Corset Strings

It was today or never. The rain has been fabulous....but it's been hard to get a break in the weather so that I could lace the prom queens into their cages and take those dresses off! Got it done this morning before 11:00 a.m. - our monsoon/hailstorm commenced about 3:15 p.m. or so, so I'm glad I got everyone sewn in tight!

Greenbush Italian stuffed into her dress and LITERALLY bursting at the seams. If you look closely, you can see that one of her stems has pushed apart the duct tape seam of the isolation barre and is doing her best imitation of the Loch Ness monster coming up for air.

Peacevine Cherry decided to take her dress off in an entirely different way. Rather than forcing the seams apart, she decided to push the whole dress off over her head! The pink isolation barre fit snugly against the ground before the rain hit.

A closeup of Peacevine Cherry with her pink halo in the morning sun. The stems have pushed up more than 14 inches above the top of the cage.

Polish Linguisa showing off her sisal corset. Two of the three elongated French / Italian paste types have so far refused to set fruit because it's been just too hot and dry. The only one of the three (Polish Linguisa, Maruskin's Andes, and Lusignan's Special) to set fruit in the heat was Lusignan's Special.

Everyone breathing a sigh of relief at last....nekkid!

Hartford fruit with raindrops. It's been a hard season for this variety this year, although it seems to be impervious to blight.

Jaune Flammee exhibiting something I've never seen in this variety (this is the 11th year I've grown it): blossom drop from the heat. If you look carefully at the stems on the truss, you'll notice that it looks as though an insect has neatly nipped the blossoms from the stems. However, the blossoms have not been able to set fruit in the uneven weather, so the blooms simply shrivel and shear off at the joint in the stem that supports the flowers.

Marshpond Farm on Saturday, July 14

This was the second trip to Marshpond Farm to take photos of the Captain's plants. In spite of drought, lack of cash, and lack of time, these plants have been treated like royalty - and it shows. Grandfather Ashlock is definitely the belle of the ball on the right side of the fence, but the left side tomato patch is a complete hedge of thriving healthy plants from our colleague, Jennifer Mattern, who is pretty much green from her pinky toes up to her foramen magnum.

Britain's Breakfast blossom cluster. Britain's is considered a multiflora variety, as you can see from this huge bouquet of unopened flowers.



Butler Skinner on the left, Fish peppers in the middle.

Love the stump garden full of Hinkelhatz hot peppers!

A pot full of Matchbox (from Fedco Co-Op in Maine) hot peppers sucks up the heat just in front of Andy's florida room.

The right-hand tomato bed at Marshpond Farm: Grandfather Ashlock is front and center, with Peacevine Cherry peeping out on the right hand side. Assorted oxhearts and elongated paste tomatoes are planted just at the left of Grandfather Ashlock.

Grandfather Ashlock showing the big ruffly blossoms so typical of potato-leaf varieties.

To the left of Grandfather Ashlock: Maruskin's Andes and Polish Linguisa. Hartford is too short this year to see, but you can still see Peacevine Cherry sticking its wild tentacles out from behind Grandfather. Great stick teepees for these tomatoes.

Fat Lady in Last Year's Opera Gown

It's time for many of my charges - that were only 5 inches tall on May 23 - to slip into something more comfortable. Taking off the isolation barres means that I will have to tag the trusses that set fruit while they were protected by the barre. I'll have to make individual bags for trusses after this.

The goal is 1-2 ounces of seed for each of the varieties featured in next year's AppalSeeds programs, but 1/8 ounce of those that won't be a featured AppalSeeds star, but which will be listed in the Seed Saver's Exchange Yearbook.

Stock for next year will include the following, based on results so far this year:

Butler Skinner (mitten-leaf, drought-proof)
Nolt's Holy Land (drops blossoms in high heat)
Depp's Pink Firefly (potato-leaf, drought and frost tolerant)
Maruskin's Andes
The Kenny (potato-leaf, drought and frost tolerant)
Rose Beauty (blight and drought tolerant, very productive)
Livingston's Beauty (blight and drought tolerant, very erect sturdy plants, high productivity)
Grandfather Ashlock
Greenbush Italian (it's big fat jolly monster of a plant, with some blossom-drop resistance in high heat)
Peacevine Cherry / Brown Berry (they're cherries, and therefore indestructible)
Britain's Breakfast (multiflora, also indestructible)
Piedmont Pear (good seedling vigor, thrives on neglect, but fitful germination this year)

Transplants will be the tried and true: Livingston's Beauty, Stupice, and Jaune Flammee.

It's absolutely incredible when you think that Alexander Livingston recorded that it took 1 1/2 TONS of seed from Livingston's Beauty to supply the demand for that particular variety at the end of the 19th century. If an ounce of tomato seed is approximately 15,000 seeds, then Livingston was sending out more than 430 million seeds annually - of this ONE variety. And by then, Livingston was one of several seed companies that operated on a large scale. One of these seed groups was The Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearance  -  the Shakers - who grew their own seed stock. It boggles the mind to think of seed production on this massive scale using only hand tools.



Butler Skinner, making a break for it (lower right).



Greenbush Italian isolation cage looks more like a tomato bratwurst.

They're BACK!!!!



First Stupice ripening, July 08, 2012.

This week the Stupices (say "stoo-peech-ka" - it's a Czechoslovakian variety!) are ripening. It's been a horrid, horrid, record-breaking year, but we all know that tomatoes usually do really well in a drought if they can get any little bit of water consistently.

This particular Stupice was planted on May 24 - making the first ripe fruit 49 days from transplant. While this variety is an early tomato, however, these plants had been seeded in early February, and so they were a little larger than some of the other plants that went in on May 23 and 24.

Stupice is a truly amazing variety, not unlike Jaune Flammee; it has an uncanny ability to survive the crowded conditions of the seedling tray without suffering from nutrient deficiencies, wilting, bolting, or many other problems caused by overcrowding. Both varieties hold well without stunting, which is another reason I like to use them as transplant varieties for the AppalSeeds workshops.

Both Stupice and Jaune Flammee have high-quality flesh and taste; the only so-called flaw I can find in either tomato is that the fruit itself is not large. This aspect of these varieties can be disappointing for workshop attendees, but this is one of those years we'll be happy to get anything out of the garden regardless of size, color, or shape.



Jaune Flammee in the front bed with real, live rainwater dripping from the leaves last week.

That's a hint: don't wait two weeks and dump three gallons of water on a stressed plant. Either give them a couple of cups of water daily, or use drip irrigation or a soaker hose.  If you inundate a dry, stressed tomato plant that's flowering with a bucket of water, you'll end up with blossom end rot about 60% of the time....more than than for elongated paste tomatoes and some oxhearts.

The Jaune Flammee pictured above is unlikely to show any signs of blossom end rot, blossom drop, early blight, or many of the other issues that plague tomatoes in Kentucky. It's relatively early in mid-season (70 days), so there should be a ripe tomato in the back bed by August 1. Maybe sooner the way things are going.

And the front bed may actually beat the back bed this year. The back bed is showing an unsettling pattern; the last three rows of tomatoes are in a newer part of that bed. They are planted in soil that was lawn rather than chicken run; there is also less windbreak and shading in that part of the garden. And so I'm afraid that Lusignan's Special, Verna Orange, Polish Linguisa, Hartford, and Jaune Flammee have suffered from less nutrition, less water, and more searing dry heat than the other nine varieties represented in the big tomato bed.

More real, live rain, dripping from the gutters and the bird feeders onto the Big Fig Newton at the kitchen door.

The"Big Fig Newton" (a 3-year-old Chicago Hardy aka Bensonhurst Purple) has taken over the little flower bed next to the kitchen door. This particular plant was pruned this winter to 3 feet tall, and has already reached the monstrous dimension of 12 feet tall, 6 feet deep and 8 feet wide. I hope the new Celeste figs do as well, but I don't see how they can top the Newton. Figs, people, are drought-proof. If we have another year like this one, I'll be planting Arbequina olive trees in the front yard to go with our figs.