First Tomato of 2012 and Other Vegetable News

One of the happiest days of the year has arrived--the first tomato has ripened in my garden!

It is a Sakharnyi Pudovichok variety that I grew from seed obtained through Tatiana's Tomatobase this spring. She indicates that it is a "Russian commercial variety introduced in 2006 by Russian commercial vendor 'Sibirskiy Sad'."

I probably should have picked it yesterday, as it's a little soft today, with a few holes where some critters took samples.

At 256 grams, it is a BIG tomato.


































Not to be outdone, 2011's first tomato of the year, a Mortgage Lifter, grown in a pot at the side of the house, is pulling in a close second. I picked it today so it wouldn't get "sampled" but I probably won't slice it until tomorrow.

It's smaller, 149 grams, but still a good size for a container grown plant. And I know from last year that it will have excellent flavour.

This was the first tomato plant I've ever grown from seeds that I saved myself (as opposed to buying the seeds from someone else.)




















The other 14 tomato plants (yes, I did get carried away) are growing like weeds.

Most of them are at least 6' tall now, and some I'm trying to train to grow horizontally (just so I can spend less time on a ladder.)

I mostly grow indeterminate heirloom tomatoes. Indeterminate means that they keep growing and producing tomatoes right up until frost. Determinate tomatoes grow, set a big batch of fruit, and then stop. I like indeterminate because a) I get a kick out of growing oversize plants and b) I like to have fresh tomatoes for as long as possible. If I were interested in canning them I would prefer determinate tomatoes so I would be able to do them all up at once.

The heirloom tomatoes tend to grow bigger than the modern hybrids as well, because the modern hybrids have been bred to grow for ease of commercial production--fields full of 8' tall plants would be unwieldy on a commercial scale.

In other vegetable news, the zucchini are having a rough time. One zucchini plant should be more than enough for all our needs, but I put in three plants because I know I have a problem with striped cucumber beetle (an evil, disease carrying creature.)  Sure enough, two of the plants are on their last legs already, after having produced one mature zucchini each. Hopefully number three will remain resistant long enough for us to have a few nice stirfries...

Zucchini #3 on the left in the top picture and front and centre in the bottom picture. Zucchini #2 on the right, after succumbing to the diseases spread by the evil Striped Cucumber Beetle.

In happier news, the garlic harvest has cured and it's pretty darn fantastic.

Hopefully this will last us for most of the winter. I'll use several heads from this as "seed" in October.

And here are a few shots of the front garden (these don't go with the title of this post, but if I don't put them up now it will suddenly be next weekend before I get to it, and it will all look different.)

The plantings in containers are really coming into their own now. Coleus 'wasabi' (the lime leaves you see in the planter) grows like it's on steroids. It was a new introduction for this year (I first saw it at the Garden Making magazine booth at Canada Blooms) and it's certainly a plant that you gives you your money's worth. I've pinched it back several times to keep it from overwhelming the rest of the garden.

Another new plant for me this season was the "potunia" petunia you see in this picture (the peach/orange flower hanging over the left edge of the pot.) The tag said it would produce mounds of blooms on a compact plant, with no need for deadheading--and it's delivered! I was so impressed with how it started off the season that I purchased 3 more (in purple and red) for the planter on the side of the house. A definite improvement on the old cultivars that would get leggy and require constant deadheading.

The liatris (the purple flower spikes) has been very happy this year. I've had to create a set of stick braces to keep it from reaching out and grabbing passing pedestrians. The bees love it.

There's a lot going on in the front garden...

While the back, home to vegetables in the sunny parts, and more cool foliage plants in the shady parts, is a bit calmer.

The Trouble with Tomatoes

I have a problem with growing tomatoes from seed.

It's hard to admit it, but I do...

The problem is that I keep starting them too early. 

Today is April 30th and they're already three times the size of what you'll find for sale in a nursery on the May 24th weekend (about when they can/should go out here.)

Last year was my first year of growing my own tomato plants from seed and yes, I was so excited I just couldn't wait. I started them on March 12th, the weekend before Canada Blooms. They were HUGE long before I could put them outside. There were more seedlings than I had space for. Potting in the next size pot up had to happen not once, but twice. When I moved them out to the cold frame they instantly filled it. And then some.

However, I had great tomatoes. The first one was in July and they just kept on coming.

But this year I vowed I would do better. No seed planting until after Canada Blooms. And Canada Blooms was 5 days longer this year than last year! Surely this would be a sufficient delay.

March 25th was bright and warm and clear. Out came the tomato seeds...

6 different varieties (yes, six. I couldn't help myself.) Five from Tatiana's Tomatobase (an absolutely  fantastic source of heirloom tomato seeds and information that I had the good fortune to stumble upon) and then my own saved seeds from last year's "Mortgage Lifter" tomatoes.


  
Into the trays they went, two seeds in each cell. Watered, covered with a plastic dome, onto a heating mat, and into the toasty boiler room.

Of course, within a few days, for every 10 seeds I planted at least 9 germinated.





But I was ruthless! As soon as they were big enough to shed their seed coats I snipped off one from each pair (I've read this is less disruptive than pulling out the ones you don't want.)

And now...

 

Now it's April 30th and I have blossoms already! This variety is Mennonite Orange.

All the plants are really robust...

I hope I'll be able to move them into the cold frame this weekend.

In case you're wondering about the orange snow fencing you see above and here in the full reveal of my "grow op"...

It's to keep out the furry members of our household...

Who me?

It's not pretty but it works. 

So far.

And yes, that is a fan blowing on the seedlings. I do this for half an hour or so a day (again, something I read) to strengthen them. If I don't have the time to turn the fan on I tap each of the plant stems with my fingernail a couple times (this is also supposed to strengthen them.) 

I told a gardening friend of mine that I did this and he looked at me like I was really crazy. And maybe I am when it comes to gardening.

But I'll have sturdy tomato plants with beautiful tomatoes on them...

...and next year I'll start my seedlings two weeks later. April 8, 2013 is now circled on the calendar!

Book Review: The Heirloom Tomato

The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table

Amy Goldman, 2008

I’ve been on a bit of a heirloom tomato kick the last couple years. If you pick up The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table and take a look at how beautiful they are, you might understand how I became smitten. There are dozens of tomatoes pictured, all plumply ripe, and visibly delicious (if that’s possible. I think it is. Pass the salt shaker and fresh basil please!) 

I stumbled on this book by accident. Even though this was an amazingly mild winter, the lack of growing things started to get to me, as usual, in January. To take the edge off I stopped at the garden center one day on my way home from work, to peruse their selection of seeds. They had an excellent selection of many flowers and vegetables, but there weren’t any “interesting” tomatoes (i.e. heirloom varieties that I wanted to grow). I thought about waiting until Canada Blooms, as there are always several seed vendors there, including those selling unusual heirloom vegetables. But what if they weren’t coming this year? After dinner I went on the internet to have a look at this year’s Canada Blooms vendors.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it I had stumbled on the mother of all heirloom tomato seed websites, Tatianas Tomatobase. 593 varieties of heirloom tomato seeds were available!  And yes, I went through the website and looked at every last one. Amazingly, the site has photos (at various stages of growth and development) for each variety, along with details on the plant’s history, growth habit, etc. This is the work of a genius or a well organized tomato addict, possibly both. Even better, the grower is in Canada, the seeds were $2.50 a package, and the shipping costs were extremely low. I was quite proud of myself for only ordering 5 packets (which arrived in less than a week!)

While I was poking around on Tatianas Tomatobase I followed some links and discovered www.tomatoville.com which bills itself as “the world's largest online community of tomato growers.”  There are countless forums and articles on, of course, tomatoes. If you have a tomato-growing question, this is the website for you.

Anyhow, somewhere on Tatiana’s website she listed The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table as a good resource, so I picked it up at the Toronto Public Library. As mentioned, there are many beautiful photos of tomatoes, and lots of detailed information on quite a few varieties. But not nearly as many varieties as you’ll find on the tomato website. However, if you like to browse through a lovely book instead of clicking a mouse, this is a good way to get your information. The back quarter of the book is devoted to recipes, the front eight to growing and seed saving.

As I’m not one to read the complete details of every plant described (but instead leaf through, look at the pretty pictures, and delve into the full details only of varieties that looked especially interesting) I found it a pretty quick read.

If you’re interested in a book that’s more of a tomato story than a reference, I highly recommend Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark, 2008.  If you’ve ever grown a tomato, you’ll enjoy this book.