Garden Hacks

At the beginning of the summer when I realized I had NO TIME for my garden, I thought, I’ll figure out some garden hacks and then I’ll blog about them. Sadly, not all my hacks worked, but there is still potential and the information is worth sharing, so here we go….

Let’s start with the biggest flop with the potential to be the biggest success. I do think this one is a keeper, but it needs some modifications and a lot more attention.

Gutter Step Garden

Nick built this lovely idea for me last year to house the strawberries. We had to relocate them so we could tear out the garden that was their home of the past twelve years and replace it with an expanded driveway. They were happy in the gutters and looked beautiful all summer and fall.

The garden is basically four gutters with caps on both ends mounted on a set of stair stringers and then given a frame to add stability. We didn’t poke holes for drainage because the caps were not a good seal and they leaked beautifully. Also, the gutter step garden is on a slight slant, so the water naturally drained off one end.

Lucky for me, I didn’t put all my strawberries in the gutter garden. I sagely planted half of them in an inground garden. Why am I lucky you ask? Remember last winter? The seven-month-long bitter, miserable slog through below freezing temperatures, daily record breaks, and endless snow? Why yes, that winter. By spring my strawberries in the gutter garden were dead beyond dead.

The Best Taste of Summer

I had other plans for this week’s post, but then this past weekend I had Tomato Pie. Wow. Tomato Pie is quite possibly the best taste of summer. There is an adorable little town just north east of here called, Lititz. I’m not the only person who likes this town as it was voted the“Coolest Small Town in America” this year by BudgetTravel.com. Visiting Lititz is always fun, but the only place I ever eat lunch when I’m there is The Tomato Pie Café. If you’ve ever had their tomato pie you understand why they named an entire restaurant after it.

I spent most of Labor Day weekend laboring over my tomatoes. Canning nearly 50 jars of sauce and salsa. I was dreaming about tomatoes and picking tomato seeds off of every surface in my kitchen and on my person by the time it was over. And yet, there still sat a carton of tomatoes on my porch and plenty more ripening on the vines that will not die (despite being besieged by the late blight!). I thought of Lititz and the café and tomato pie. I deserved tomato pie after my weekend of tomatodom. But there was no time to drive to Lititz, besides company was coming for dinner.

Luckily, I’d recently seen an obscene recipe for Tomato Pie on one of my favorite blogs (A Garden for the House). I printed out the recipe and ascertained that I had all the ingredients necessary. I even had a few more tomato eaters coming for dinner that would appreciate my efforts. My children were horrified at the idea of Tomato Pie. I asked them what they thought pizza was and they scowled and said, “Not tomato pie!” For once they could agree on something.

The Blight Battle Begins

The battle has begun.

The battle to avoid the Tomato Blight of the Summer of 2013.

I did everything I could to avoid it. My babes were raised on homemade seed starter containing lots of organic compost. They grew strong and healthy in our basement under the lights, transitioned to the porch for hardening off and were planted after danger of frost in our best vegetable bed where no tomatoes had been grown in over three years. They were mulched heavily in clean straw and on cold nights were blanketed in buckets.

I dutifully snipped off all the branches that neared the ground. We gave each plant its own cage to protect it from flying feet chasing baseballs and to later support them as they grew.

We watered only when necessary, using a soaker setting and being careful not to splash the leaves.

And yet….

Tomato Wisdom

I don’t know about your house, but it is high tomato season at my house. We are virtually drowning in the sensous rosy red fruit (although some of our heirloom varieties are pink, yellow, orange, and my favorite – rainbow). So far, I've canned 27 pints of salsa, 24 quarts of tomato sauce, 18 pints of diced tomatoes, and 16 pints of pizza sauce. And still the tomatoes ripen. There’s no time to write while the sun is shining, so here’s five little nuggets of wisdom I’ve gleaned from the tomatoes this year:

 

1. You don’t have to do things the way everyone else does it. You don’t have to peel the tomatoes. If you’re making puree or pizza sauce, or even tomato sauce, just clean them super well, core and seed them, and run them through the food processor until they are liquefied. Skipping all that peeling saves endless time.
2. You don’t have to stick to your plan. Use up the most ripe tomatoes first. Let go of your best laid plans and use up the over-ripe mortgage lifters first if the Amish paste tomatoes are still firm. Once a couple tomatoes start to rot in your containers, the fruit flies and ungodly stench descend. Get to work.
3. Sometimes it’s best to put off until tomorrow what you really can’t do today.  If you don’t have time and you are overrun with tomatoes, clean them really well and put them in plastic bags in your freezer. If they're destined to be sauce anyway, freezing them won’t hurt –promise. You can can at Christmas if you want. Or use them as you need them, provided you have the space to store them in the freezer. Our cow arrived a few weeks ago, so all the space in our freezer is spoken for.
4. Cheating is permitted when there’s nothing at stake except your sanity. You can stretch out your work time by refrigerating your tomatoes. We’ve had them wait two weeks on us with very little loss by picking and putting them directly in the fridge.
5. Even when you’re busy, it’s important to feed your children well. Plant cherry tomatoes and when your kids are hungry for a snack, send them to eat directly off the plant – saves time, dishes, and money!

Using the deep fryer base to can outside. Water heats faster and it keeps the heat out of the kitchen.

Fresh Tomato Sauce for the Lazy Cook

I have always believed that the way to make real tomato sauce is to slowly cook fresh peeled tomatoes, sautéed peppers and onions, plus fresh minced herbs, while channeling an Italian grandmother and sipping a glass of red wine. This past week I discovered there’s a much simpler, lazier way.

Summer has been trolling along in a very unproductive way for me. I’ve barely kept up with the weeds, my running mileage is way down on account of the fact that I hate running when it’s hot and humid (and it’s been six-bajillion degrees and balmy for two months now), and you’ve probably noticed I’ve been neglecting my blogs a bit. No excuses really, just enjoying my kids, my family, my friends, and my air-conditioning. 

So, back to my discovery. In a moment of guilt, I decided that I needed to get my act together and plan some menus so that our dinners would no longer be a mad scramble or a everyone-fend-for-yourself affair as has been most of our meals this summer. I planned pasta with fresh spaghetti sauce for Thursday because our tomatoes are just starting to ripen. Great idea, problem was that I got distracted by a writing deadline, laundry caught on the line in a sudden thunderstorm, and my elderly dog who was struggling more than usual. These were all things that honestly necessitated my attention.  

It was 5:30 when I had time to get dinner going, and we had to be out the door for a kid-activity by 6:30. No time for fresh sauce. Or was there? 

I picked six beautiful tomatoes and decided I didn’t have time to peel them, so I simply cored and seeded them and threw them in the food processor. I processed the tomatoes until no more skins were evident (children are opposed to skins on most fruits and veggies).

I pulled out an onion and pepper and ran to the barn for some garlic cloves that I’d left to drying along with my plans to braid them by their green stalks like I saw on a farm visit last season. (It’s too late now, I discovered as the green stalks are brown and crispy as fallen twigs, alas, maybe next year).  

There wasn’t time to sauté the veggies, so I threw all of them in the food processor along with a handful of fresh basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, sage, and a tiny bit of tarragon. I processed this mess until it was an unrecognizable brownish mass that looked a bit like dog barf. (see pic) I suppose I could have chopped them finely, but that would require a longer cook time and my kids tend to turn their noses up at recognizable vegetables. 

I threw the red and brown purees in a pot on the stove with some salt, pepper, and a can of tomato paste (for thickening) and ten minutes later I had delicious fresh sauce! Really it was beyond yum. The only complaint at dinner came from my oldest who said the sauce was too sweet! Can’t believe I’ve wasted so many hours of my life peeling tomatoes and cooking down my pasta sauce! I think all those Italian grandmas just wanted an excuse to hang out in the kitchen.

I plan to experiment next time by adding some red wine, more garlic, and maybe one of my flavored olive or grapeseed oils. Now that I know it isn’t an all afternoon commitment, I’ll be brewing up fresh sauce on a regular basis.

Seedling Season

It’s time to buy seedlings. I try to grow most of my seedlings from seed, but as I’ve written it’s been an especially trying year for me. So I’ll be heading out to nab a few baby plants for my garden in the next few weeks. I aim to plant tomatoes/peppers around Mother’s Day. I know some people plant much earlier, but I can’t deal with the late night panic when an unexpected frost descends. I’m fundamentally a lazy gardener and rounding up row covers is just too much work.

As you head out to pick your seedlings, here are a few tips:

1. Look for the healthiest plant possible. Rich, green color and stocky stems are always a good sign. Avoid the plants with yellow leaves, this means they’ve been subjected to a dry spell or sub-par nutrients. You don’t want the tallest plant either, leggy plants might have been looking for more light or been hopped up on too much fertilizer.
2. Avoid plants that have obvious insect or fungal damage – chewed on leaves, funny spots. You don’t want to bring home the blight!
3. Don’t buy from places that have miniature plants – meaning you don’t want a teeny-tiny plant with big flowers or fruit already starting. It’s not natural for them to be flowering so soon and could mean they’ve been artificially induced to do this (to make them more attractive) or they’ve been stressed out by too little water and sent out their fruit early.
4. Buy the largest plant you can – not by plant size, but by root size. The plants in the bigger pots most likely have bigger root development and won’t have as much ground to make up when you plug them in. Those six packs of bitty little peppers for a buck-fifty are cheap for a reason. They’ll be way behind your other plants and may never catch up.

 Plan to make your purchases when there is time to plant. I tend to buy on whim and have several containers of plants waiting to be planted sitting on my porch on any given week. That’s not a good way to operate. The sooner you get them in the ground, the better chance they have.

The best day to plant is a cloudy day, or at least in the evening to avoid shocking your babies with the bright, blistering sun. And be sure to water well for the first few weeks to help them establish themselves and sink their roots down deep so they can survive.

Dig a hole big enough to sink your seedling up to its neck. It should be a few inches deeper in the ground than it was in the pot. Even if you cover a few leaves, you’ll just be giving it stronger roots. If you pull your new plant out of it’s container and the roots are in a tight, tight knot, wiggle them loose, or even break off some if necessary, so that you can spread the roots out in the hole.

I like to work a little compost in to the soil in the bottom of my hole. This gives the new plant a little fertilizer to get it going. And when I inevitably forget to water it, it still has something to keep it going.

Be sure to mark your seedlings well. You may think you’ll remember what type of plant you put where, but you won’t. Trust me on this. It also keeps helpful children from pulling out your new plant in their efforts to help you weed. Have fun with labeling, too. You don’t have to write exactly what’s on the plant label. You can call the plants anything you want!

Buying seedlings always feels like cheating to me. But the new plants I bring home are typically more exotic and exciting than what I’ve got growing under my lights and that makes it fun. Every year I try to pick out something I’ve never grown before – eucalyptus, peanuts, and last year we planted a kiwi fruit (it survived the winter – imagine!). Happy shopping!

My Black Thumb

Just to be sure you aren't under the illusion that my thumb is greener than the next person, I’d like to confess the gardening disasters that have already befallen me (or it might be more appropriate to say the gardening disasters I have already created) this spring. This growing season is shaping up to be my worst ever, unless you include the year I had a sick newborn and planted only potatoes because they would require nothing of me.

The first disaster started back in the fall in our brand new terrace garden. We filled the hillside bed with dirt harvested from our paddock – rich with ten years worth of natural fertilizer.

And then I planted a cover crop of rye grass. The plan (as I understood it from skimming an Organic Gardening article), was that the grass would run its course and die out by spring and then we would knock it down to serve as a natural mulch for our tomatoes. Brilliant! No more purchased mulch, plastic or otherwise, since the last two seasons we’ve gotten the early blight and the late blight. This was to be the year of the tomatoes!

 The grass grew beautifully all winter. The problem is that the northeast has experienced the warmest winter on record (at least my records) and that grass is still growing and growing and is so thick and tall that the kids hide in it for Capture the Flag. Now what? So much for my grand plan.

There is a second part to the tomato disaster. This year I made my own growing medium. I blogged about the beautiful mix I concocted. I started eight different varieties of tomatoes, plus four sweet peppers and four hot peppers in the growing mix.

Wow! The germination rate was through the roof! My growing mix was amazing – every single seed I planted sprouted, plus some appeared to have duplicated themselves because some of the pots had 8 seedlings fighting for light. I patted myself on the back and thinned my seedlings.

A few days later, I noticed there were even more seeds sprouting. The problem was, every single seed that was sprouting was a tomato. Even the peppers. Tomato seedlings have hairy stems – you can’t mistake them for anything but a tomato. How was it all my seeds were tomatoes?

When I checked the buckets of growing mix, yet to be used, there were hundreds of tomatoes sprouting there too. Obviously my compost was full of tomato seeds, and God knows what kind of tomatoes at that. Were they seeds from the organic cherry tomatoes I buy for my oldest to snack on all winter? Were they seeds from the first tomatoes we harvested last year, before we knew we had the blight and happily threw discarded tomato pulp in the compost? Or were they seeds that I had just planted? No way to know.

So here I am with plenty of tomato seedlings, only I’m terrified to plant them for fear of the blight, plus I have no earthly idea what kind of tomatoes they are.

And the disasters just keep coming…..

Since we were having trouble containing the chickens, I decided to sprout my peas before planting them. That bought us a few extra days to secure the chicken fence and clip every wing. The peas were slow to sprout and the day they were ready, I was leaving town for my little brother’s retirement celebration (I’m not that old! He’s an air force pilot who retired after 22 years).

With no time to plant, I thought I would stall them; I put them in the fridge to wait until I got back three days later. I did wonder if this might kill them, but I figured they were peas and the temperature wasn’t freezing so they would survive.

Wrong. Those lovely sprouted peas I planted promptly when I returned produced only 3 viable plants (out of probably 100 seeds). So today I replanted my snap and snow peas and berated myself the entire time.

And the fun continues…

Meanwhile, the lettuce I planted several weeks ago was still not appearing, same for the carrots, spinach, and onions. I figured this was mostly due to my negligent watering habits, but could also be blamed on the fact that the only rain we had in the past two weeks was a huge downpour the day after I planted all those tiny fragile seeds. For a week, I watered diligently. No dice, just a couple onion tips.

Perhaps they washed away. Perhaps they did. When I dug around to add more seeds, I found only a handful of lettuce plants getting started. Ugh. Replanted the lettuce and spinach this morning. The carrots are on their own. I never have good luck with them anyway and I’m going to assume the onion bulbs will get going once the gardener gets her act together and starts watering on a regular basis.

This would all be very depressing, except the great thing about gardening is that seeds are cheap. You can always try again tomorrow. In digging up the OG article that led me to plant the grass, I discovered that you can just knock down or mow the rye grass. I tried tromping it down, but it just bounced right back. I’m thinking we might have to use a scythe, that’ll be fun, won’t it honey?

And the tomatoes. I pulled out everything from eight of the starter pots and put fresh seeds in them, figuring all the volunteers who were going to volunteer had already done so. I’ll use my eight new plants as templates to decipher what is growing in all the other pots.

This is the goal. Someday.

I hope your gardening season is off to a better start than mine. I’ll let you know how the story ends.

NOTE: I'LL BE PRESENTING A WORKSHOP ENTITLED "CLEAN AND GREEN LIVING" AT THE MASON DIXON LIBRARY WEDNESDAY APRIL 18 AT 6:30 PM. WOULD LOVE TO SEE YOU THERE.

Top Ten Reasons We Can

I had a hot date with my hubby last night. It got pretty steamy and altogether messy. We canned tomatoes until the wee hours. It’s that time of year. Twenty pints of pizza sauce and nine quarts of tomato sauce. And still the tomatoes keep coming.

We’re taking a break and moving on to peaches today. Bought a huge bushel of seconds peaches ready and ripe. This weekend’s date will involve skinning the luscious beauties and squeezing the pits out of them before we cook them in to peachsauce (just like applesauce only peaches and no sugar!), peach Barbeque sauce, and maybe some peach jam or syrup. It will definitely get sticky.

Canning can be a solitary endeavor, but it’s much more fun with company and music (and some wine). Sometimes when I’m elbow deep in the mess I wonder why we do this. It would be so much easier to buy tomato sauce at the store. And even if the price of organic tomato sauce can be dear, I’m fairly sure my time is worth just as much.

Inspired by my son's excellent blog, How To Kill Your Characters, (It’s all manner of musings on Dungeons and Dragons on the surface, but underneath it’s pretty philosophical and just plain good writing. He puts me to shame.) which is filled with Top Ten Lists, I present:

The Top Ten Reasons why I can each summer:


1 Popping the lid off a jar of tomato sauce in the dead of winter returns summer if only for a meal. All the flavors of five different heirloom tomatoes in one jar is divine. No can from the store, no matter how exclusive and expensive the brand, can compare.


2 My youngest child considers homemade peachsauce such a special treat, he opts for it over all manner of junk food.


3 Instead of empty calories and chemicals in store bought pancake syrup, we slop on homemade blueberry syrup any time of year not just special occasions.


4 Once you grow accustomed to homemade applesauce it’s pretty much impossible to eat that mealy mush they sell at the grocery store.


5  I feel connected to my mother and grandmother and all the women before them as I “put up” healthy, homegrown food for my family.


6 I can’t stand to waste anything. And I can’t stick to one kind of tomato or cucumber. How else could I keep from throwing all the extras on the compost pile?


7 I like cherries, blueberries, and peaches too much to eat them only a few weeks a year and I can’t bring myself to buy (or pay the price for) produce shipped from the other side of the globe in the dead of winter.


8 It may consume my time in the summer, but it saves me time in shopping trips to the store the rest of the year. We always have sauces, fruits, veggies, and jams on hand year round.


9 I get incredible nerdy satisfaction from hearing the jar lids “pop”, writing the contents on the lids, and lining them up neatly on the shelf.


10 It’s one tiny step I can take toward living more self-sufficiently. If I had my way we’d live off the grid on the side of mountain, but thankfully (for my kids at least), I married a man who enjoys the marvels of modern conveniences. Although he makes a damn fine lumberjack, I must say.

I hope you’re inspired to get canning yourself! If you need some tips or ideas check out some previous posts

Canning foibles, canning basics, canning tomatoes, applesauce , more canning ideas

Or locate a copy of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving – it will tell you everything you need to can anything. Canning isn’t rocket science, I promise. You can do this!

Tomato, Tomatoh, Don't Call the Whole Thing Off!

Tomato, Tomahto, this year I was tempted to call the whole thing off. Our tomatoes were a disaster thanks to the Tomato blight. Each year I can over a hundred jars of diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, pizza sauce, and salsa, enough to last us the year. This year that ain’t happening. Depressing is what it is. Last week I bought 25 pounds of tomatoes from a local farmer and did put up 11 jars of salsa and some pizza sauce. The tomatoes weren’t heirloom or organic, not even close to it, but store bought salsa isn’t homemade tasting or even close to it. Same goes for pizza sauce. So I spent a morning deep in tomatoes and that reminded me that even if I’m not canning tomatoes this year, that doesn’t mean other people aren’t.

The easiest way to can tomatoes is to simply slip off the skins, quarter and seed them and can them. Takes no time at all. Removing tomato skins is simple. Heat a pan of boiling water and plunk your tomatoes in for a minute. Remove them and put them in ice cold water. Now the skins are easily removed. The Ball Jar Book recommends scoring the bottom of the tomato with a little X before you place them in the boiling water to make the skins slip right off.

Tomatoes have a few other issues when it comes to handling them. Use only stainless steel pans. The acid in tomatoes can react with other types (copper, brass, aluminum, or iron) and then they sometimes taste really funky. I just learned recently that I shouldn’t be using my big wooden spoon to stir them either because the wood can absorb flavors. This discovery led me to wonder what else I don’t know about cooking tomatoes.

Since I’m not actually canning many tomatoes this year, I had a few moments to read about canning tomatoes. I was excited to learn the reason why my sauce sometimes comes out too runny no matter how long I boil it. It has to do with the enzymes that are released when you crush tomatoes. I feel like a scientist just talking about enzymes. The only thing I really know about enzymes are they get going when something sits around at room temperature for awhile (like yogurt) and they can do good things. They’re the reason dry aged meat tastes so great.

When tomatoes are cut or crushed, a natural enzyme is activated which causes the solid and liquids to separate. So if you’re canning you want to begin heating your tomatoes the moment you begin cutting or crushing them. I was excited by this knowledge, so I tested it out on a small batch of pizza sauce made from the tomatoes I bought from a local farmer. I skinned them, seeded them and put them through my food processor in small batches and immediately tossed them in to the pan to begin cooking. I think there was still too much lag time, but my pizza sauce came out much thicker than usual. I can’t wait to figure out how this will play out with my spaghetti sauce next year. Hopefully I’ll retain this knowledge until next tomato season!

One more point of reference on tomatoes. Lemon juice is always something I debate with myself over. Add it or don’t add it. This year a friend who had plenty of tomatoes called me when she was knee-deep in canning them and we debated the lemon juice issue at length. I thought if I kept her on the phone long enough, she might offer me the tomatoes just to end the conversation. No dice. Anyway, the question is do you or do you not have to add lemon juice to your diced tomatoes when canning them in a hot bath canner. I know, I know, it would have kept you on the edge of your seat I’m sure. Most references do tell you to put lemon juice in the jar before you add the tomatoes to ensure that the acidity is high enough to keep the tomatoes stable in the jar. So it’s probably a good idea. Having never done this, I had to take the other point and say that many homegrown, heirloom tomatoes may have plenty of acid and do just fine on their own. I’ve never had a jar go bad (knock on wood) and I’ve never added the lemon juice. And then we consulted several texts and decided that since we don’t have a lab that can test the acidity of our tomatoes (and I’m not truly certain what the correct number would be anyway), we should err on the side of caution and go with the juice. So now I’m a little paranoid, and I will probably add the lemon juice next year.

Amazing that I learned so much about canning tomatoes this year without canning very many. Maybe there was a reason I got the blight. Maybe the powers that be knew I didn’t know enough and I certainly didn’t have the time to can a hundred jars this year. Live and learn. That’s what it’s all about.

Seed Saving Saves

Finally, I’m posting about seed-saving. I’ve meant to write about this for some time, especially since many of the seeds that you can save are probably long gone. Still, there’s lots left to save. Normally, I’m a big seed saver. It just seems so self-sufficient and Laura Ingalls-like. But this year with “the great tomato blight”, I’m feeling a little hesitant to save anything that might be contaminated. I’m leaning towards only saving flower seeds and avoiding anything that grew in the same garden as the tomatoes, but you probably aren’t facing this dilemma, so let me get right to the details of seed saving.

Seed saving is very simple, really. The most important thing to remember is to be sure your seeds are completely dry before you store them. If they aren’t they’ll mold and die quietly while you are certain they are tucked away safe in their beds ready to brighten your garden next spring. If you are a real seed saver you can save seeds from virtually any plant. I’m more of a basic seed saver and I save only the ones that are special to me or are incredibly easy to save.

Another critical piece of information: You can’t save seeds from hybrids or genetically engineered plants. Well you can, but if they’re hybrids they’ll be one or the other of their grandparents, but they won’t be what they came from. I’m sure that makes no sense, but think about it and maybe it will. Many of the engineered seeds just plain won’t grow. They’re designed that way so that you have to go buy new seeds from the seed companies each year. This is one of the criminal practices that put small farmers out of business. Even if the seeds would grow (and a few would), it’s illegal to save them because they are patented. If you plant your own seeds in a field next to a field planted with designer, patented seeds and they pollinate each other, you can’t save your seeds that year even if they were your own to start with – again, it’s illegal and farmers have been prosecuted for this. Big agri-business is as territorial as the mafia. So, buy heirloom seeds and start saving them to ensure their survival.

I would encourage you to enlist your children’s help on this endeavor. First of all, it’s a great living science lesson. Second of all, children love treasure hunts and that’s what this is. And third of all, anything that gets them interested in gardening is a good thing.

Here are some of the things you’ll need to get started: Clean bowls, clean newspaper, clean containers (preferably dark colored). That’s pretty much it. There is some fancier seed saving equipment, but for now you don’t need anything you don’t already have.

The basic steps of seed saving are thus:
1. Locate and gather the seeds
2. Clean the seeds if necessary.
3. Spread the seeds out to dry on newspaper.
4. Put the seeds in a sealed container and LABEL them. (Trust me you won’t remember what they are. You won’t. Please take my word for it. Even if the container is a really special tea canister.)
5. Store in a cool, dry, dark place. (I’ve used refrigerators, but a drawer in a cabinet in a dry basement with a dehumidifier is best)

When gathering seeds from flowering plants, wait a few weeks after flowering until the flower has faded and the petals begin to drop, that’s when they’re perfect for harvesting. When you locate the seeds, it’s sometimes easiest to gather the seed pods in paper bags and bring them back to your work space to actually loosen the seeds. Flower seeds will not need to be washed. You can simply spread the seeds out on a drying tray or newspaper and let them dry. Most seed saving instructions make a big to-do about getting rid of the chaf (unnecessary flower material that accompanies some seeds when you gather them), but I don’t worry too much about the chaf. If it’s easy to separate, I do, and if it isn’t, I dry it with the seeds. I then store it with the seeds and figure it’s just more compost when it’s time to plant.

For most edible plants (i.e. peppers, tomatoes, garden veggies of all sorts), you want the fruit to remain on the plant for a week or two past its prime. This is true for all of the veggies I’m going to mention except pumpkin and winter squash. When you are gathering the seeds from vegetable plants, you’ll want to put them in a bowl with water and allow the bad seeds and pulp and what-have-you to float to the top. Leave the bowl out for 2-4 days, but be sure to stir the bowl at least once a day to keep mold from forming. (I know this seems nasty, so don’t start a big seed saving project the day before you’re hosting a Ladies luncheon or birthday party for a 3-year-old.) Once the seeds are finished soaking scoop out the good seeds from the bottom of the bowl and spread them out to dry on paper. I know there’s an analogy about the good seeds and the bad seeds in there, but it’s not coming to me.

I’ll give you some simple directions for a few of the seeds that I’ve collected successfully in the past. I’d encourage you to take your kids out and see how many kinds of seeds you can collect. There are thousands of options. You can even collect seeds from wildflowers and perennials, and certainly trees. You’ll have fun with this project and next spring it will be exciting to see what worked. You can start the seeds inside in late February just when you’re pretty tired of winter and ready for some spring.

Tomatoes:
Pick a really good tomato that looks gorgeous and is so ripe it might just start leaking all over your counter. Scoop out the seeds and whatever pulp comes with them and place them in a bowl of water. Once the seeds have finished their soaking regimen, spread the good seeds out on strips of newspaper (skinny strips) and let them dry. When they are finished you can just roll up the newspaper and put it in a sealed container. In the spring when it’s time to start planting, just snip off a seed with paper attached and plant it. Great trick, huh? I’ve found some seeds stick and some don’t, so I collect the ones that don’t in a container. I’ve also used paper towels (good organic, non-perfumey, non-colored kind) because that seems healthier than newspaper with all its ink. Especially if I plan to share the seeds.

Peppers:
Choose a pepper that has over-ripened and deeply colored. Cut open your pepper and remove seeds. You shouldn’t need to wash these seeds since they’ve just come from a sterile place. Simply spread them out on paper and dry them.

Pumpkins (melons, zucchini, cucumbers are the same except you want really ripe fruits) – scoop out seeds and place in water bowl. Separate the good seeds from the bad (per above) and dry seeds really well. Bigger seeds take longer, don’t forget.

Beans and peas– Allow the beans to dry on the plant. They should be so dry they rattle when you shake a seed pod. This could take 6 weeks or more. If they are close to being dry and you expect a big storm, you can lift the plant (root and all) and put it in a dry place to finish drying out and save it from the rain. You won’t need to rinse these seeds.

Marigolds –These are probably the easiest seeds to save. You should never have to buy marigold seeds again unless there’s a cool variety you’d like to try. Wait for the flower to die and the stems to begin to get brown and stiff. Then pluck the flowers off the stems and take them to your working area. Spread out a newspaper and rub your fingers back and forth on a bloom and see all the seeds release. You’ll recognize them. Marigolds have that distinctive black end and look like tiny sticks. I’ve had years when I was in a hurry and simply grabbed the blooms off the plants and filled a paper bag and then hung the bag to dry in the basement. Come spring I pulled the bag down and released the seeds and they did just fine. Still, the organized seed drying and saving plan is probably best.

Zinnias – Are just as easy as marigolds. Save lots of colors, but be prepared for them to come back in shades you don’t expect. Mine tend to come back all pink. I’m going to work hard this year to keep my Green Envy Zinnia seeds separate. I planted them away from the other zinnias, so hopefully there was no unplanned pollinating going on. We’ll see next spring, I guess.

Petunias – The seeds are in the little seed “capsules” that you’ll notice on the stems below the flowers. I don’t know a better way to explain, but look and you shall see, I bet.

Snapdragons – Also found in seed capsules that grow under the flowers (where the earliest flowers were).

Poppies – the flowers turn in to giant seed pods with a gazillion seeds in them.

Sunflower – I think you can figure out what these seeds look like.

So, happy seed gathering! And don’t forget this is important work. Gathering seeds ensures that heirloom vegetables and flowers are here for generations to come.

The Blight of the Tomatoes (or Blame it on the Weather and Walmart)

It is a sad tale I tell. One I sincerely wish I didn’t have to tell. It’s not easy to bring myself to write about it. But for you, dear readers, I will try. For the first time, our tomatoes have the blight. I’m not sure if you would call this early blight or late blight because it seems to be right in the middle. I guess since my tomatoes are only beginning to ripen I would lean towards calling it early blight. Either way it’s bad.

I’ve heard this is a bad year for the blight and lots of gardeners are dealing with it, so I guess I’m not alone, but it’s a first for me so I’m taking it personally. I don’t know if I wasn’t diligent enough about cutting off the low hanging leaves and branches quickly ( I do have a few other things going on in my life and the tomatoes, while very important to me, sometimes want for attention). Or was it my watering technique? Early blight is a fungus that spreads from the soil and is splashed up on to the leaves. I was doing a little multi-tasking while I watered this year and left the hose on the tomatoes while I did other things. Maybe it was too much? Or is it because we planted our tomatoes in the same place in the garden? I’ve always rearranged my garden every year, but was urged (by a person I will not name) to keep the tomatoes in the same place they were last year. It’s smart pest and fungus management to keep rotating your crops. I knew this, so have no one to blame but myself.

Or maybe I can blame Wal-Mart. I was only somewhat comforted to read a New York Times article about the blight which is apparently ravaging the Northeast tomato crop this year. This particular strain of the fungus is airborne rather than soil borne so no one seems to be immune. The article sited several factors including the weather conditions which were perfect for the blight (lots of rain, cooler temperatures, high humidity). The other big factor was the increase in homegrown tomatoes (a good thing) and the consequent heavy sales by Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Lowe’s of tomato seedlings grown on large industrial farms in the south. Plant pathologists (did you know there were such people?) speculate that many of these seedlings were infected and that’s how the disease spread far and wide instead of being concentrated on large farms where it can be contained as is usually the case. The weather and Wal-Mart are two of my favorite bad guys to blame, but surprisingly this brings me no comfort. Besides my tomatoes are homegrown from heirloom seeds saved from last year’s plants which were ridiculously healthy.

Most of the information I have on early blight focuses on prevention. Maybe that’s because once you have it, you’re done for. I hope that’s not the case. I don’t give up easily so we are waging a battle here. I’ve been cutting off all the effected leaves and branches, which is leaving my tomatoes looking pretty naked on their lower halves. The blight works its way up from the bottom. They look pretty ridiculous, but you do what you have to do, right?

After reading about organic tomato farming I learned that organic farmers use a copper spray to prevent and stop early blight and that this is okie-dokie, at least according to the US government. But the internet is full of dark corners where you can discover awful things caused by too much copper, so I’m living dangerously here. Still, if it’s copper laden tomatoes or no tomatoes, I’ll go with the copper ones. Several of our plants are doing better than the others so we’ll save seeds from those plants assuming they have more of a resistance and can pass that lovely feature along. I’ll update the tomato battle with pictures on the blog as we go just in case you want to see the damage. We’re all rubber-neckers, I know.

I am harvesting a few tomatoes and hopeful that I’ll get some more, but it won’t be anywhere near the number of tomatoes we require. Last year we put up nearly 25 jars of tomato sauce, 15 jars of pizza sauce, and 15 jars of salsa, not to mention another 15 jars of diced tomatoes and we ran out in March. I had high hopes for doubling those numbers, but I suppose it’s only a pipe dream. So how are your tomatoes doing? Got any to spare?

Of Weeds, Lettuce, and Tomatoes

OK this is going to be a boring garden post. So if you’re tired of me writing about gardening, you can skip this one. I checked though and I haven’t written about gardening in nearly two weeks! Gardens require maintenance, sad but true. There was a time when I just planted seeds and left them to their own devices. I figured whatever I got was better than nothing. But now I know better. A minimal effort can bring great rewards.

Take weeding. I hate it most days, but I’ve come to find a sense of satisfaction in a weed-free tidy garden, or at least patches of weed-free tidy garden. My garden keeps getting bigger and it becomes impossible to keep all the weeds out. You do what you can.

Mulch is one tool in the battle of the weeds. You can lay newspaper around your established plants and hose it real good for an inexpensive, if unsightly, mulch. If you’re rich, you can just buy mulch and surround your plants. Be careful though, I would caution you that most mulch is not the least bit organic and could leach any number of chemicals in to your soil. I save the commercial mulch for flowers. I don’t worry if they aren’t so organic. Straw is another good choice for mulch, and it will compost in to your garden during the fall and winter.

Mulch aside, it comes back to weeding. I prioritize my weeding efforts. I weed closest to established plants by hand, careful to get the entire weed. Between the roes, I use a stirrup hoe (looks like a real stirrup with sharp edges that you work back and forth over the soil) to just scrape off the top layer beating back the weeds in mass and keeping the weeds from going to seed and expanding my problem. It doesn’t always look pretty but it keeps things under control. Most importantly, weed after a good rain. There’s no point in weeding when the ground is dry as bone, unless you use a hose and hose the area you are weeding, which seems a little backward to be watering your weeds.

Weed every chance you get. Don’t leave all your weeding for one day – can’t be done – or it can and your back will complain about it later. You’re outside admiring how beautifully your tomatoes are taking to their training, you pull a few weeds. You’re killing time waiting for your kids to be ready to go to soccer, you pull a few weeds. Your kids are driving you to drink, instead go outside and pull a few weeds. Every chance you get – pull a few weeds. Sorry, but it’s a never ending process. I've considered using my children as indentured servants to take care of my weeding problem, but I don't want them to resent the garden or anything that comes out of it. Some children can be convinced to help by cold hard cash. Good luck with that.

How is your lettuce growing? As painful as it may be, it’s important to thin your lettuce. You need to pull baby plants that are crowded. You’ll want to keep thinning (and eating the babies you pull) until your plants aren’t touching. This necessitates that you thin as they grow. If you’re lettuce stays cramped and crowded the leaves on the bottom won’t get sunlight and they’ll rot, rotting all the leaves around them too.

If you eat lettuce like I do, you’ll soon have bare patches in your lettuce rows – plant more lettuce. In fact, plant lettuce in any spare spot you have. They love to grow in the filtered sunlight under other plants. Tuck in more lettuce in any spare space you have, and that includes flower beds. Walk around in the early afternoon and figure out if there are places in your gardens that only get morning sun – perfect spot for some more lettuce (or spinach).

Once you’ve picked your lettuce, washing it can take time. Know this going in. When you buy store bought lettuce it has been washed by some high pressure lettuce washing gadget and still you have to wash it because there are little specks of dirt. The lettuce you pull out of your beautiful garden will be covered in dirt, grass clippings, and bugs. The lettuce you bought at the store was once covered in those things too, plus some chemical fertilizers. When you are washing your home grown lettuce, take care to wash it one leaf at a time. Nothing can put you off homegrown lettuce like a bite of slug with your salad. I soak all of my lettuce in my sink as I’m washing it so the bugs will detach themselves or drown. I pick up one leaf at a time for a gentle hand scrubbing before placing it in the salad spinner. Once all my lettuce is clean and dry, I place a dry paper towel in the bottom of a plastic bag and load in the lettuce on top. The paper towel will soak up any water and keep my lettuce from rotting. I keep these bags in the crisper drawer of my fridge and the lettuce will stay fresh for nearly a week.

On to tomatoes – hopefully yours are looking happy and bushy by now. It’s time to give them a trim. Grab your hand clippers or kitchen shears and carefully trim off any of the lower branches whose leave are touching the ground. Then as your plant grows and you begin tying it up to your tomato fence or stake or basket, gather the leaves that are in danger of drooping to the ground and wrap your tie around them as you tie to keep them off the ground. This may sound confusing, that’s why I added the picture up top. The bottom line is you don’t want any leaves touching the ground. If they droop on the ground they can rot and spread that rot to your entire plant. That’s why you sometimes see tomato plants that are bushy and green on top and brown and scraggly on the bottom. They may survive, but they won’t product nearly the same number of fruits.

When watering tomatoes, do all you can to water the ground under them and not the leaves themselves. A good deep watering at their base is much better for them than a sprinkle from your automatic sprinkler. It takes time, but everything that matters takes time. You should know that by now.

Tomatoes need support, like all of us. You can buy tomato cages at the store that do a great job of supporting your tomatoes. The problem I’ve had with them in the past is that it’s impossible to pick the tomatoes that grow inside the baskets. You’re stuck like the monkey in that experiment – you can’t get your hand back out of the cage unless you drop the tomato. Maybe you’ve had success with these cages, but not me. There are lots of other options – fences, stakes, trellis, use what works for you. We’ve used fences in the past, but after last years six foot high tomatoes, this year my husband has made it his personal quest to accommodate the tomatoes no matter how tall they get. He borrowed his system from the tomato gardens he sees in China where he travels for his work. Using skinny boards, he has built a wooden frame that is six feet high with boards going across it at one foot intervals. As the plants grow he uses torn pieces of cotton clothing or sheets to tie the plants. This is a great way to recycle your old t-shirts. He plans to train the tomatoes to snake in and out of the cross boards as they grow up so that the weight will be evenly distributed and the fruits will grow on both sides of the frame. I’ll post a picture on my blog so you can see the tomatoes’ progress. I’ll let you know how this plan works out.

Peas of all shapes and sizes should be ready about now. Remember to pick early and often if you want to prolong your season. It’s just about cherry season too, so watch your local farms for pick your own local cherries.

The Babies Are Moving Out

It’s time to move the babies outdoors. It’s kind of like sending the preschooler off to kindergarten. You can no longer control their surroundings and protect them from the elements. You have to hope you’ve done a good job raising strong healthy seedlings and then pray for good weather. There are a few things you can do to make the transition easier.

I firmly believe in “hardening off” my baby plants. This means moving them outdoors in a gradual way to get them used to the wind, temperature, and the strong sun which is so different from the fluorescent lights they have been raised under. Even store bought seedlings can use a little hardening off. If I had a sunny window I would start by letting them spend some time there. Alas, the only really sunny window is in my six year old’s room and that might not be the safest of surroundings. So I move them outside in to the shade on my porch on a warm day for an afternoon. From there I increase their time outside and their exposure to real sunlight a little each day. Eventually graduating them to sitting in their bin together over the very spot I plan to plant them. If the temperature threatens to dip low, I bring them in for the night. This takes about a week.

At this point I watch the weather. The last frost is supposed to be somewhere around tax day (April 15) for us, but we always seem to still get a few frosts after that down in the hollow where we live. I shoot for Mother’s Day for tomatoes and peppers and other warm weather plants. I want to be certain the temperature won’t go below 45 at night. I’ve got too much invested in my tomatoes (all 24 of them) to risk a cold night ruining my hard work. Ideal conditions would be daytime temps around 70 and not too sunny with some light rain. But life is not ideal now is it?

Planting seedlings is careful work. Water your seedlings thoroughly so that when you lift them out of their pots they soil will stick to the roots and not crumple away. Lay out where you are planning on putting them and prepare clear markers so that other folks who traverse your garden won’t trample on them. Like so many other things that look great at home, once you get them out of their element they seem incredibly small and fragile. Surround them with a string fence or deliberately mark them with large stakes.

Dig the hole larger than the seedling pot and be sure the soil you are planting in to is moist. If it isn’t, water the hole before planting the seedling. If you have compost to add, work the compost in to the hole also.

Getting the seedling out of its pot and in to the soil seems simple, but that isn’t always the case. If you use plastic containers (like the used yogurt cups I use), it is helpful to tap the bottom to loosen the plant. I actually invert the plant (holding my hand over the top so the plant won’t fall out) and tap it really hard. If there are roots growing out of the bottom of the cup I tear them off. Then I carefully shake the entire plant out for the container and set the plant in the hole, firming soil around it and up its neck. I bury it deeper in the ground than it was in the pot, especially with tomato plants.

Many of the books I’ve consulted have said to lift the plant out by the leaves, but that has never worked for me. Inevitably I end up lifting off the leaves without the plant. So gently shaking the plant out of the pot works is my method. And if that doesn’t work, I run my finger around the edge of the pot and scoop the plant out that way. If you have used the “plantable” peat pots, you are supposed to be able to plant the seedling pot and all. The one year I tried that it didn’t work for me. The plants were root bound and didn’t do well. At the end of the summer when we turned over the dirt, the peat pots were still completely intact. So if you use them, be sure to tear off the bottom and maybe tear the the sides back a bit too before you plant them. Lovely idea though, those peat pots.

My favorite plant store (Landreth Seeds) is having their annual sale this weekend. I will get up early to be one of their first customers on Saturday. As much as I enjoy saving lots of money raising my own seedlings, it’s still at thrill to buy a few “foreigners” to plant. This week I’m also going to harvest some of my “volunteer” lettuce that grew from the lettuce I planted last year and let go to seed. That’s the beauty of heirloom seeds, you get lots of volunteers. I’ll let you know how that works out. I’ve never thought of lettuce as a perennial, but this year it is for us. Gardening is such an adventure. You learn something new all the time.