And notes for next years gardening

1.  Need to be more aggressive about weed control .  The tarp strips worked really well but need to use more.

2.  Keep fruit and branches off the ground.  I lost a lot of fruit that way.   Prune low branches aggressively.   Tie up things better.

Summary thought on 2014 varieties

Airy leaf:  ok but not as impressive as super sauce.

Better bush:  I got a few, nice round red tennis ball size, but not super prolific in the end.

Black Cherry: As last year, this is a very prolific cherry.   With about 4 plants I had a lot of these and I canned 2 quarts. Still a great plant.  Good taste.

Black from Tula:  similar to Cherokee Purple in color and size, but BFT are often a little bigger and weirder shaped.  Still nice, great flavor .

Costoluto Genovese:   I think it's worth planting again,  as it was not bad for yield and it's a great deep red fluted fruit, and sauces surprisingly well.  It is prone to end rot and otherwise softens/rots very quickly on the vine.  

Cherokee Purple:  lived up to high expectations:  good yield, great fruit & flavor.  Rounder than BFT.  Plant again!

Flamme:  still did well , nice yield.  

Green Zebra:   Nice yield but I didn't get to many of them in time due to vacation, and the plant location (the ones in the back got less live).  Still a good one.

Hawaiian currant :  still a great currant.   Super prolific.   Only need 1 or 2 plants.

Indigo Rose:  hardly harvested any, though they made lots;  too overgrown in the back there,  but it accomplished my goal for cross-pollination attempts.

Kellogs Breakfast:  did pretty well and I like these big yellow fruit.

Mortgage lifter :   As widely regarded, this was prolific, grew well and had great fruit.  Tasty.  Plant again for sure.

Orange Slicer:  did well, was prolific, good tomato.    Just barely darker orangey than KB.   

Pink ping pong:   I don't recall seeing these at all (1 plant , planted late) but the location in the back row was pretty overgrown with weeds.

Red pear:  my kid seemed to like these last year so I planted this again.   But despite fantastic yield,  the fruit was very susceptible to disease, bugs and spoiling, so I didn't pick many.   Won't plant it next year.

Super sauce:   I liked these a lot.  Got some fruit up to ~1 pound.   Need to support these better to keep the gravy trusses off the ground!!

Saving seeds / closing down the garden

The tomato harvesting is all bit done now.    Only picked about ten or so today, with the exception of Hawaiian Currant which is still going well.  Not bad for one plant! Once it starts this variety keeps continuously growing and producing .  They are tiny but sweet and my daughter still loves them.

I saved seeds from the single crossed fruit that survived (IR x CP).  Seeds+pulp from the IR fruit were squished out into a small glass,  a little water was added, and let sit ~3 days.  Swished around once or twice during this time. Then strained out the seeds which were largely free of the pulpy jelly after the ~3 days fermenting. (It stank).   Then , put seeds on a piece of wax paper to dry thoroughly.

I started taking it down today, starting with the first row. ( note mulch tarp mostly pulled up just before I took the poles down.).

Winding down

Late July was the peak harvest.   Now it's slowed down although I made about 2 quarts more purée the other day.

Only 1 of my cross pollinated fruits survived.  One other was lost when my spouse discarded it by accident; forgiveness is key to a good marriage.  I am now saving seeds from the lone survivor IR x CP fruit.  IR don't have tons of seeds though.   

Made some very good salsa with a store bought mix, several tomato types and tomatillos.

Jars....!

Canning progress 8/13/14

Yesterday I had my largest batch of pasta sauce yet - 7 full quarts, enough to fill my canner.   This was made from a big batch of red tomatoes - enough to fill my sink (I'll post photos later).   The tomatoes were mainly Super Sauce, with some Mortgage Lifter and Airyleafs.  The Super Sauce were really great.  A few came close to 16 oz. - really huge plum shaped, red fruits.      

In total I have about 25 quarts canned so far, and I believe we are just past the biggest harvesting time.  
I noted that the Green Zebras and Indigo Rose were the last to ripen.  However I think they went in the ground last, so there you go.

For the canned quarts I have the following items.   The pasta sauces are all basically made with homegrown basil, garlic, salt, sugar, maybe onion, oregano, and maybe a bit of "italian seasoning" and a sprinkle of red pepper (not too much).

•A few jars of "orange sauce" made from yellow tomatoes (Kbs , Orange Slicers and a few Flammes). From blanched/peeled/pureed/filtered tomatoes.  Lotsa basil, which after cooking seemed to darken the yellow sauce to an orange-red color (still much more orange then normal pasta sauce).
•A few jars initially of "dark red" sauce, mainly BFT + Cherokee Purples + Mortage Lifters, and some Costolutos. From blanched/peeled/pureed/filtered tomatoes.
•A few more jars of red sauce, mainly from MLs.  This time I did not blanch and peel them - just pureed them with the skins on, after cutting out the cores and bad parts of course.  I decided it was too much time and work to do all the blanching and peeling.
•The 7 jars noted above of red sauce from SS, ML and Airyleafs.  For this batch I pureed what I estimate to be ~10-12 quarts of liquid tomato puree to begin with (after filtering out seeds and pulp with a colander).  This was boiled down to the 7 quarts, then I enlisted the help of a neighbor who let the sauce simmer with the garlic, basil etc. all day long till I could can it that evening.  I was really happy how that went - especially when the final volume was almost exactly 7 quarts, perfectly filling the canner - couldn't have planned it better if I tried.
• And, a few jars of blanched and peeled, whole/halved/ quartered tomatoes.  2 quarts of black cherry tomatoes, which is nice because it's a bit different.  Several jars of the yellow tomatoes.  Here I started to notice some jars had a bunch of water (like ~1/3 the jar volume, with floating tomatoes on top) separating in the jars after canning.   Those are nicely yellow.
• The weirdest jar was made from pureed Costolutos    After initially being dissapointed with the first few of these tomatoes, due to a fair number with end rot,  I warmed up to them as more good ones started coming in: they are the deepest red of all the varieties I've had, and with the ribbing they just look really fantastic on the plate.  So the puree from these is a really great red color.  After canning one quart of puree, it separated out to have a floating layer of solids, a watery layer and a sunken layer of solids.   Weird, but eventually when cooked and reduced it should make a fine base for a single small pot of sauce.

Pics of recent harvest 7/18-7/20/14.

Pics of recent harvest 7/18-7/20/14.

Harvest time!

Here we go.   Friday evening I picked an awful lot. A few dozen Cherokee purple and Black from Tulas (which I can't tell apart),  plus orange slicer and KBs, some pasters.  Lots of black cherry - prolific!    Flamme, MLs too.   Green zebras not quite ripe .

Made 2 quarts of CP/BFT puree 7/13.   2 quarts yellow purée 7/19.  Then,   3.5 quarts purée from BFT/CP/mortgage lifter/pasters, which I simmered to reduce to 2 quarts, then made sauce with garlic and homegrown basil, salt,oregano.   On 7/20.

7/4/14 update

Happy 4th of July.  We picked a few ripe tomatoes today.  Just a few so far .  Here's a good BFT.  There was another enormous one that had a big bite taken out by a bird or squirrel but it was still huge.   A few other ripe ones had some end rot or were on the ground & gross.  However I think the twine setup is doing a decent job keeping things mostly off the ground.

   I checked the pollination attempts.  One or two fell off.  The BFT ovule looks the same.  A couple of the IRs are still intact and look like they are slightly swelling, so maybe some success there.

First cross attempts

Examples of very different pistil morphologies:  BFT (Black from Tula) is short and stubby.  Note lobate ovule.  IR (Indigo Rose) is long and thin. These are after fertilization attempts. (maybe those are specks of pollen on the ends?)  Photos taken with iPhone 4s with macro lens.

6/29/14 update

Good rain every few days lately so there's been no need to water yet. I picked a small flamme and one HC this week;   a few others are turning.   Won't be long now.   Today I forgot to bring the twine, but instead I did 5 cross attempts. Collected pollen on cut wedges of black paper plates - that worked ok for collecting.  I am pretty good now at talking apart the flowers by hand without damaging the pistil - 5 for 5 today.  So I did the following. All are recorded in format female x male.  1 & 2: IR X BFT.  not really sure if I got BFT pollen or just tiny dust? 3&4: IR X CP.  here I know I got a good pollen shake from CP.  5. BFT x IR, good pollen.  Not using bags or anything to cover the pistils as I think they are more trouble than they are worth .  

6/22/14 Update: almost harvest time

Another Sunday trip to the garden.  It's all growing well mostly- lots of tomatoes on the way.  And, the first fruit coloring up (a Flamme).  I weeded, and put up twine now up to my belly on rows 1-4.   I was going to stake row 5 - where mainly indigo rose plants are flopping around - but I forgot my stepstool and couldn't pound in the 8 foot stakes!! Maybe next time.

Generally, the Florida weave is keeping the rows 1-4 open and workable, and the plants are growing well - so far so good.

June 15 Update

Happy Fathers' Day...an enjoyable morning spent with more staking & twining.   Got 4 rows staked now.  Weeds under control. Lots of green fruit set.   

June 7/8 update

Yesterday & today I spent another 2 hrs each day: finally weeded the last 2 rows - really, it was more like hacking down waist high weeds with a grass blade tool.  Then I got weed control mat on the last of the 6 rows.  Florida weave poles and string are now up on rows 2 & 3.  I still need to string up rows 4 & 5.  Feeling like I am closer to a maintenance phase rather than "preparation".

  As for carrots in row 6, a few are up but the weeds really overshadowed them. If I want to sow more I will have to really re-till that row I think.

  Fruit set is underway on several plants.

Summer gets under way

Today I got in a good 2+ hours of morning work at the comm garden.  Before I called it quits I weeded 4 rows and got weed mat down on 3 of them. Plus, I got the first row trellised with Florida weave.  The poles are 8ft "2x1" wood poles/lumber from home depot; about a buck each. These are pretty much the cheapest 8 ft pole you can get.   I trimmed one end to sharpen it a bit for driving, then marked each 10 inches and put in wood screws for twine tying.   I tried to get each stake in ~10 inches deep.  Only got twine up to the first 2 levels yet.  I hope these poles are in deep enough to stay up...

I still haven't really weeded row 6 at all, and row 5 just around the tomatoes a bit.  It's just a lot to weed at once.  But at least things are starting to get under control. Also I found some potato beetle larvae on a few plants, which I picked off.  Pics:  before & after;  first fruit set.  (BFT).  

Tomato water wilt?

This seems to be water wilt - wilting from the top down due to waterlogged roots.  Need to improve drainage next year and/or do more "raised" plants, e.g raised rows.  Fortunately the community garden is already raised rows thanks to the way it was plowed.

Post planning / Be a tomato supporter

For supporting the many plants, I am planning on buying 8 ft. 2x2 poles which I can get reasonably cheap at Home Depot, then using twine to do the Florida weave thing.   5 rows: 25 ft; poles each 4ft =5 x 6 = 30 poles;  figure 5 rows x 25 ft x 2 times across each row & back again x say, 6 levels of twine = 1,500 feet of twine.  Whoa.

TIming / home garden

Since I got the plants in the ground about 2 weeks later than last year, the growth is slightly behind vs 2013.    My most important lesson has been to make sure the seedlings are firmly established & hardened before transplanting.  The ones that I sowed last indoors were IR and CG, and they had about 50% or worse survival - too small. The rest had like 90% survival.

The backyard plot has Red Pear, Hawaiian Currant, Cherokee Purple, Black Cherry, cukes and a couple of basil plants.  And I have one pot full of sports I saved from the garden - probably black cherry or HC.  I will put these in a big patio pot.

Weeding

Wow - 2 weeks hiatus and the weeds are exploding in the community garden.  Sooooo, it will take a huge amount of manual labor to weed if I don't put down some static weed control.   (Before & after images below...about 1 hour of work and didn't finish it all.)  Thus I am ordering more pro weed mat.   Now I see the wisdom of putting that stuff down basically all over.  But it's a lot of mat to order, since the good stuff is about $27 per 3x50 feet.  That's enough to block 2x25' rows.  6 total rows to worry about in the 25' square.

The basil plants that I started from seed are barely growing; slightly bigger in the home garden.   A few carrots have emerged in the comm garden but will take care to separate from fast growing weeds.

The good news is that most of the tomatoes are doing OK and growing... The first flowers are emerging.

Mothers' day update 2014

Yesterday and today I did weeding and watering at the big garden.  Learning more stuff:  first,  the IRs and CGs did not do so well after transplanting.  They were smaller because they were sown later, and I think they could have used some more time to establish themselves before transplanting. so about half of the IRs/CGs died, and those that are alive are scrawny.  Next year allow to establish in 5 in pots, another week, outside with sun, before transplanting.  But most of the other plants survived and are doing okay.

May has begun...All plants now in the ground.

So I finally got everything planted in the community garden plot, between last weekend and today.  It's a bit over the top in terms of numbers of plants, but I am guessing the per-plant yield will be lower than in my home garden.  

At home I have 2 HC, 2 RP, 2 CP, 2 BC. Plus cukes, carrots and basil.
At the community garden: about 65-70 plants plus 2 basil and some carrots. !
The totals per variety are:
1 FL, 1 HC, 1 PPP, 2 RP, 4 BC;  3 CP., 6 BFT; 3 AL, 7 SS, 5 CG; 8 ML, 4 BB; 4 KB, 6 OS; 3 GZ. 11 IR
Some of the CP I planted on the first day did not survive.  They were too dry.    I took care after that to moisten the pots thoroughly before planting.   We got a lot of rain last week so soil conditions are better now.
Here's the arragement by row in the community garden:
One. FL. RP. RP. CP. CP. CP. PFT. HC. BFT. BFT. CG. CG. BC. BC. BC.

Two. KB. KB. KB. OS. OS. OS. OS. OS. OS. KB. CG. CG. CG. BC.

Three PFT. PFT. PFT. AL. AL. AL. ML.x 8.

four. BB. BB. BB. BB. SSX7. GZ. GZ. GZ.

Five. Basil. Basil. PPP. IR X 11.

Six. Carrots half row.

All seedlings finally moved to 4 inch pots... intro to the community garden

I mixed good quality potting soil with either about 1/4 peat moss or germinating soil for repotting.   As of today they are all in 4 inch pots.

For the 2nd round attempts at germinating I used good quality seed germinating soil - and got nearly 100% germination.  What was even more striking to me was that the plants were more vigorous too.

Last saturday I put about 8 plants into my plot in a local community garden.   These were mostly Cherokee Purple and a few others.  However the watering supply wasn't hooked up yet, so  I hope they survived the next few days till rain came.  The soil seemed moist below the surface so here's hoping they are OK.

Big rock

Well after some more digging I concluded the rock was a piece of limestone at least 2-3 feet across, of unknown depth.  Too big to remove without a tremendous effort. I buried it about 10 inches deep and decided to plant cucumbers on top.

My garden rocks

I was putting down more topsoil+black kow+ peat moss the other day, so I was diggin' and mixin', and went just a few inches deeper then last year.  Then I found a limestone boulder.  Or bedrock...

More sowing

Over the last few days I planted fresh Indigo Rose seeds, and new Costoluto Genovese seeds (an Italian red ribbed variety that I hope does better than Zapotec did).  And, some basil.

Seedlings

So now, I have germination from all except indigo rose for which the few sprouts died.  I can't believe how terrible the miracle gro potting mix was for germination.  "Mix" is not soil - it's  more like sticks and wood chips with a smidge of dirt.  Plus it quickly led to an infestation of tiny black flies called mildew flies.  They are harmless, just annoying.

More germination

From the new Burpee starter.  Airyleaf, CP, a couple others are emerging as of today ~7 days after sowing.  Since the Burpee planter is kinda of raised off the heat mat, the mat may not be helping much, but it's encouraging.

Crummy germination

Well I mistakenly used ordinary potting mix for seeds on march 1.  1. It's full of sticks.  2. It gets waterlogged and doesn't drain well.  So only about 4 varieties had any germination.   On March 11 I replanted almost all varieties in a Burpee tray with better substrate - like coconut fiber/ peat moss stuff.  And better system for keeping moist but not too wet.  

March 8 2014

7 days after sowing indoors:  I put 1 seed per cup, at least 6 per variety; even with heat pad several varieties don't have sprouts yet.  Perhaps I need to reseed to be sure.  Last year I put 2 seeds per cup and reseeded some.  However it can take up to 2 weeks for germination especially without heat.

2014 has begun

This year I plan to have a more limited set of tomatoes in the home garden, while renting a plot at a local farm for more varieties.  On March 1 I started seeds indoors. Here's the list.  6 seeds each: Airyleaf, Better Bush ( hybrid), Black from Tula,  Green Zebra, Hawaiian Currant, Kellogg's Breakfast, Mortgage Lifter, Orange Slicer (hybrid), Pink Pong Pong, Red Pear, SuperSauce (hybrid).  8 each: Black Cherry, Flamme, Cherokee Purple; 12 of Indigo Rose. Also, extra HC and RP for Josh's school, for fun.  

As of March 5 some sprouts have emerged over the heat pad.