Category Archives: Vegetables

Spring Is Here (Almost), Starting Seeds, Transplanting, and Other Garden Chores

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I feel like I am just awakening from hibernation. The bears have it right, taking a nap in the winter. Although I wouldn’t exactly call it a winter. Very little snow. That makes a lot of people happy but I live HERE for the four seasons. What this does for me, is make me antsy. I hear the birds chirping, I don’t need a coat for the most part and I am chomping at the bit to start our plants.

My table is filled with germination mix, seed trays, and seed packets, a sprayer, garden marking pens, tags, etc. All the paraphernalia you need to plant seeds. and I even have printed spreadsheets. I am trying to be organized.
These are my seeds. I store them in the dining room, which at this time of year is no longer called a “dining room” but a “seed propagation” room. You can see in the background the racks and LED lights we use to germinate them.
Tomato babies, they look really good this year.
Pepper babies, they take a lot longer to germinate than tomatoes do.

I spend a lot of time looking online at seed catalogs, choosing new and old varieties of tomatoes, peppers, veggies, and flowers. It is a veritable buffet out there. So far, I have 357 varieties of tomatoes, 64 kinds of lettuce, and 126 kinds of peppers and the number of flowers is almost incalculable.

Flowers and more flowers. Snapdragons, stock, alyssum, asarina (a beautiful vining plant), begonias, salvia, and alyssum.

Now that I’ve found out I can grow teeny, tiny seeds that look like dust, I am growing all of them I can. Of course, for things like coleus, begonia, and petunias, I am finding the benefits of using pellleted seeds. I am even trying calceolaria. Talk about dust. You want to plant maybe 30 or 40 plants, no, what you have in your hand is more like 5000 seeds, or so it seems.

Petunias, I am trying something different using plug trays for individual flowers. It doesn’t necessarily save space but it should save time in the long run.
Here I am transplanting the first sets that are going to live in gallon pots

So it begins, transplanting. We put a couple of heaters out in the greenhouse for me to work and not freeze, a fine music system (well actually my iPhone and a Bose speaker) and I am happy as a clam. There’s something about playing in the dirt.

Today I have transplanted 600 tomatoes. Only a billion more to go. I am glad I love doing plants although it can be overwhelming at times. They say that if you find something you love, you’ll never work a day in your life!

The Tomato Lady Is Back!

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Cherokee Carbon and Chocolate Cherry seedlings

 It’s been a while. I must apologize as I guess I am not as invincible as I thought. Just a little catch-up here – I finally got my permanent knee replacement after dealing with a temporary one for 10 months. Every step hurt. November 10th it was put in, just 2 days after Thanksgiving, my knee collapsed and I fell down, breaking my femur in two places! Who does that? I guess go big or go home, right? I have been walking with full weight for the last two weeks after two months of being confined to a recliner. That was tough. I made it and am doing that overachieving thing again. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be on my feet although it still hurts a bit, unused muscles and all.

Jalapeno “M”

I currently have over 350 varieties of tomatoes this year and over a hundred varieties of peppers. I have the elusive Cougar Reds this year, and then some. Last year I couldn’t find them in stock anywhere. 

Red and Pink Brandywine seedlings grown for the gallon pots.

I just finished planting seeds for the main crop this morning and already have 3000 plants almost ready to go into gallon pots in a couple of weeks. We switched to LED lights and are really impressed. The peppers look amazing, better than any that I sold last year!

February 20 Main crop of tomato seeds
Cougar Reds

I will be starting vegetables soon, including cauliflower and broccoli and have flowers going also. 

I have had to redo my website which means learning another software program. It’s taking a while. Keep on eye out for it plus my Facebook page. I will have more news there. Hoping to open mid-April. 

Tomato Identifying as a Pumpkin! From The Tomato Lady’s Garden to Yours

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This is one of the last Greek Rose that we picked from our garden for this year. They are lovely and very large and delicious. This one was so big, it seemed to be identifying as a pumpkin! This one is just for fun! Happy Fall!

Why is My Squash Turning Yellow?

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spaghetti squash 73118 - 1So many people come to me with questions about their gardens. I think one of the cutest things they tell me, is that they keep getting blossom end rot on their summer squash. You know, where, you get all excited because it is your first squash of the season. Every day you check on it with anticipation. Then, the horror of horrors, it starts turning yellow! Aaaahh! You babied it, watered it, fertilized it. Now, this.

More than likely, it wasn’t pollinated. Wind and bees are the primary ways pollination gets done. Mommy flower and Daddy flower get together, and well, you know how it works.

Squash, melons, pumpkins, and cucumbers are members of the same family and they often have problems with pollination due to the male flowers falling off before the female flowers open. 

Here is a great article I read this morning that tells you, in simple terms, how to get around that. Easy peasy and soon you will be giving squash away, right and left!

Here is the link and I’ve included the article to. Thank you to Harvest to Table for the great read.

https://harvesttotable.com/hand-pollination-of-vegetables

hand pollination

Hand pollination is the manual transfer of pollen from the stamen of one plant to the pistil of another–that is from a male flower to a female flower.

Members of the Cucurbit family–squash, melons, pumpkins, and cucumbers–often have pollination problems because the male flowers commonly open days before the female flowers and so often drop before pollinators such as bees can transfer pollen from male to female flowers.

When female flowers are not pollinated, the fruit will never appear. The nascent fruits–bulging embryos–at the stem end of female flowers will shrivel and die if not pollinated.

If fruit is not forming on your Cucurbit family plants, you can help. Rub a small brush or cotton swab on the stamen of a male flower (it will be dusty with pollen) then rub the brush on the stigma of the female flower.

Hand pollination

Alternatively, you can remove the petals from a male flower and brush the stamen against the stigma of a female flower.

Which flower is male and which is female? Female flowers have a small bulge (a small immature flower) where the stem meets the flower. Male flowers are shorter than female flowers and often appear in clusters.

Costoluto Genovese and Costoluto Fiorintino: Old Heirloom Tomatoes from Italy

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costoluto genovese

Costoluto Genovese The fluted, old Italian favorite that has been around since the early 19th century. Fruit is rather flattened and quite attractive with its deep ribbing. This variety is a standard in Italy for both fresh eating and preserving, and known for its intensely flavorful, deep red flesh. They were also one of the varieties planted at Thomas Jefferson’s home in Monticello in 1809.

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Costoluto Fiorentino Heavily ribbed (costoluta) flat Italian heirloom beefsteak type from Florence. Red, 12-16 ounces slightly flattened fruit. Outstanding taste. Large, vigorous, indeterminate plant with good production. Similar to Costoluto Genovese but slightly flatter and higher-yielding.

Costoluto refers to the distinct flattened, heavily-ribbed shape of various Italian heirlooms. Both of these tomatoes are shaped like this. some of my customers don’t like the ribbing but I think it is pretty and the taste is good. There is a reason these are heirlooms!

Both these pics are from my garden the year that I grew them.

Insights Into How I Run My Business – The Tomato Lady

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tomato seedlings

Every year I try to be more organized with my business. I ask myself questions like these:

  • What do I want to offer this year?
  • What tomatoes or peppers did I not like?
  • What do my customers want?
  • Are there any new and astounding introductions that I need to try?
  • How much soil and germinating mix do I need?
  • Do we have enough stock of the amendments we incorporate into our mix?
  • When do we want to open?
  • When do we need our other greenhouses up?

And then I have to think about updating the website, doing research for descriptions, pictures, making large tags, small tags, marketing, doing the bookkeeping/taxes . . . etc.

I think one of the biggest concerns is figuring out how far back to plant the seeds so they are ready at a certain time. It doesn’t matter whether they are tomatoes, peppers, flowers or veggies. When I first started my business, I planted everything on March 17th. That didn’t work out so well. I had ginormous plants in small pots. (We called them trenching tomatoes!)

One variable we can’t control (a big one) is the weather. Since we grow ours as close to nature as possible, we heat only to keep them from freezing. We don’t grow ours as the bigger operations do with climate controls for even temperatures. It gets hot, it gets cold. (I think that is why ours do really well here in our part of the world). When the sun comes out, even if it is cold outside, it heats up very quickly. Cooler temps encourage root development so they have a stable base to start reaching for the stars when it gets warmer. We have had some of our varieties grow a foot in one week! (I know that sounds great but that is not good at all).

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My dining room becomes the seed starting room for several months. Shelves, fluorescent light banks, germinating mix, water jugs, seed packets, plant lists, pixie stakes, anything needed for planting. It is quite the mess! This is the room we use for our game nights twice a month, needless to say, we are relegated to the living room playing Scattergorries or Charades for several months.

tomatoes31

This year we are going to try and have 2500 gallons for sale. That is 1000 more than last year. They are easier to keep happy, don’t require as much water (don’t dry out) and have a BIG headstart over the ones in the smaller pots. That is really important in my part of the world where there every other town/location seems to have a different growing zone! Our weather. isn’t really consistent. sometimes we have a long growing season, sometimes we don’t. Last year we had a frost/snow late September. One year it didn’t get ugly until November. All it takes is one frost and your plants are done, it doesn’t matter if we have two months after that of temperate weather. With some varieties, it is important to have the headstart.

brandywine pink1_

Take the Pink Brandywine. It has a long growing season and really needs the extra two months. I have found that it is not the size of the plant but the maturity of the plant that determines whether you harvest something or not. Pineapple is another one that benefits from this, as do a lot of the bigger heirloom varieties. We will still have our regular pot size.

me-in-greenhouse-up

I just finished my first cup of coffee and as I contemplate going out to transplant some more tomatoes, I am glad I could tell you some of what I do and how I do it.

I know this is a long post but I wanted to share some of the workings and thoughts behind being an “urban farmer”. It’s not all fun and games and takes quite a bit of planning and thinking and of course hard work! To the gentleman who said that farming is a no-brainer occupation, I’d like to invite him to put himself in my shoes and the shoes of every other farmer out there and let him see how hard it really is! It’s not as simple as digging a hole and dropping a seed in it. I use a lot of gray matter to grow my business!

 

Hello Spring! (I think)

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cherry-tomatoes---1

One of my many harvests last year. Wishful thinking!

it’s been very cold here or maybe I am just getting older. Lots of sunshine and the birds are starting to make melodies so I expect it to be considerably warmer than it feels. I go through this every year right around February.

I have transplanted 0ver 900 pepper plants already and they are snug as a bug in a rug in our “pepper greenhouse”. I planted 62 varieties this year and will be showcasing some of the newer and favorites on this blog in the future.

As for tomatoes? This year I have over 200 varieties, by far the most that I have ever done. Last year I had 178 and wanted less. Yup, you can blame it on the catalogs. With their pretty pictures and fantastical descriptions such as “the best tasting”, “brilliant color palette”, “earliest for northern regions”, “most prolific”, “an heirloom older than dirt” etc. (the last one, not really, but it sounds like something someone would say.)

I got rid of some I didn’t like or that were hard to sell and of course, kept my favorites and the favorites of my customers. In all, what with taking away and adding, I have 203 varieties. Uh huh, that is a lot! I order mostly from seed catalogs like Seeds n Such, Totally Tomatoes, Tomatofest, Harris Seeds, Johnny’s Seeds, High Mowing Seeds, and others. I also peruse our local Northwest Seed and Pet for their offerings. This year I found some seed by Snake River Cooperative, Shoshone, Moscow, Latah and Sandpoint, seeds developed in our area by Idaho State University. I am anxious to try those and see how they do.

As with the peppers, I will showcase some of the tomato varieties also.

This is my busy season, buying and researching seeds, ordering supplies, figuring out a planting schedule, making big and little tags, ordering preprinted tags, planting and transplanting babies, updating the website, organizing marketing materials and email lists, creating blog posts, watering, fertilizing, arranging heaters and keeping an eye on the temps, taking cuttings and rooting them, to name just a few of my responsibilities

Good thing I love what I do!.

Purple Cauliflower, Golden Cauliflower White Cucumbers, and A Paprika Pepper

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cualiflower cucumbers 8119 - 3We have been picking broccoli for quite a while now, today, I picked our cauliflower. One was a gorgeous purple and the other a beautiful cheddar yellow. First time I’ve ever grown cauliflower and got something besides a softball size, insect-eaten, inedible object, sprouting flowers. My first introduction to colored cauliflower came from Winco. One day, they were sitting in the produce aisle. As you know I love color. They taste exactly like the white ones but are prettier. Great for a veggie tray although I see cheese sauce in it’s future.

Shown is also one of my white cucumbers (yes, I was going to eat it and cut the ends off and then decided it needed it’s 5 minutes of fame). Love it! Sweet and juicy, not bitter in the least. There is also the spineless Beth Alpha, an Israeli cucumber and several pickling cukes. I think I have enough to make several jars.

 

flowers, garden - 63flowers, garden - 65

The red object is one of my paprika peppers. This is the most amazing pepper plant ever. Let’s face it, peppers are hard to grow here. We always grow our plants in the greenhouse which develops extremely hot temps, probably not unlike a blast furnace. I always tell people don’t beat yourself up if you don’t have success. Some years are better than others.

This one is growing outside, in a large black pot. It was the first one to put on peppers and there are so many that they are crowding the stem. I picked the one that was starting to color up. This one is called “Feher Ozon Paprika” the plant isn’t even two feet tall! This is the first year for this and I will certainly grow it again.

Just a little note: Making your own paprika is easy. Let them dry thoroughly (ok, truth be told, I put mine in a box and promptly forgot them for two years) until crispy, dry and light. They are easy to crumble. Use a coffee grinder to grind as fine as you like. It was a wonder using my own ground paprika, didn’t taste like red dust!

Got Tomatoes??? Our First Picking of the Year

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Here is a picture of our first picking this summer. Sungold, Sweet Treats, Sweet Baby Girl, Blue Creme Berries, Rose Quartz and one Brad’s Atomic (it’s the metallic looking one). We also picked our first cucumber from our Spacemaster in a container.

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Brad’s Atomic Grape cherry tomato

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Various cherry tomatoes picked July 20, 2019

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Spacemaster space saver bush tomato

Beaver Dam Pepper

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Beaver Dam Pepper

A pepper so good, Hungarian immigrants carried it with them when they came to Wisconsin.

It is no wonder that the Beaver Dam pepper was nearly lost to posterity, trampled upon by the market demand for easier-to-grow pepper varieties that don’t require such laborious agricultural techniques as planting individual stakes for each pepper plant.

The eponymous pepper came to Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, in 1912, with Joe Hussli, a Hungarian immigrant who couldn’t conceive of a new American life without a little peppery taste of home. Locals and descendants of friends of the Hussli family like to say that the Husslis planted the seeds, grew the peppers, and shared the seeds with friends and neighbors, thus setting up a little community of Beaver Dam pepper growers who appreciated the delicious plant’s mild bite, enough to pass the seeds down for generations. There are pepper-growing families in Beaver Dam who have saved seeds from at least the 1980s. However, over generations, farming of this pepper has dwindled considerably as hybrids flood the market.

Today, Beaver Dam still celebrates its favorite pepper in the form of an annual Beaver Dam Pepper Festival. Fans can buy the prized crop from local growers, eat pepper sausages, and even participate in an apple pepper pie–eating competition with the town sheriff. Current growers, who descend from a long line of Beaver Dam pepper cultivators, also give presentations on the plant’s history.

For locals, preserving the town’s pepper is crucial. The story of its near-extinction is a story of how our current food culture has prioritized efficiency and shelf-life over flavor. The Beaver Dam, an heirloom variety, requires more care in growing than hybrid peppers that are hardier, more disease-resistant, and thus more dependable in terms of yield. But organizations such as Seed Savers and Slow Food USA are building up a steady base of growers yearning for flavor and willing to return to traditional, sustainable methods of farming. Thanks to their interest, the Beaver Dam pepper has been preserved and there are enough seeds available now to bring the pepper back from the brink of extinction.

The peppers start out lime-green but gradually mature to an orange or blood-red color, over a period of 80 days. Between three and eight peppers grow on each plant. Thick-fleshed, the peppers are mild-to-hot with an appealing crunch that is great in salads and fresh salsas. They also go brilliantly sliced into a sandwich or stuffed with a rice or meat filling. And some fans insist that they’re an absolute must in Hungarian goulash. The peppers are between 500 and 1,000 SHU on the Scoville heat scale.

 

For those not in the Beaver Dam pepper inner circle, the seeds are also available through organizations such as the Seed Savers Exchange, a repository of heirloom seeds meant to preserve endangered varieties of garden and food crops.