The Tomato Diaries

It Won't Be Long Now!

2011-06-24T10:42:00.011-04:00

Things are really coming along with the tomatoes, although some of the plants are doing much better than others. The ones in my homemade E-Buckets just aren't as green and lush as the ones in the 14 gallon plastic totes I am using for the first time this year. I thought the smaller determinants would fare better, but they have a lot of leaf-curl and look sort of spindly.

The strawberries I have planted in those buckets, though, look great. I think next year I'll plant more strawberries in the buckets, and maybe try some eggplant and bell peppers in them to see if they'll do okay. I'll have to buy more totes, though, for tomatoes... maybe smaller (10 gallon?) ones for the determinants!

Here is the Bella Rosa, along with the basil I'm growing:

The Bella Rosa is getting a bit bushier at the top and it finally set some fruit. It's supposed to be a more heat-tolerant variety but it's definitely more late-season than the other heat-tolerant ones I tried this year.

Not all of these are mine-- just the four in the E-Buckets right next to the deck:

The ones in the buckets in front are my friend Karen's. She hasn't been able to plant them yet because she's been trying to close on a house for months so she hasn't had anywhere to put them. She was finally able to close last week, so all of those buckets will be going to their new home soon!

Here are some pics of the monster Chocolate Cherry plant:

That's Manalucie in the tote container to the left of the Chocolate Cherry plants. There is a lot of fruit set on the Chocolate Cherries... Now if it would go ahead and ripen!

The plants I've put in the corner between the deck and the house are doing really well, for the most part:

You can see, though, the difference between the plants in the E-buckets and the totes and tub. From left to right, it's Carolina Gold x 2 (these are the ones that got a bit sunburned... they're finally bouncing back), Moreton and the one in the white round tub is Pink Potato Top. This is my second year trying PPT, and it's doing *so* much better than it did last year-- I'm sure it's because of the larger container.

These four in the purple totes (from right to left: Big Beef, Marianna's Peace, Arkansas Traveler and Giant Belgium) are lush and green and just beautiful. Again, I'm thinking that the container is making a difference. Also, this is the first year that I've moved almost everything off of the deck. The plants are more sheltered this way, both from the ridiculously intense sun (I can't even imagine trying to grow anything in Texas, Arizona, or any other state that's hotter than here) and from storms. In the past, the plants would get blown over in storms so they lost branches and fruit. I'm hoping that I won't have that problem this year.

All of the tomatoes have now set fruit, and I'm hoping that I can pick the first one by July 4th... I'd love to have tomato sandwiches and BLTs over that holiday weekend!

Well Underway

2011-06-15T19:42:00.012-04:00

I'm growing even more tomatoes this year than last year, and they seem to be doing pretty well so far. They do have some leaf roll, but it's probably because of the heat we've had. Several of them have set fruit, and most of those are the plants that are supposed to be heat tolerant. So far, Solar Fire is far ahead:

Thessaloniki is another heat tolerant variety:

My Minnie's Pinstripe also has fruit already... I don't know whether this is a heat tolerant variety because the seeds were given away by someone on Tomatoville.com:

Moreton is a new hybrid for me this year:

The Chocolate Cherries are monster plants:

They're a different variety from the cherries I grew last year, but they're just as huge. Already fruiting, too!

Carolina Gold was supposed to be heat tolerant, but both of my plants got burned in the sun and I ended up having to "top" both of them... they're bouncing back well, though, and one of them has even set fruit:

My strawberries seem to be plugging along, but not getting much fruit yet:

I'll need to get some bird netting soon, though, because it's only a matter of time before the mockingbirds and doves notice them and decide they look snack-worthy. Finally, my herbs are doing great! First pic is of thyme, cilantro, sage (only got a couple of sage sprouts so far-- germination for these was not very good) and oregano and the second is of four pots of basil:

I can't wait to start making pesto... I've missed it! This year I want to make and freeze enough to last me through the winter. When the tomatoes start coming in, I can make Caprese salad, too. Really looking forward to that!

Year Three

2011-03-11T08:16:00.002-05:00

A comment from "z" on my last post from May of last year prodded me to update this thing... I have never been very good about keeping up long-term with any type of journal! Maybe this year will be different-- we'll just have to see.

I'm going to paste my response to z's post:

So sorry I fell off the face of the earth after this entry! Last year ended up being pretty much a bust for my maters. I got a some off of every plant, except the Pink Potato Top. As beautiful as it looked when I posted this, it ended up with little leaf-- the bucket I had it in stayed too wet and got overheated. It made LOTS of tomatoes, but they were all afflicted and tiny.

I think my problems last year were a combination of the heat and the buckets I used. As much as I like my homemade E-Buckets, they are just too small for the honking-huge heirloom plants! This year I'm going to try some other, bigger containers.

I'm growing a few heirlooms (Marianna's Peace is still my favorite so I will try to always grow that) but most of what I'm planting this year will be hybrids that are heat-tolerant. I'm hoping that *this* will be my year for a bumper crop!

I *did* get lots of cherry tomatoes last year, and I didn't baby those nearly as much as all of the other plants. Looks like "benign neglect" worked just fine for those! I also had a couple of bush-type plants that did pretty well, so several of the hybrids I'll grow are smaller, determinate types. I'm starting my seeds this weekend-- a little later than I did last year, and I'm hoping that by doing this they'll be less leggy when I go to set them out (and give away my extras to friends and coworkers!).

And Mortgage Lifter Pulls Ahead!

2010-05-26T22:26:00.001-04:00

I really thought that Pink Potato Top was going to set fruit first, but Mortgage Lifter is actually first, with three babies set already:

I'm glad, because fruit is setting two full weeks sooner than it did last year-- I'm really hoping most of the plants will set some fruit before the weather gets so hellishly hot and the plants start dropping blossoms. My Spudakee Purple has finally developed some tiny flower buds... and the new growth on it is oddly wrinkly and curled, but seems to smooth and straighten out as it continues growing.

I was glad to find that Ananas Noir is putting out new growth-- it's the only plant so far that has no flower buds whatsoever, and I think it's because I accidentally "topped" the plant when I was pinching off suckers. I really do try to be careful, so I can't figure out how I did this. It's a really good thing for me that tomato plants can be so resilient!

I'm going to post one last picture tonight, of the lettuce I'm growing. The bigger plant is one I bought at the farmers' market and the tiny ones are from seeds I just planted this past weekend. I'm amazed at how quickly they came up.

I'm going to let them grow a little bit bigger, then thin them out and use the ones I pull in salad-- I can't wait to taste my own homegrown microgreens!

So far, so good!

2010-05-23T12:04:00.007-04:00

I hesitate a bit typing that title-- I feel like I might be tempting fate. Weather this year has me a bit concerned, because we've had cooler, rainy days alternating with warm/hot, humid days. This is a recipe for fungal diseases, which can destroy tomatoes in no time. To be safe, I'm going to start spraying today as a preventive measure. I was just out visiting the plants, tying up the newer growth to the stakes where needed. I'm amazed at how fast these grow!

Here are pictures of all of the plants:

They really are getting tall, and I'm having to stay on top of pinching at least some of the suckers off to keep them from getting totally out of control. I want to keep them staked as opposed to caging them-- I was NOT a fan of the whole caging thing last year. It is easier, but I think that letting the plants get so bushy in the cages encouraged disease. I know staking isn't a guarantee they won't get sick, but I feel like I can monitor the plants better and more closely when they're staked.

I took pics of some of the blooms appearing on the plants. This one is Mortgage Lifter-- it has lots of blooms on it, and I'm cautiously optimistic that it looks like couple have already fertilized-- they're closing up and don't show signs of dropping.

Here are the blooms on Marianna's Peace, my favorite from last year. Don't know why, but these are noticeably bigger than the blooms on the other plants-- this plant can bear LARGE fruit, so maybe the size of the bloom is comparable to the size of the fruit? I really don't know, but find these beautiful.

Finally, here's a pic of the "star performer" so far this year-- Pink Potato Top. This one is a MONSTER! It's taller, bushier and has lots more blooms than the other plants. Mortgage Lifter may give it a run for it's money, but for right now PPT is bigger and badder than the other plants. I tried it specifically because I read that it's a heavy and reliable bearer and it looks like that might, indeed, be the case.

It's also supposed to have good flavor, which I hope is true since it looks like I may have a lot of fruit from it. I just hope I can keep these plants healthy (at least, healthier) this year-- I'm really looking forward to trying all of the different tomatoes to see which are best!

One Year Later...

2010-05-09T18:49:00.006-04:00

Well, true to form, I essentially abandoned this blog last year when things got "hot & heavy" with my tomatoes. Unfortunately, I say "heavy" not in terms of yield; just indicating that I got overwhelmed. My plants started having issues with discolored leaves and other stuff that appeared to me to be disease that I never was able to clearly identify. I did get pics of that, but they are on my other laptop and I don't feel like hauling it out to post a few pics that will just bring back bad memories. :o)

I did manage not to totally lose any of the plants until the very end of the season. One of the things I did successfully that helped was I took cuttings from the plants that seemed to be having the most trouble. That's one cool thing about tomatoes-- you can pinch off a sucker, stick it in some potting mix or water and it'll grow roots like nobody's business.

After I rooted the cuttings, I learned to make eBuckets via Dave's Garden. One of the folks I met there, Lane, came up with the design after some folks started speculating on and easy and cost-effective way to make a self-watering planter. After some brainstorming about using 5 gallon buckets (like the ones paint or pickles come in) and colanders, Lane came up with a design that works beautifully! Here are the directions for the eBuckets. My husband I made 4 of them last year, I put cuttings in 3 and had more tomatoes off of those 3 plants in just a few weeks than I got off the parent plants all season before that.

Too bad I didn't plant them up, though, until late in the season... it was August, I think, so I got a few ripe ones before first frost, at which time I then had LOTS of green tomatoes! Good thing they will ripen after picking, so we did get to enjoy them even after the frost took the plants.

This year, I'm even more ambitious. Thierry made me 6 more eBuckets so I now have 10 in total. I have planted a different heirloom plant in each one, plus two cherry tomatoes in my old EarthBox. The only one making a repeat appearance this year is Marianna's Peace-- those were my favorite tomatoes last season, and she withstood the mystery disease fairly well.

Here are pics I took of my plants yesterday:

I'm hoping that this year I can be a little more laid back than I was about everything last year. Now that I know a little more about what the plants can handle, I'm hoping I won't go into a tizzy with every little leaf spot or discolored stem. I guess we'll find out!

Getting there!

2009-06-13T18:42:00.007-04:00

This is certainly a beautiful sight:

But THIS one is even better!!

This one, not so much though:

I've found three of these little suckers in the last two days-- one today, two yesterday. I'm going to get Thierry to help me spray tonight, because I have no intention of letting them eat up my plants. I'm not sure exactly what kind of 'pillar they are, but I'm going to try to find out by posting the pic on the Tomatoville forum. I've also been fighting off a fungus gnat infestation, which are more annoying than anything else. I'm just hoping that when the tomatoes get big enough, I can get to them before the birds do... I hear mockingbirds really love tomatoes, and we have a lot of those around here.

Entering Week Four...

2009-05-30T14:25:00.005-04:00

The tomatoes have been planted out for three weeks now, and they definitely aren't "babies" anymore! I'm glad that the next few days are supposed to be sunny, so they can dry out a bit. The bottom leaves were really starting to curl a LOT, so they definitely need a rest from the rain.

I can practically stand at the door to the deck and SEE them growing taller. Overnight, Marianna's Peace grew up past the first ring of the cage. They all also now have flower buds. Even though I took pics of some from each plant, the only one that came out clearly (because I didn't think to use the macro function... duh!) was the one of the buds on Carmello:

Since they're all starting to get blossoms, I'm going to have to separate them to different areas of the deck. I want to save seeds from them and in order for them to remain true to type, they can't cross-pollinate. They may do that anyway, but it's a lot less likely the further they are apart. I'm also going to top-dress them with some tomato fertilizer, since I'm sure all of the rain has leached out most (if not all) of the fertilizer I gave them last week. If they're getting ready to bloom, they definitely need to be fed!

Thierry and I planted the fifth bag last weekend-- with herbs. I had picked up a couple of pots complete with seeds at IKEA when I bought the plant glides there, and have been growing them on my kitchen windowsill. I also picked up a rosemary plant at Trader Joe's about two weeks ago, and we decided to put them all in the last grow bag together.

Besides the rosemary, there are chives, parsley and basil. I'd like to add a sage plant to the mix, but when I went back to Trader Joe's last night they had already sold all of the herb plants they had the week before. Oh well... I'll have to look for one at the nursery!

Weekly Update

2009-05-27T17:06:00.007-04:00

Okay, I'm posting this a bit later than I had intended, but I *am* getting it posted! You'll see that we did get the cages up... actually, Thierry did that all by himself. I asked him to help, and the sweetheart did it all before I could get out there to help him! Good thing, too, because the plants have gotten much bigger. If we had waited, I think it would have been tough to get the cages in without injuring the plants. These pics were taken this past Sunday, May 24.

All four plants, definitely bigger than the week before!

Marianna's Peace:

Carmello:

Paul Robeson:

Goose Creek:

We've been getting a LOT of rain during the past two weeks, and I think it's a mixed blessing. I'm glad that (so far) we haven't had to deal with the hassles we had the year of the drought, and the plants are growing nicely with all of the water. I think it's getting to be a bit much, though, and the plants are beginning to show signs of some stress-- the bottom leaves on most of them are curling, and the Carmello is looking just generally droopy. I just hope that things will even out a bit so that I won't have to worry whether they're getting enough nutrients. They are getting blossoms again-- they got a few right after I planted them out, but I believe that was a reaction to the stress of transplanting them. They were way too small at that point to even think about letting them set fruit, so I pinched off the buds and tried not to feel too guilty about it. I'm relieved to see that they are budding again, and hope that it will warm up enough (but not too much!) so that the blossoms won't drop. This is quite a balancing act, which is funny if you think that tomato plants grow wild in other parts of the world without any problems!

One Week Out

2009-05-16T22:28:00.013-04:00

These plants are growing like crazy... I can practically SEE them grow when I look at them. This is what they looked like one week ago:

And this is what they looked like this morning:

The individual plants are looking really good. I wish I could post these next few pics of each side-by-side, but the dang blog layout won't let me (or I just can't figure out how).

This is Marianna's Peace last week:

Here she is yesterday:

Carmello a week ago:

Carmello yesterday:

Paul Robeson on May 8:

Paul on May 15:

Goose Creek a week ago:

And this week:

I'm especially glad to see how well Goose Creek is doing, and not only because it was the most expensive of my four seedlings. It's an heirloom variety that has a really interesting history, having been brought to the Lowcountry of South Carolina by a slave who smuggled the seeds in her skirt when she was brought to Charleston. Her Gullah-Geechee descendants have passed the seeds on to each generation and now her great-great-grandson (who is an edible landscape expert) has made them available to gardeners everywhere. I can't wait to try the tomatoes from this plant, and so far it's looking good! In fact, the plants are all looking so good I'm going to have to get Thierry to help me put up the cages for them sometime this week.

2009-05-15T21:59:00.015-04:00

Last week I got my four tomatoes planted, but I had to do it two different days. I started on Wednesday evening, but only managed to get two of them done before a thunderstorm came up.

First, I had to hydrate the coir. I took a block of it and put it in a plastic tote I'd bought at IKEA for just this purpose.

I then started adding water to it. It took about 8 gallons or so, overall, and I kept breaking it up by hand every so often. This is what it looked like after I added the first two gallons of water:

I later found out that I'd have been better off to add the water then go do something else for a while. It will hydrate just fine on its own, and doesn't need any "manual assistance". I thought it would speed up the process, but instead it just wore me out-- I was exhausted by the time I was done with the first two plants! Here's the coir about halfway to being completely hydrated:

I then started filling the growbags. Here's an empty one:

And here's one filled with coir:

I then simply made a hole in the middle of the coir and put some organic fertilizer (Espoma's Plant Tone) in and mixed it into the coir in the hole. I then pinched off the bottom half of the branches/leaves on each plant, and placed the plant into the coir. I filled the hole, pressing the coir gently against the plant stem and making sure to cover the stem up to the level of the bottom leaves. The parts of the stem where I pinched off branches that are buried will send out roots, making a larger and stronger root system than the plant would have if I simply plonked it into the hole "as is". Here is the first plant, Marianna's Peace:

And here are both plants after I finished the second. You can see how dark it was getting because of the oncoming storm:

I finished the other two on Friday, and felt quite accomplished when I was done. It took me a lot longer to do the first two than the second two, I'm sure because I had no idea what I was doing at first! Here are all four of them, finished and ready to turn into monster vines bearing lots and lots of tomatoes (I hope!):

Once I figured out how to plant in the growbags, it was very easy and I enjoyed it. I actually found myself wishing I had more things to plant. I do still have one bag and enough coir to fill it, and I sure don't want it to go to waste. Thierry and I are still trying to decide what to plant. Right now I'm leaning toward carrots, but I'm very tempted to try Belgian endive... it's one of Thierry's favorite vegetables, and expensive to buy in the store. He's been visiting family in Belgium for the last two weeks-- we'll decide about what to plant after he gets home this Sunday!

Getting Ready

2009-05-12T21:32:00.003-04:00

Our soil here is utter crap (clay, full of rocks) that would literally require a pickaxe to break up, nevermind then having to work a ton (literally) of compost and other good soil amendment into it to get it in shape for gardening. Instead of in-ground gardening, I've purchased Easi-lift growbags to use as growing containers, which I’m going to put out on our deck. I bought them from Peaceful Valley and they shipped them very promptly. The bags are a reasonable price, but Peaceful Valley did have a minimum order of 5 bags. So, I have one bag left over and I’m trying to decide whether to pick up another tomato plant at my local nursery, or something else. Thierry is voting for something else, but I’m not sure what to choose— he doesn’t like cucumbers, squash or eggplant (all of which are, in my experience, very prolific so just one plant should give us plenty of veggies).

I still have the Earthbox my mom gave us years ago, but according to my research the tomatoes should do better in these bags which are large (15 gallons each) and will therefore allow the plants to grow much larger root systems. I may use the Earthbox for something else— maybe some herbs I’m sprouting (more about them another time).

As for the plants I chose, I really want to grow heirloom tomatoes. My mom grew German Johnsons a couple of years ago and even though they were “high-maintenance” in her opinion, the flavor of those tomatoes was unbelievable. Also, I like the idea of growing varieties that have a history, and weren’t developed in a lab somewhere. After more internet research, I ordered four heirloom tomato plants from Laurel Garza (super friendly, and answered the phone herself!)— Carmello, Goose Creek, Marianna’s Peace, and Paul Robeson. It looks like these are fairly heat-tolerant (it gets mighty hot here in Concord) and should do okay in containers. When they arrived, they were packed very carefully and were in great shape for having traveled all the way from California! Shipping costs were a bit pricey, but it was definitely worth it. I would not have been able to find these varieties at a local nursery, and the way they were packed was truly ingenious; I wish I'd gotten some pictures as I unpacked the box they came in. However, I *did* take some pics of the plants not long after they arrived and they are beautiful!

The Marianna's Peace plant is the tallest and the bottom leaves were yellowing a bit because the seedling was outgrowing the pot! All of the plants, though, as you can see were in great shape and I was just itching to plant them.

Since I am using the growbags I needed some sort of mix with which to fill them. After reading the Dave’s Garden website for a few days, I liked the sound of coconut coir instead of potting mix (although I could have blended the two)… I’ve never enjoyed getting my hands dirty with actual DIRT. So, I ordered enough of the coir from InstaGarden (run by a fellow known on Dave’s Garden as BocaBob) to fill the bags.

After a trip to my local nursery, I came home with two types of fertilizer—one for foliar feeding and a granular tomato fertilizer. I also got some “blossom set” spray, which is supposed to help increase yields by preventing blossom drop. That occurs when the weather gets hot, which it definitely does in this neck of the woods! After that, I had the most important things I needed to get the seedlings "bagged up" and, hopefully, growing like crazy.

Next post – transplanting the seedlings!

A Little Introduction

2009-05-09T15:43:00.003-04:00

As I wrote in my profile, my experience of gardening when growing up was reluctantly helping out in my parents' vegetable garden. Every year they would plant a large garden at my granny's house in the mountains of Virginia, and every weekend we would go there and tend to the garden. As much as I hated grubbing in the dirt, I did enjoy (most) of what came out of that garden: corn, beans (string & butter), squash, zucchini, potatoes, asparagus and (my favorite) tomatoes.

I don't remember ever eating a store-bought tomato growing up-- I guess we were just spoiled and lucky. What we didn't eat fresh, my mom canned and the stewed tomatoes we had in the dead of winter would take me right back to summer. My parents haven't had a garden in years, though, and I have never been a big fan of gardening. As the years have passed, though, I've started to miss truly fresh, homegrown vegetable more and more, and none more than my beloved tomatoes.

My husband Thierry and I have tried twice in the past few years to grow tomatoes in an Earth Box (very generously given to me by my mom) with mixed success. The first time (about 8 years ago— wow, time flies!) we were living in an apartment so the box was on our balcony. I honestly can’t remember where we got the plants (two of them) or what kind they were, but we got enough tomatoes for us although it definitely was not a great yield. I think it’s because we didn’t really know what we were doing, plus we had to fight whiteflies for most of the growing season. That's when we discovered insecticidal soap-- I much prefer organic solutions when possible.

Our next attempt was in 2007, and THAT was a disaster. Thierry did pretty much all of the plant care that year, but he does not come from the same gardening background I do— even though I never particularly enjoyed working in the garden, I at least had some experience with it. Thierry grew up in the city in Belgium and had very little gardening experience. He was a trooper, though, and really tried in 2007. Unfortunately, that was a heatwave/drought summer here in NC. We got a grand total of two tomatoes from our plants (purchased at K-mart, again no idea what kind) before the hornworms invaded. I never knew how squeamish my husband could be until he saw his first hornworm! He gave up on the plants at that point, and given the bad shape they were in I didn’t think I could “rescue” them with my limited knowledge.

Thierry was so put-out by the 2007 debacle that I didn’t even mention tomatoes last summer. This year, though, I told him that I really miss REAL tomatoes so I wanted to try growing them again AND that I would be doing the work this time around. He is very skeptical, but I don’t think he realizes just how much I want to taste a real tomato again! At any rate, because he IS so skeptical I feel like I’ve got something to prove here. Unfortunately, I remember very little of what I learned about tomatoes growing up. I’ve been doing a lot of research on the internet and although I still feel like I really don't know what I'm doing, I'm willing to give it a try.

It's going to be some work, but I'm pretty sure it'll be worth it. I'm keeping this blog so that I can keep track of what works and what doesn't, for my own future reference as well as for others out there who may be thinking of doing something similar. In the current economy, I'm seeing more and more info and encouragement on "growing your own food" so I believe that more of us novices are going to be trying our hand at gardening. It may be frustrating, but I'm sure it won't be boring!