Around the 'Stead

It's getting to be that time of the year around here.
Some things have been a surprise, others a little slow to get going, but over all, I've been pretty happy so far. I guess I just have to keep in mind that after all, it is only June 23rd.

I could go into more detail, but in the interest of my just getting caught up, I think I'll just give you all a little over view.
Enjoy.

These are my Hamson Tomatoes. A very good producing, heirloom, determinate canning tomato.

Peppers. Two varieties of Green Bells, some Reds, and Jalapenos.

This corner is harder to get to because of the fountain, so we filled it with Beets and Turnips.
This is the first year that we're trying out Turnips. So far they seem to be doing well!
Here's a new tomato trellising method that I'm trying. I needed to find a way to effectively trellis along my back wall. Hopefully this will hold up well. This trellis is holding 14 plants (7 heirloom San Marzanos, and 7 Roma Tomato plants that I saved seed from.). At the end of the row is some Eggplants too. The front is my spinach beds. They've been producing really well too.
One of my three cut and come again lettuce beds. These will be getting trimmed this weekend. Mmmm Salad time...
A perennial family favorite, Kohlrabi. I never seem to plant enough of these.
Early Girls setting tomatoes should be reddening soon.
Peas... filling out and nearly ready to harvest the bulk of them.
One of this years biggest surprises. Our Artichokes.
You can't see it very well from here, but there were 13 artichokes on the plants at the time I took this. I've harvested a few already too. These were the Artichokes that I over wintered in the greenhouse.

Like so many things, I sometimes have higher expectations of myself and my garden than are realistic, but it seems every year I feel behind. I can only assume that it's because the season seems so much longer as I work on my off season growing and preparing.

The biggest thing I can say was successful so far this year, is this. With the exception of the Artichokes. Every plant I just showcased for you was started from seed. This is a first for us. Some did better than others, and lessons still come with every year, but I have to admit I am proud.

Hope you enjoy the tour. More to come soon!

All the best to you all.
P~

When life gives you lemons...

Well, maybe it's because you have a new Meyer lemon tree??

Alright, I admit it, I'm cheesy. But I did get a new Improved Meyer Lemon Tree last weekend.

I've been wanting one of these for a couple of years now. Then, last year when I got some of my mom's lemons I was sold. They are soooo good! So Saturday afternoon, my gift for my (gulp) thirty ninth birthday, was a lemon tree.
And here she is. My little limoncello machine! right there in her current home in the greenhouse. We've been having some really off again on again cold spells punctuated by hot days so I think I;'ll keep her in there for another couple of weeks to be safe. Later she'll be in a nice pot that I inherited from my uncle and will be kept outdoors for the summer.

And there's lots going on in that thar greenhouse too. As you can see below. I can hardly move around in there any more.There's lots of tomatoes, a lemon tree, peppers, cantaloupes cucumbers, tomatillos, marigolds, herbs...
Even some pumpkin starts that are doing really well.
And I found this on one of the little heartland tomato clones that I was able to hold over the winter. Guess there's no better testament to a healthy plant than that huh?

But Wait! There's more... There's life outside too!
Our onions are coming along well, and just about ready for a good mulching with some straw. I would love to do it earlier in the season, but our winds here just undo all my hard work.
It may be hard to see, but this bed has one of our first carrot plantings of the year growing up in it. There's five rows with a couple of extra wide spaces in the middle section. On either side of the bamboo stakes that are laying there will be planted beans for this year. The carrots will grow right along with them in the shaded area.
Here's a closer look.

And some peas. These are not doing too well. Late winter storms beat them up. Not the cold mind you but the winds. They broke a lot of them off right at ground level.

The first Kohlrabi plantings had trouble too. notice the front (windward) side of both beds were hit the hardest?
This bed has my bok Choi Chinese cabbage and is surrounded by carrots. Later in the season I'll fill the bed in with pumpkins and squash.

Not much to say... more peas!
And last but not least, the potato garden. Lots of green popping up here too!

So there you go, all caught up right? well, kind of... still have a couple more posts that I'll try to get up soon. Too much to do, not enough time!

hope all's growing well with you all
P~

a question answered (Plant Propagation)

I had a question posed to me today from a new(ish) reader. I thought I'd take a minute to give a quick answer.

Jasonbx asked...
Started reading through your blog earlier this spring. (I tried starting tomatoes from seed this year, and was looking for any info I could find.) I'm curious if your thinning cuttings dipped in rooting hormone made it? Also would this potentially work with larger tomato "branches" or only main stems?


Well Jason, Yeah... They did great!
As a matter of fact I'd even go so far as to say that they did even better than I would have hoped. I kept them very wet for the first week and a half, sort of to mimic the way that I had had them in water like I had done in a previous test. That trial ended up rooting them pretty well even though I hadn't used any rooting hormone at all. This time I was putting them into a soil-less medium so I thought a little hormone wouldn't hurt any.
Tomatoes tend to do very well as it is for setting new roots. You can see above that the roots have easily established themselves in the cell pack that I placed them in. Below is a picture of another tray of cuttings that I just did the same thing with last weekend.This tray has the extra cuttings from some bell papers, jalapenos, a few more tomatoes and even some eggplant.

That leads me into the answer to the second part of Jason's question. Can you do the same thing from regular "branches"? Yes, absolutely. In fact, if you've ever had a large tomato plant droop till it touches ground, you may have found that it will readily throw down roots mid-branch and start a new plant. As long as you don't cut too large a piece of new growth (it needs to be able to support itself easily) it will root fairly easily.

I hope to do some more interesting propagation trials as the season progresses. I'm glad to know that they've helped a little, or at the very least piqued some interest!

Happy propagating!
P~

Keeping up with stuff

Sorry for the absence, so much to do so little time. It's amazing how fast time slips away from me. So much to do so little time, you know. I guess after a week I'm about due for an update though. Some of you may remember I mentioned a while back that I have a test I need to take for work - Security Plus. It's honestly about as boring a thing as I can imagine having to put myself through, but it's required so I've been working on that. Of course there have been taxes to file, storms and other projects that, while I won't mention them quite yet, are pretty exciting but have taken some time! Excuses, Excuses... right?

In my last post I mentioned the big Spring storm that swooped in on my honey and I's date night. We ended up getting somewhere in the area of 3-4 inches of snow in our neighborhood - where we live in northern Utah the amount of rain or snow you get can vary greatly within a small area - but the next day, as is typical of spring storms, it was warm and sunny. In the picture below you can see how I covered over my cloches at the last minute with a couple of the recycled window frame cold frames that I put together. They were there mostly just to keep the snow from piling too deep over the cloches and making them like little freezers.
Luckily, it worked great as you can see from the healthy little napa cabbages under their individual greenhouses.

Thursday evening (Last Thursday), with a good weather forecast in mind (The lows have been between 36 and 40 and highs well above 50 - 60F for the last week.) I took the plunge and moved my plants to the greenhouse. It was not without reservation and some precautions of course, but they're there, transplanted and ready to really get going!

The main thing I transplanted was my, by now quite leggy, tomatoes. I took care too to try to maximize my work by attempting to root the cuttings that were trimmed out. I'll talk a lot more about that in another post in case you were interested.
Above you can see most of the plants that I brought into the greenhouse. Artichokes are in there at the back of course, in front of them are some mixed flats with early cucumber and squash starts and in the foreground are a whole bunch of tomatoes in 6 pack cells ready to get a new home.

********* F - L - A - S - H **********

And by using the magic of the blogosphere, here's a shot of a part of the tomatoes that I put in to plastic cup "pots". These should hold most of them over until they're ready to go into the ground.And here's a shot of a few of the larger ones that I put into 1 gallon nursery pots. I was able to pick these up a the local nursery used for .30 a piece.And in case you were wondering about my little heartland tomato plant that I cloned last year and held over... well, now there are three.
They're all doing great. All are about 6-8 inches tall at this point and just getting ready to take off I think.

I've more to share, but I'll have to get that up over the weekend. Till then, all the best to you all and Grow On!!
P~

The lone survivor.

Last fall I embarked on a new experiment. Cloning Tomato cuttings from some of my favorite tomatoes from last years garden.

The going was great to start with. I was able to get all the cuttings to root nicely, they all transplanted to soil with no rejections and all was going along like I'd done this for years. And then old man winter snuck up and clubbed me over the proverbial head with weather that stayed in the teens and twenties for weeks and weeks. I was able to cover the transplants with some plastic, that helped a bit. I even brought an electric heater into the greenhouse to keep the chill off under the plastic overnight by running it with an on and off schedule using a timer, that helped too, but just not enough, I kept loosing plants here and there through the winter.

Sadly, I finally met my match with a final hard cold spell some time in early January that took nearly all the rest. But one hearty little guy held out. He was scrawny and a little cold burned on the tips but with some love I've been able to pull it through!
It's one of the heartland tomatoes that I grew last year and lucky for me that was at the top of the list of tomatoes that I wanted to be able to keep over the winter.

Right now, this little Heartland tomato is about eight inches tall and starting to fill in a bit more. My hope is that I can let it grow for another couple of weeks and then split it again from this stock and get at least three healthy plants from this lone survivor. This is a known to be a particularly good patio tomato variety, meaning that it can do well in pots, and I plan to try my hand at growing a few of them that way this year. Because they are also indeterminate (meaning the harvest doesn't come all at once, but rather trickles in all season.) the plan is that if I have them established well in the pots come fall, I can move them into the greenhouse and have tomatoes well into December.

Of course I've had these grand ideas before and they didn't work out as planned, but since when has THAT ever been a good reason to quit?
Wish me luck!
P~

Keeping things clean (21 Days)

One of the most important and probably opt overlooked things one can do to help themselves be successful in thier propagating is to keep things clean.
There are a number of plant diseases that could easily prey on young, newly propagated plants if given the chance. Many of these can lay dormant in the very pots that we use to plant them in. Like many gardeners, I try my best to stretch my dollars and to consume less resources by re-using many of the pots that come through my garden. Taking the necessary care to make sure those pots are clean is a pretty simple tasks that can help to avoid a lot of problems.

I started with a regular bucket filled with water. This is just a preliminary wash to get off most of the dirt and grime off the pots before I sanitize them.While I rinsed them off I used an old rag to wipe down the pots quickly to remove as much dirt as possible.

After wiping down and generally cleaning out the pots I put them in a sinkful of warm bleach water. Using the bleach water is for basically the same reason as you would use a sanitizer when washing dishes. It kills bacteria and keeps disease from being able to spread easily.

After cleaning I stacked all the pots that I cleaned so that they could air out and dry completely. Bleach is not a good thing for plant roots so you do want to make sure that they are dried completely.

So now that I've gotten these all cleaned and sanitized, it's time to get those plants into the dirt.

I did plant one variety of tomato into a few of these pots, some of the romas that I am working to clone. I didn't want to jump in and plant too many of them for fear of they having a problem accepting the transplants. Best to stick a toe in the water first you know?

In the last few days we've had a dusting of snow and a serious cold front. I'll get out to plant some more this weekend comeing up. Watch for more and some photos then.

Anyone else trying to clone cuttings this fall?
P~

Propagating plants (10 day update)

Took a peek under the plastic wrap today and found a little surprise.Do you see them? Those little white spikey things poking out from the stems? Those are roots. So far so good!Here's a little closer look at them. This particular plant was one with the heaviest concentration of new roots, but most all of them are showing at least some rooting activity.

Take a look at the picture below, it's from a little different angle.Remember in my last post about the propagation how I said that the stem/leaf crotch was the place where most rooting would happen? Well, here you can see just that. That's one of the leaf ends that's poking out of the main stem and it's right in the middle of the heaviest concentration of new roots.

Like Hannibal from the A-Team used to say...

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

More to come as they progress.

P~

Put'n it up!

A big part, and to be honest it's a really big part, of the idea of a sub-urban farm or urban homestead or whatever you'd like to call it, is deciding what to do with all the stuff you've grown after you've grown it.

With the economy as it is, we'e been happy to be able to help out friends and neighbors with some extra produce from time to time and we've eaten a ton of really good fresh meals, but at some point, you just have to either put up or shut up. By put up I of course mean putting up food for later. We've done a good bit of that this year. We've dried, frozen, pickled, jellied, juiced and canned much more this year that in any year past. It is by no means enough to feed us all winter, but it helps me to justify to myself the effort, time and let's be honest here, money, that we put into our garden. I wish I'd had a chance to get good pictures of everthing we did, but alas the technical difficulties raised they're stupid heads more than once for me.
Here's some pickles, potatoes, plum jam and salsa that we put up one weekend. It was a busy one for sure.

I also tried my hand at making sour brined pickles this year. I can't take credit, as much as I'd like to, for the beautiful pickle cukes. I can't grow them to save my life! But I did find a local grower that had a great deal on these and they worked great.
After seasoning and brineing them and letting them ferment for three weeks they developed a great kosher dill sour pickle taste. I really really like them. This will be a definite do again project.
This year we also tried our hand at dried tomatoes. Believe me, we have much more than this. After they're dried we can re-hydrate them in a little basamic vinager and then store in the fridge in some olive oil. Very very good!
And of course we canned tomatoes. These are some of our chopped tom's. We also have done whole romas, tomato sauce and even tried ketchup.

Slowly but surely we're building a good food storage in the basement. It would be easier to freeze a lot of stuff, but that won't help me if the power goes out.

There's still more to go, but soon these jars will be regular guests on our dinner table.

Few things taste better than something you planted from seed, picked at the peak of ripeness with your own hands and put up for later.

It's a good life, eh?
Till next time.
P~

How NOT to start tomatoes

Ok, here we go. I have to say I read a lot of blogs, and often times I'm inspired by them to try things that I never would have thought of. I've seen beautiful heirlooms veggies that make me want to try new breeds. I've learned how to make yogurt and cheese from scratch, and I've been honored enough to have occasionally inspired others (their words not mine). Often times these kind of blogs are visited by new readers that are searching for answers to many of the same questions that inspired the authors to research answers and to post their solutions online in the first place. I know there was a time, and some times there still are times, when I would look at what someone or some family is able to accomplish and think "Man, these guys are awesome! They never screw things up!". It can be really disheartening when you're just starting off and you make some mistake you think is just stupid and you imagine that others don't make those kind of mistakes. You know what though, I bet they do. Goodness knows I do.

I may not advertise all my screw ups, and when I do make them I've learned to work hard to not make them again, but I learn from every one of them. In fact their often my best lessons. So, in the spirit of full disclosure, and so that perhaps someone can learn from my mistake. Here is a biggie for this year.No biggie right? It looks a little bit dry, maybe could use a little supplement or something, but not bad for a week and a half old tomato start right? Yeah, that would be true if it wasn't 6 and a half weeks old instead!And here's the rest of the family. A pathetic, ugly bunch of purplish-yellow leaved stunted failures!

So, yeah, the tomato starts that are going in the garden this week end are not from my super slick seed starter set up. but rather were picked up at a local family run nursery a couple of weeks ago. They're about 50/50 heirlooms and hybrids and they're doing very well and are hardening off as we speak.

What happened though? best I can guess it was a problem with the temperature. The cold weather seedlings that I started did great, couldn't have asked for better. However, as we all know, tomatoes are not cold tolerant plants. From my post-mortem research, I've learned that colder, moist temperatures can cause a lock-up of phosphorus in the soil that will cause a Phos. deficiency. As the plants started displaying their early symptoms, I tried a little more water. Not too much, as this causes a whole lot of other issues, but I didn't let them completely dry out either. This extra water in the cool climate of my basement was, I think, I culprit. The seedlings are still alive, but very stunted and unhealthy. I'm trying to keep them outside and see what happens, but I'm not counting on them at all this year.

So there you go, my biggest seedling failure to date. (See Irma, nothing to worry about, the peas are doing fantastic!) It's ugly, but not that big a deal really. I know I'm still learning a lot of things and every time I have these kinds of set backs I get a little better. Take heart if you've had failures too. They happen. Keep pressing forward and challenging your self.

I will!
P~

More tomato talk

I can't tell you how glad I get to see information as well received as the tomato post from yesterday has been! That's really the best part of blogging and it's the reason I drag my butt on here every night.

Don't sweat asking the follow-up questions Eric, really, you guys make my life easy when you ask me about something. It's hard sometimes to think of what I want to write about day to day and when I have this kind of great interaction it makes it easier on me and I think it's really helpful to see all the other opinions and ideas out there. I also sometimes don't know if there's any interest in the particular topic I'm writing about so hearing the follow-ups or asking for more, like Steph did, let's me know we're onto something. That's the greatest strength we all have online is the power of the collective and of the interplay of our ideas and lessons learned, don't you think? I'm also glad to have gotten to hear from a couple of new folks through this process. Glad to have ya!

So then, inspirational talk and blushing out of the way....check! On to business.
Steph, I did a little search and came up with a couple of really good links to help you visualize what I'm talking about with the indeterminate tomato plant pruning:

The first one is a great page all about pruning tomato plants. I don't tie mine up like they do, but there's no hard and fast way to do this so give it a read. Additionally, Kory I totally agree with what you added in the comments section about pruning up the bottom most leaves. This article touches on that. Not spreading disease is a good point as well, hadn't thought of that.
http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/pruning-tomatoes.aspx

This page is a pdf provided by the Colorado state extension Master Gardener program that goes into all kinds of information on Tomatoes. It is VERY good information!
http://cmg.colostate.edu/gardennotes/717.pdf
For all of you that said that you were planning on modeling trellis after my framework system, this pdf has some great illustrations of trellising methods that could easily apply to mine. In fact, one of them, the fan trellis is not one that I've ever seen before, but could potentially be adapted to that trellising system. (On that note...If any of you DO get similar set-ups put in place this year send me a couple of pics so I can show them off to everyone OK? Don't be shy.)

Now, in an effort to kill two birds with one answer, jc and darren had to kind of related questions. jc asked if I would grow tomatoes in the same method as the beans, and Darren wanted to know what happens when they reach the top of the trellis. Yes, j.c. I would and in fact WILL do it. All I'll need to do it add one more cross piece to the top section, centered on it, and then run the strings down to the bottom. When the vine has reached the top, well...it goes over the top to be simple about it, or I train it along the top or yeah I would prune it off. The later would certainly be the case if it were late in the season and I wanted to ensure the fruit that had already set had the energy in the plant used to ripen it before the first frost.

On a final note, Eric asked if I had any more thoughts on planting shade tolerant plants in the shadow of the larger ones. I do, and I think it would actually take a little writing so I'll go into more detail soon. In the short-term however, and in the interest of making sure no one waits too long take this answer. Plant the shade/cool tolerants during their regular season but do so taking into consideration of where the larger plants will be growing later. The shade tolerants will be OK in the shade on a summer day, but need the full sun now while it's cooler.

More to come on that later. Thanks for the great input.
Paul~

Answer to the tomato question

Well I asked you to ask and Eric took me up on it. His question was this:

I'm curious about your tomato growing method. I think you planted your tomatoes close together (1 ft) and used your trellis system for support. What have been your experiences with growing indeterminant tomatoes in this fashion? Can you talk a little about pruning specifically for your growing method?

Well Eric, here goes. Yes, I do grow my tomatoes in very close proximity (1 sq ft), and yes I am very big on trellising. Too leave it at that would be making the process too simple though, so let me explain. In the pictures above and below, there are two sections of tomato trellising. The one above is the box that is in the back, the one below is in the box in the middle in case you weren't sure. This is last years trellis that I tried out. I didn't like it, and am modifying my framework trellis system to have a center beam that I can hold tomatoes on for this year, but this illustrates the method just fine.

I do grow the tomatoes in 1 sq foot of garden space, but I have thus far only grown indeterminant plants and they take to this very well. Generally speaking a tomato plant can grow just fine in 6 inches of soil in a square foot but the reason they don't is because if they're not trellised they require greater rooting space for structural support for themselves. With the tomato plant trained to a trellis, the support needs are met and the plant just needs to grow. This reduces the space needs of the roots. For training the tomato to grow up, I use a rebar stake that I notched with a hack saw and tie a string to. I stick it in the ground right next to the root ball and then tie the string up to the top of the overhead beam, whatever that is. As the plant grows, it naturally gets "leggy" at the topmost part. As this get's long enough, I just gently wind it around the string which stays in place. You don't want to weave it too tightly or it will strangle the plant, just let the plant know where the string is and guide it around. Here's a close up of one of my San Marzano plants and you can see the string with the plant wound around it.Now, here's the caviat. This works well for indeterminant tomatoes because they have a natural vineing tendancy. Determinant tomatoes do not. They are more naturally inclined to bush and produce a lot of fruit for one harvest than to continue to crank them out over time. This year we are going to grow a good selectionof these types as well, and I will not be trellising them. At least not like the other ones. I may work out a loose cage type thing or something, but I am not going to worry about them getting tall. It's not in their nature.

As for pruning them, I do make sure to prune them pretty consistantly. This isn't directly related to trellising, at least not in that I need to do it to get them to grow up or anything. The reason I prune is to maximize the yield as well to limit exposure to diseases. The basics are to pinch off all suckers. (These are usually the branch looking stems that crow out from the crotch formed by the leaves and the stem. They rarely set fruit and if they do it is usually inferior. Secondly, I trim off any old or dying leaves or leaves that touch the ground. Many of the blights and pathogens that tomatoes get, come from soil contact. There's a lot of good resources online if you'd like more info.

I hope this at least points you in the right direction Eric.
Good luck to you!
P~

A Better Trellis - part two

After my last post about "building a better trellis" I had a couple of questions that I wanted to take a minute to address as well as to share a couple of other options that I've used.

Wife to 1, Mom to 5~ liked the look of the trellising system that I wrote about, but needed a little more detail on how to grow her tomatoes.
Here you go:
This picture was taken in the '08 garden in August. It's helpful in this circumstance because it allows to you see the new framework system as well as my typical single frame tomato trellis so I can point out the differences.

The raised bed in the front is growing green beans up the twine while the raised bed in the rear had two varieties of tomato's. The single frame is made of electrical conduit and is approximately 6 - 6.5 foot tall. You can see that by August the tomato plants were already grown up and over the tops. I should add that these are indeterminate tomatoes, not determinant. The difference is that indeterminate tomatoes lend themselves better to climbing and trellising than do the determinant ones. In my previous post I showed this image: This is basically a hybrid of the single frame's tall single post to tie the twine to, with the ease and stability of the square trellis system. This is what I will be doing this year. I tied the strings to the bottom beam and then ran them up over the top beam and tied it loosely. (not too.) I place a string in the center of each square foot up the middle.

As the tomatoes grow all I had to do was gently guide them around the strings that I had tied in place. The tomatoes will naturally want to climb, they just need some support. One thing I may do is rather than tie the strings to the top of the center beam, I may tie it to the outer top beams so as to allow the tops of the vines to grow out onto them. Stay tuned in a couple of months for even more detail. For now, here's a close up of some San Marzano tomatoes growing up one of my string trellises. Pruning and training allow the plant to focus on producing tomatoes rather than plant vegetation.
Bill~ asked me at what interval I planted my green beans and how far apart are the twines? Here you go bill:
For beans and cucumbers, which are the two crops that I used these trellises for this year, I spaced beans at three plants per square foot. I alternated plants, zig-zagging along the bottom of the bed and trained the plants to grow up the strings that I had tied at approximately 6" intervals. For my six foot deep raised beds, I was able to plant 18 plants on each side of the center beam for a total of 36 plants. For cucumbers I planted them straight in line at two per square foot inline.

On the sides of the beds this year I grew onions, zucchini, herbs, a wild tomato, and carrots. I think any plant that can stand a little shade will be fine though.
And that brings me to Wendy~ who made the comment that she could see covering these trellises with plastic as a make shift greenhouse. Well, Wendy...There you go, These work very well for that as single frames, but I see no reason that they couldn't work fine as the square
trellises either.

My whole point in designing these trellises was to try to come up with something that I could modify easily and that would be versatile enough to be used season after season. They seem to have fit that bill so far I think. I look forward to hearing about your experiences with it!
Till next time.
P~