it. I would have bet any money on this being an elongated paste or even a slightly oxheart-shaped fruit, but I believe it's going to be a fat pendulous oval.

Nolt's Holy Land is still a mystery, but it's a tremendous plant, robust in growth which can be unusual for the wispy-leaf plants. Still have no idea what the fruit will be like. This is a multiply-branched plant, with several primary stalks originating near the soil line. Definitely one to cage rather than stake for a variety of reasons - wispy foliage, lots of branches, seems to be a fairly brittle-stemmed plant as well. She's also having an aphid attack right now, so I sprayed with a chamomile / tea-tree oil / baking soda solution to see if I could knock the infestation down a bit while providing some natural antibacterial support.

The winner of the triumvirate of tiny seedlings I planted in this plot. Jaune Flammee is one of John Maruskin's favorite tomatoes, and one of the only two he asked for by name this year....and when it was time to plant I realized with horror that I had sold all the large plants without saving one for us. I had also tossed the Flammees into the composting bucket just that week, so I had to root around for still-living seedlings covered in soil. I came up with about 8 and planted the three strongest-looking ones in the compost bucket.

The Kenny, from Mischelle Hodgkin. You can tell that this one has really put on some monster growth like the Depp in the last two weeks. I anticipate the potato-leaf plants catching up with their older siblings over the next two weeks.

Another plant I had no intention (like Holy Land) of growing this year. Beauty was such a, well, beauty when I grew it out to use as transplant tomato for the programs that I fell in love with it - and then after reading a little bit more about it in Livingston's book I decided that I had to grow it. Supposed to be trouble-free, glorious-tasting 19th-century sweetheart.

Livingston's Beauty blossom cluster. Apparently prolific!



Lusignan's Special is one to fight for. Very frail looking but tougher than you'd imagine - this was introduced to Seed Savers Exchange supposedly by William Woys Weaver. Hails from Lusignan, a small French town, and produces luscious rose-red bomb-shaped fruit about 4 to 7 ounces each. It looks like a paste tomato, but it has a tender, juicy sweet flesh.

Lusignan's Special appears nowhere online, in a catalog, or anywhere else that I have found, and I was shocked to find that it was not listed anywhere in the Seed Savers Yearbook this spring, so I'm encouraging everyone I can find to grow out a couple of plants and keep it going.  

Peacevine Cherry seemed to experience a drop from catalogs this year. Great-tasting full-flavored cherry does beautifully as a roasting tomato. Gorgeous in salads. Big feeder, needs a good boost of phosporus. Hard to kill. Seems to never have any blight issues. Super-high in gamma-aminobutyric acid.

Peacevine Cherry fruits.

One of my favorite pastes - a tie with Andes. Sturdy, a fatter wispy-leaf. Doesn't seem as robust as I remember it, but still a strong grower.

Rose Beauty produces creamy-yellow fruit with a pink blush on the bottom when dead ripe. Beautiful plant, beautiful fruit, great-tasting, full-flavored and not bland like many pinks and yellows. From the Rose Family in Estill County, Kentucky. Hard to find - and I can't figure it - the seedling is another super-robust one that requires no extra care. Shows drought tolerance and some disease tolerance / resistance in my garden.

Rose Beauty flowers. Lots of polycarps this spring.



Verna Orange - a stunning orange oxheart. No blight resistance, hence the huge stack of hay underneath her. Unfortunately I think Verna is one of those tomatoes that hates being mulched, so I'm not sure what to do with her this year. She's healthy enough, but I need to aerate her soil . She's at the end of the line to get superior air-circulation in an attempt to stave off blight, but she may be getting and staying a little nutrient-starved, so I'm going to up her feeding schedule a bit. She'll be getting a drink of Dutch Soil from Homestead Gardens Nursery in Casey County KY.

Verna Orange flowers. Vernas produce gigantic orange oxhearts that are a sold sheet of mango colored and textured flesh when cut. Fewer than 100 seeds per 16 to 20 ounce fruit. Gourmand's delight; seed-saver's and grower's nightmare. Worth every bit of extra care she requires. Getting to be hard to find ... and Verna is an oddly strong, fast-growing seedling. Excellent germination always, even in older seed that has been poorly kept. I think she wants to make every seed count since she doesn't produce very many!

Another hard-to-find oxheart. I believe I got seed first from Bill Minkey. Hartford is a beautiful deep rose-red oxheart with a glorious flavor. Pretty productive, but stops producing early on, at least the last time I grew it that's what happened. Well worth it for the fruit. Eastern box turtles will be a problem if you grow Hartford and you have a lot of this critter in the neighborhood. We had a big male who took out a Hartford every single day. I found him asleep one afternoon with his nose resting in the remains of what had been a one-pound fruit.