Two Greens, an Orange and a Blonde: It’s Tomato Time

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Principe Borghese TomatoesThe first tomatoes into the ground this year were the ‘Principe Borghese’ drying tomatoes, four of them started from Bountiful Gardens seed, four from Victory seed. Six of the plants are doing very well, flowering and just beginning to set fruit. Two, one from each seed company but both planted in the same section of the bed, are smaller and less robust. They don’t appear diseased or I would pull them out rather than risk the other plants. If you have a guess as to why they are so much slower than their buddies, I’d love to hear it!Lag-Behind-Borghese

Our second tomato trial is four different sources of ‘Cherokee Purple’ seed; High Mowing, J.L. Hudson, D. Landreth and Seeds of Change.  Cherokee Purple Seed Source TrialThis crew was seeded in mid-March and the best plant from each source was planted in the garden May 1st, with compost, egg shells, bone meal and salmon heads. The tomatoes are approximately 3′ apart with some heirloom basil  planted nearby.  A second batch of strong, healthy seedlings, one from each source, are planted in a friend’s garden a few miles away. So far three of the four plants in the Dirt to Dinner garden are relatively uniform. The Landreth seedling has the largest diameter and the ‘Seeds of Change’ plant is slower growing than the other three, but they all look strong and healthy. The High Mowing ‘Cherokee Purple’ is my bet for the first to flower. Planted close to this trial is a ‘Cherokee Chocolate’ from Sustainable Seed as another point of comparison. It has already opened it’s first flowers, and they are huge!

The next tomato trial is a side-by-side comparison of ‘Orange Heirloom’ against ‘Persimmon’. Both are new varieties to us and the garden. We’re looking forward to trying them and hope to choose one to trial more fully next year. We are also comparing ‘Black Sea Man’ to ‘Black Krim’ and ‘Rosso Sicilian’ to ‘Costaluto Genovese’, which did very well for us in 2009. The ‘Costaluto Genovese’ makes deeply lobed fruit with an acidic, somewhat tart, robust tomato flavor. They were my top choice for slicing tomatoes until I met the ‘Cherokee Purple’.

Search for the Blue Zebra TomatoesWe are also growing out five seedlings from Tom Wagner’s ‘Search for the Blue Zebra’ which we will compare with his ‘Green Zebra’ and ‘Black Zebra’ grown from Boondockers seed. These seedlings, just planted yesterday, are covered with 30% shade cloth for the first few days as they acclimate to the new garden bed. I have no idea what the Blue Zebra’s will be like. They may not be blue and they may not have stripes, but it’ll still be fun to see what we will get.

Pruden's Purple Tomato with BasilThe other tomatoes in the garden are one each of  ‘Pineapple’, ‘Aunt Ruby’s German Green’, ‘Old Kentucky’, ‘Pruden’s Purple’, ‘German Pink’ and, my eating-out-of-the-garden favorite, ‘Blondkofchen’ which does not seem any too happy about the cool weather we are having this spring.

That feels like a lot of tomatoes all of a sudden, but it’s really only two dozen plants, or so.  OK, thirty, in this first batch. We’ll talk about the sauce tomatoes another day. It’ll be weeks before we have to find room for all of those seedlings.

Garlic in May

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This was the year that I discovered “young” garlic. I had never tried it and didn’t know that, like a leek, you can use all of the white base of the plant, as well as the tender, lighter-green part of the stalk. And I do mean all of the white part, newly forming garlic head included. The papery wrappers we’re all used to painstakingly peeling away from our cured garlic? They are soft and savory and you just cut right through them when you prepare the immature head and the fleshy bottom of the stem.

I must have stolen at least a dozen of these treats out of the garlic patch before the rest of the heads were fully plumped up and the leaves were starting to dry down. I used them to flavor stocks, frittatas and stews, in stir-frying and fed a few of them to my husband raw to help clear sinus gunk from a cold.

This year we did two patches of garlic, a softneck, ‘Chinese Pink,’ and a hardneck, ‘Music,’ both from Territorial Seed. The ‘Chinese Pink’ said it was an “extra-early-maturing variety” and to expect it to be drying down late-May to June. ‘Music’ has a mid-late harvest, which usually means late-July in our part of California. They were both planted on October 4th, 2010. The ‘Chinese Pink’ went into a 4’x4′ raised bed. I may have planted more than 50 cloves. I harvested 30 of them, there are another ten still in the ground and I “borrowed” quite a few out of the bed to use green.

Measuring Garlic HeadsThe ‘Chinese Pink’ garlic has a mild, fresh flavor even after it has been cured. The heads, when they aren’t still covered in soil from the ground, have thin, pink vertical stripes on the outer wrappers. The ‘Chinese Pink’ was harvested even earlier than I could have imagined and rates as a big winner in our garden this year. Some of the heads are over 2″ across and the majority of the cloves in each head are a good size for peeling.

It looks like the ‘Music‘ is just starting to dry a few of it’s outer leaves. Better get out there and try some of it green before it’s too late!

Potato Progress

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Potato Planting Map

April 1, 2011 Planning out the Planting Chart for Test Bed #1

The Great Rare Potato Grow Out Project begins!

Raised bed potato planting

April 2, 2011 Planting the potatoes in Test Bed #1

The first Test Bed of potatoes is planted under 4″ of Happy Frog planting mixes.

Potato Test Patch #1

April 24, 2011 All the potatoes in Test Bed #1 have sprouted

It took three weeks before we had all the different varieties sprouting in Test Bed #1.

Raising the potatoes raised bed

May 9, 2011 A second 8" tall frame is added to the Test Bed #1

A second frame was added to the Test Bed and filled in with more planting mix.

Raised bed potatoes growing

May 19, 2011 3rd 8" frame is added and potatoes are hilled again

The tallest variety so far is called ‘Toro Dude’ at ~28″ and the ‘Satina’ variety is close behind.

Potato Flowers

May 19, 2011 'Toro Dude' is preparing to flower

Flowering may indicate the end of setting stolons to form potatoes. We will continue to hill the potatoes until the first flowers bloom.

Tallest potato variety

Guisi Potatoes Topped out at 4' 8" tall

My charming 6-ft even husband volunteered as the human yardstick. The tallest variety in Test Bed #1, as measured on June 29th, was one of the four the white-flowered ‘Guisi’ plants. We will try to get more precise when we dig the vines, but for now we are calling it 4′ 8″.

Life Beyond Potatoes?

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Malabar Spinach seedlingsJust for the record, we do grow things other than potatoes in the Dirt to Dinner garden. The fact that we’ve harvested over 10 pounds of potatoes in the last two days doesn’t mean anything. We had to move them out of the way to make room for other things to grow, that’s all. ;-)

If you look closely you can see that these little beauties are Malabar Spinach.  (Click the photo to enlarge.) The kind with the purple stems. Which I hope are going to climb these 8 foot tall bamboo poles and mingle with the ‘Scarlet Runner’ beans I planted at the base of the fourth pole. In my imagination it’s a beautiful combination.

Borage FlowerWe also added three types of basil. Some, called ‘Pestu’, from seed that’s been in the family for over a hundred years, ‘African Blue’ basil which I bought at Common Ground and ‘Amethyst’ basil, just because I thought it would look nice mixed in with all the tomatoes and the green basil plants.

Our beneficials are doing the trick. We have more insect, reptile and bird life in the garden this year than ever before. The ‘Blue Borage’ is covered with flowers and bees. They love it! And it’s a good thing I didn’t ever get a chance to plant the full dozen borage I had planned for the front garden this year. It turns out that ‘Blue Borage’ is huge! And it just keeps on growing, flowering, spreading out in all directions.

Cherokee Purple Tomato TrialThe ‘Cherokee Purple’ trial patch is in, salmon heads, egg shells, bone meal and all. We planted the best seedling from each of four different seed houses ‘Cherokee Purple’ seeds to compare. And there are ‘Cherokee Chocolate’, ‘Rosso Sicilian’ and ‘Pruden’s Purple’ all out there keeping them company. Last year was a terrible tomato year here, so this year we are doing everything we can to make them happy. I waited until May to plant them, even though it nearly killed me and it was probably warm enough a week before that. I amended with biodynamic compost and plan to water once a week with fish emulsion or liquid kelp. The ‘Cherokee Purple’ plants are spaced three feet apart to give them growing room and air circulation. It looks like a lot of space right now, but I’m hoping I don’t feel that way in September.

Our next project is finding room for squash, another dozen tomatoes, and lots more beans for drying. Good thing I’m reading Derek Fell’s Vertical Gardening. We’re going to need every square foot we can find this year!

How Much Do Seeds Really Matter?

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When I grab a ‘Cherokee Purple’ tomato seedling from the nursery, I look to see if it’s been grown organically but I have no idea where the seed used to grow that seedling came from. And I never gave it a thought—until this year. This year, seeds and where they come from has felt a lot more urgent. And I’ve tried to make sure that all the Dirt to Dinner seeds came from companies not involved with GMOs, the more local and more independent the better. In order to support the Safe Seed growers I have found, I bought seed of my favorite varieties from more than one source. I have ‘Cherokee Purple’ seeds from four different companies growing. I think I ended up with ‘Lemon’ cucumbers from at least five different places.

Which got me thinking, “How much does it really matter where my seeds come from?” Of course it matters in terms of voting with your seed dollars for the kind of practices you want to see in the seed industry, supporting local economies where possible and to the folks who grow and distribute safe seed. But does it matter in my garden? Does it matter on my table?

Turns out, I think it matters a whole lot more than I ever imagined. In late February, I started seeds of ‘Principe Borghese’ tomatoes for drying from Tomato FlowerBountiful Gardens and Victory Seeds. I planted them under the same conditions in the same flat. All the BG seed was sprouted a week later, with less than half the VS seeds up. Final germination was BG 100% and VS 75%. I eventually thinned to the best four plants from each seed house and on April 16th I planted them in the same warm and cozy growing bed. The tallest, strongest, plant, which is already flowering, is one of the Victory seeds. And the only seedling that didn’t do well in the transplant process? It’s also from Victory. Though maybe I should have more thoroughly thawed the salmon heads before I stuffed them in the bottom of the tomato holes. If that poor seedlings roots were scrunched up against frozen salmon eyeballs the first day or two, that’s hardly the seed’s fault! I plan to measure the amount and weight of tomatoes produced and to dry each batch separately in case there is a difference in taste. If it doesn’t eventually taste good, who cares which day it germinates?

The day after I started the tomatoes, I planted ‘Scarlet Ohno’ turnips from High Mowing and Bountiful Gardens. The BG tops are taller and earlier, Scarlet Ohno Turnipswhich, if you are growing for turnip greens, could make a big difference. But the roots are different as well. The Bountiful Gardens ‘Scarlet Ohno’ is a vibrant, almost-beet red. The High Mowing root, though the same size, is clearly more pink even though the two turnip rows are growing in the same bed, with the same soil, water, everything.

I’ve been surprised by the amount of variation in some of the varieties. I tried ‘Canellini’ beans from three different sources and one variety didn’t even come up at all!

I don’t actually understand enough about the seed industry or plant genetics to fully get why this would be. I’m heading back to Carol Deppe’s Breeding Your Own Vegetable Varieties to see what I can figure out. And I’m going to keep experimenting with side-by-side trials like these to see what else I can learn with the kids in the garden this summer.