Gardening Stuff

There's been some harvesting around here. I canned a few pints of tomatoes this weekend, and the fall-like weather prompted me to make some nice cabbage soup. That same weather prompted me to make a stew of vegetables and farmed Vermont venison, and roast a chicken stuffed with rosemary, parsley and thyme from the garden, and serve it with my usual melange of what's-in-the-harvest-basket.  This time it was green beans, zucchini, summer squash, baby potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, and red onions sauteed in a combo of olive oil and butter. 

Pumpkin Watch will continue, but there is sad news to report.  I discovered that that pumpkin is the ONLY pumpkin that has survived, and the plant from which it grows has succumbed, as have all the others, to downy mildew.  The Watch may not be as exciting as I'd like, but we'll do it anyway.  Because the plant is stressed, the pumpkin will probably not grow anymore, but also because it is stressed, it will send out a message to ripen.  The fruit's job is to make seeds for survival of the species, and when the plant gets sick, the last bit of remaining energy goes to seed production, therefore ripening.

Much of the vegetable garden has been very recently (literally in a few days' time) overtaken by disease.  All of the cucurbits -- cucumbers and squashes -- are struggling.  Insect damage and the aforementioned downy mildew have taken their toll.  When this sort of thing happens, I could cry.  My pole beans, which were thriving just last week, also seem to have been taken over by some sort of disease. There's still a lot of stuff to eat and to harvest, but some of those crops are just withering away now.  So sad, after all the work and good care I've taken. This is not anything new -- it happens many years. I'm excited to see if the large-scale permaculture compost layering that I'm hoping to do along with Jen this fall will improve the situation for the future. When I surveyed the vegetable garden area yesterday afternoon, though, I started to hyperventilate, thinking about the volume of materials I will need to bring in for it. We've been saving newspapers and having others do it for us, too, but that is only a small portion of what we'll need for the project. 

There were several questions about the tomatoes the other day.  If you've read me go on about the tomatoes before, you may want to skip the rest of this post.  :)

The tomatoes in the photo of my post the other day are a cluster-type variety that I can't remember the name of, sorry to say.  I can remember that it said "cluster" on the label, but that's all I can remember.  As you can see, they are doing extremely well -- very fruitful and perfect. 

I also grew Early Girls that didn't do so well this year.  Usually they are one of my better performers.  I think because of the cold and extremely rainy spring, they didn't get off to so great a start.  When it was time for blossoming and pollination, it was non-stop rain. 

Because this was shaping up to be a "weird" year, and I could tell that at the beginning of the summer when I was buying my tomato plants, I decided to concentrate on the old standby and family favorite:  Big Boy.

Other years I have grown Better Boys, which I didn't feel were any better than the Big Boys, and Beefsteak and other various and sundry varieties -- there was an Italian striped tomato that was pretty cool, and there were yellow ones that were delicious, but I never could embrace a yellow tomato -- my brain just couldn't wrap itself around it -- and I haven't grown them for a few years, except last year I grew a yellow cherry tomato. Also, yellow tomatoes are less acid, and I must admit that it is the acidity of a good tomato that I really like.  I will never understand people (even some great chefs) who say you should add sugar to tomato sauce "to cut the acid."  Give me my damn acid!  Tomatoes are not supposed to be sweet!  Well, not that kind of sweet, anyway. 

I also like Brandywine, but this year could not find any at my nursery.  I grew some Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes and some Roma Italians this year, as well. 

My method for planting tomatoes:  Dig a very deep hole.  Aim for all of the plant to be underground except the top two leaves (although this year mine were not planted as deep as that, because I was a bit lazy.) In the bottom of the hole, I put a small handful of each of the following: bone meal, lime, all-purpose organic fertilizer, and Epsom salt (because my soil is magnesium-deficient.  I used to get blossom-end rot before I figured this out.  I thought my plants had tomato blight, but I had misdiagnosed that, thank goodness -- I found this out from my gardening bible -- and it was a magnesium deficiency that was causing the leaves to turn brown and die and the plants to wither away, as well.  The easy, cheap answer to magnesium deficiency is Epsom salt.).  I also put a splash of liquid kelp in the hole, set the plant in, fill the rest of the hole with water, and then fill it in with soil.

I've written about this several times, but for newer readers, I swear by the red tomato mulch that I get at various organic gardening places, but someone even wrote me this year to tell me she saw it at Wal-Mart, so I guess it's gone mainstream now.  Imagine that. Since I first wrote about this stuff a couple of years ago, several readers have written to say that they've tried it and they now swear by it as well.  Right, Adelaide, for example?  :)

The tomato cages that Jen exclaimed about the other day are these from Gardener's Supply, and they work beautifully.  They are pricey, but worth the money.  The ones we have are at least 12 years old.  Now they have the even taller ones, that, if I were just starting out, I'd buy instead of the ones I have, because my tomato plants tower above the existing cages and flop over the top.  We have five of these, as well, and we like them even better than the cages.  They are sturdier to stand up to being pushed into the ground year after year, and they are easier to clear old vines off and put away at the end of the year.  Get some.  They are worth every dime.

Comments

[Nannette]

You need to stop recommending gardening books. I keep buying them! And I'll be "permaculting" too next season. =) Already have plans for an herb spiral and a pond. Still planning the rest of the zones / sectors.

Sorry to hear about the troubles in the garden. =(( Here's to a better garden next year!

[Eunice]

have you tried skim milk powder? it works well as a fungicide (spray some on plants, work some of the powdered milk into the soil).

i soooo sympathize with your garden troubles. it's been a bad year for my tomatoes as well -- i got my first (two) tomato hornworms, plus some "sampling" by birds. the biggest problem in my garden, though, are not bugs. it's the mice. and the rabbits (not really a pest, since there's a rabbit fence). And moles. They've pretty much eaten just about every edamame plant that sprouted, chewed on okra seedlings, and even tried to eat pumpkin seedlings. and uhm, i was insane enough to plant new seeds today for fall crop. although this is partly due to a small successful experiment involving various pieces of netting in different gauges to protect the seedlings until their stems are too thick for the small critters.

i'm keeping my fingers crossed for the rest of your garden!

[Katherine]

(1) I think it's rad that you can even during the week that you were working so much that you were steaming. I just ordered Rodales preserving book. God, I love Rodale. Next weekend I'll attempt to make peach jam. Do not tell me it is not the best starter project. Cause I know, and I'm starting with it anyway.
(2) I'm so sorry about the disease in your garden. I hate that; it's so disheartening. Sympathies.
(3) Big Boy is also my FIL's favorite (I will persist in calling him my FIL, although he is actually the father of my BF, and so the ONE thing he is not is legally related to me. Just for clarity, in case you notice the BF part in point 5 below). And there you have your useless trivia for the day.
(4) I totally agree about foldable tomato cages. At the garden center where I worked, we sold the basic cheap ones, the collapsible ones, and some really super-expensivo polymer-coated ones. I know the polymer ones will probably last forever, but in the meantime, you'll need to add onto the garage to store them all winter. Sheesh. Collapsible all the way.
(5) I have one (count 'em, one) tomato plant, planted in the perennial hope that maybe I will get a tomato, even though there isn't enough sun to support it. There is one (count 'em, one) fruit on it right now, which my BF is watching like a tomato-crazed hawk. Then last week we got a big freak hailstorm, and my one (count 'em...) tomato now has hail-holes in it. Sigh. Adventures of the sunless vegetable gardener.
(6) Do long comments take up your bandwidth?

[Lucia]

I haven't even tried to grow tomatoes or much of anything else except mint, our soil is so crummy. I get such vicarious joy (and occasional sorrow)from reading about your gardening, though.

[Vicki]

Oh, I love these posts, Norma -- I learn so much!! Thank you.

[adelaide]

The red plastic mulch is definitely a winner. It makes an unbelievable difference. It would be perfect if it also repelled the deer who've been stopping by for their share of the tomato harvest.

[denny Mcmillan]

Hip hip horray for gardining I don't grow veggies any more,I live in the city.For years I tried,only to grow a salad bar for the little tree rats. So now I just do the herb in a pot thing. My husband is a permaculture king. He and the "gout weed" have had a war going on for 2 years, hubby is winning. People ask why the cardbord with mulch and rocks all over it? It's just Ken's war against the evil weed in the back.
You do rotate the tomatoes to a new spot in the garden every year right? I herd it's the thing to do.
Lots of luck with the your patch, and may Peter Rabbit eat else where. denny0x0x0

[AmyP]

Your poor garden! My dad's leeks have got rust, as well.

[JoVE]

The nice thing about smaller pumpkins is that they are an ideal size for pie.

We had real mildew problems on the squashes and cucumber last year but seem to be fine this year. It is nasty looking though.

[Marcia]

Tell us more about this permaculture thing...I think I might be doing it, but I don't know what it is!

[Cathy]

Our soil is bentonite. Lovely for some things. Not for gardening. Since we had just moved to the house, we had a lot of packing boxes and newspapers. We built raised beds. I layered the boxes and newspapers on top of the native soil then dumped kitchen produce leftovers on top of that for a year. We added leaves. Finally, I topped it off with compost. Everything thrives in that garden. I think it's called lasagna gardening. I highly recommend it.

[margene]

Is the mildew from the wet cool weeks of late? That's too bad as we would love to send you some humidity-less weather.

[Carole]

We've had some blossom end rot on our tomatoes. It's so discouraging when disease takes the vegetables!

[jenifleur]

If it makes you feel any better, the squash ladybirds just demolished my green beans and are now working on my limas. I got ONE brandywine so far and some critter has gotten the rest, I can't figure out who/what. The ants and borers got the corn. The okra and better boys are still going gangbusters, and if I can just hold out 4 more days on the limas, the guineas will be out and about to kill the bugs. There's also a mole digging a trench through my peanuts and only one of my brussels sprouts sprouted. It's indescribably annoying after surviving a harsh drought and total outdoor watering ban and now we've finally gotten some rain and the bugs are having their go.

I did start permaculture/sheet mulching the other parts of the garden and I'm waiting for a bush-hogging of the weeds to do the rest of the unused rows (please, before the seeds set, please!) We got 12 roll bales of hay off the pasture on Saturday and what I don't need for the goats this winter will be left outside to rot for further winter mulching. I'm having a soil test done at the county extension so I can figure out what to add to the soil next plowing. I'm SO excited that Nannette is doing a spiral herb mound, mine is all planned out for spring, including a built in irrigation system. The only problem is that I spend far more time gardening, reading about gardening or daydreaming about my perfect garden that I don't knit much these days.

[Cookie]

I'm sorry about the mildew. I think it was a bad summer or gardening. Too wet for you and too hot for a while here.
I gave up years ago on pumpkins. I couldn't take the heartbreak of losing them all to mildew and the buggies.
While I don't like tomatoes, I like growing the yellow ones. Easier to see while picking deep inside over-grown plants.

/runs

[Ryan]

Er, "fall-like" weather?! Didn't you JUST say summer had JUST arrived in your neck of the woods? Oh, my, Vermont summers do go by fast!

[Imbrium]

I looove homegrown tomatoes - I can't stand store-bought ones anymore, now that I know the difference. Unfortunately, living in an apartment means I have no patch of dirt to garden. Do you think I could grow tomatoes in a pot on the back porch? Can tomatoes grow successfully in a pot?

[liz]

We had lovely tomatoes last year, but this year between the drought and the heat, everything just dried up and died. Next year!

[sandy]

Mmmmm. my mouth is watering for tomatoes! YUM! My neighbor is growing lots of tomatoes and pushing the plants through the fence with the instruction that whatever is on our side is ours to eat. And there is LOTS.
Downy mildew? Could that be what is on my lilac leaves every year?

[Kristen]

Oh downy mildew sucks! I've given up on trying to grow lemon balm on my deck because it winds up with dm every darn year, no matter where I put it or how carefully I treat it. Sorry to hear you're battling it!

[Kate/Massachusetts]

Thank you for answering my tomato questions! I will definitely be spending a king's ransom at Gardener's Supply! :-) Someone recommended this site for heirloom tomato seeds. I have ordered for next year but have not received them. http://www.rareseeds.com/

[Kim]

Crying out loud, girl---you sew, you cook, you GARDEN....you're one busy, talented tomato! ;)
xoxo

[Wanda]

I just wanted to say that some of might need less acid in a tomato-based sauce because our stomach's can't handle all of the acid from tomato sauce, such as myself. Just from a different POV on tomatos, but just for eating, I never eat them anyhow.

[Angelia]

You are a busy woman! I'm glad you have so many nice tomatoes AND fall-like weather. I'm waiting for that fall-like weather! :-)

We've had some tomatoes - but alot of our garden this year is feeding a fat groundhog. :-(

[AnnP]

Yes, this has been a discouraging week in the garden.
I'll give you an insider's tip on why so many of the tomatoes taste the same. Nurseries plant generic tomato seed for the Big Boys, Better Boys etc. and just stick different labels in the pot. Makes it easy for those of us who do the labelling. :)
This is a good reason to start your own seeds from a reputable seed company.

[Kathy]

Gorgeous tomatoes! Add me to the permaculture compost list :-). Oh, and please feel free to recommend any and all gardening tools and books - you obviously have a pretty decent handle on things.

[kmkat]

Red tomato mulch promotes faster growth and ripening? That is good to know, since I garden in northern Wisconsin, which is at least as far north as Vermont. Our growing season seems to be about an hour and twenty minutes.

[wendee]

My father-in-law does this crazy thing where he ties twine around the top-most branch of the tomato vine and then ties the twine around a high PVC frame that he has constructed above his tomatoes. As they get taller, he tightens the twine until they are strung up like hop-vines. He always has an amazing crop. We tried it with our laundry line with some success (we planted the tom plants in plastic 5 gallon buckets instead of the ground, so I guess we had as much success as we could!) I'm anxious to get my permanent planting beds in so I can try his method "for real". PS - Thank-You, Thank-You for bringing the Red Scarf project to my attention.