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