Tag Archives: garden

How Was Your Garden This Year?

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I must admit, this was a tough year for my garden. I am the Tomato Lady and should have beautiful tomatoes and to be honest, I thought about questioning my calling. Slugs, flea beetles, aphids, early blight, late blight, splitting, cat facing, you name it, I had it. The weather was cold and rainy in June, then it got really hot for a long time, then it rained. All of my tomatoes split. You expect most of the cherries to split with their thin skins, (juliet is a fine tasting tomato with thicker skins that don’t usually split) but no the larger ones. The Black from Tula, which I adore, split exactly around the middle, the Sungolds and Honeybunch split stem to stern and the Oxacans, (which I won’t ever grow again, mealy texture, small) split without out the rain. Every last one of them. The only ones that didn’t split were the Nebraska Wedding, Old Fashioned Goliath, Joe’s Pink Oxheart and Mountain Gold.

At the end of the season, we picked all the green ones and left them on the porch to ripen. because of the slug bites and splitting, they rotted before they ripened so i just threw them all in the compost pile and shut the door behind on of the worst seasons ever. 

My peppers did not do well either. The heirloom shelling beans, all 7 varieties, had some sort of issue from the moment they came up. 

Hope springs eternal though, there is always next year. 

Note: the plants themselves were glorious and I’ve talked with many of my customers who said they had great success with their tomatoes and gardens. Below is an Aussie that one of my customers has grown. It was the first of the season. Isn’t it lovely? And big? I can tell you they are tasty.

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Red Tomatoes and Crazy Weather in my Garden

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I rec’d an interesting question from one of my customers. He asked me how my garden was growing and what was my favorite red variety. Every year I grow different tomato varieties, not all of them red. This year, I am loving the Marbella, Red Pear, Willamette and Giant Tree Tomato, all of which are red and very prolific. I won a grand prize at the fair for my Willamettes, an aspiring early heirloom from Oregon.

As for how my garden is doing, I’ve had the worst season ever. Every slug, every flea beetle, aphid and spider mite for miles afround has attacked my vegetable and flower garden. Powdery mildew, early blight, physiological damage (ie curly leaves) from the hot/cold/wet/dry weather we’ve had this summer, has blessed my plants too. Aaaagh!

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More Pictures of the Unique Blue Indigo Rose Tomato

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These are more pictures of the Indigo Rose in our garden

ImageImageThis is a picture from one of our customers. He grew it in a pot and it is enormous! They look like giant blueberries.

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A Unique “Blue” Tomato – Indigo Rose

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this is a picture of the Indigo Rose grown in our garden this year. It is stunning in color, not so much in flavor in my opinion. These are dark purple on the parts that get by the sun and green on the other side. We picked one and when it got really ripe, it was orange on purple. Really pretty but I thought it was tart.

One Way to Use Tomatoes – Spiced Tomato Jam

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Spiced Tomato Jam

1 1/4 pounds ripe tomatoes

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp cloves

1 pckge powdered pecton or Sure Jell

4 1/2 c sugar

Wash firm ripe tomatoes. Scald, peel and chop. Puree in blender. Measure 3 cups of pureed tomatoes into a large saucepan. Add lemon juice, the ground spices and pectin.

Over high heat, bring mixture to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Add sugar all at once, keep stirring  and bring back to a rolling boil (a boil that can’t be stirred down). Boil for 1 minute.

Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes. Skim off foam with a metal spoon. Pour jam into jars, leaving 1/4 inch head room. Wipe the lip clean and tighten lids. Process how you would like to. Water bath would work well.

Makes about 5 half pint jars.

The recipe comes from Tzena Scarborough in Spokane Valley WA. She writes,” This is a Scarborough family favorite when tomatoes were in abundance in their garden. Mom found this recipe in the Sure Jell package.”

Tomatoes and Heat

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Here in the Inland Northwest, we have gone from 50 something degrees to 99 degrees in a matter of days it seems. Not only does that play havoc with our human bodies but it can have consequences in our gardens.

The common miconception is that tomatoes love heat, the hotter the better. Not so much. High temperatures can cause several problems with tomato production. One of them is “tomato blossom drop.” The tomato blossoms “dry up and fall off the plant before a fruit is formed.”  

 “Tomatoes grow best if daytime temperatures range between 70 F and 85 F. Tomato plants can tolerate more extreme temperatures for short periods, but after several days or nights with temps outside the ideal range, the plants start to focus on survival not producing fruit. High nighttime temps are even worse than high daytime temperatures because the tomato plant never gets to rest.”

 Another tomato response to extreme heat involves its leaves. Just as they respond to very cold temps and lots of moisture with their leaves, you will  notice that some tomato varieties also respond to heat by curling their leaves. That’s a defensive mechanism that attempts to slow transpiration (evaporation from the leaf surface) of water from plant to atmosphere. 

 Specific temperatures at which blossom drop begins will vary from variety to variety. If you experience this, all is not lost, they will eventually snap out it. Water thoroughly early in the morning or put a drip system on at night to keep them well hydrated. Mulch to help retain their moisture. And pray for more temperate weather!Image

Sunday Night, April 28

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Today was an extremely windy day. Not cold or rainy but the trees were flying high. After church, we opened at 1 pm. A slow day, customer wise which surprised us since it was a weekend. I need to change my website verbiage to reflect that all the varieties are ready to be rehomed with the exception of a couple of tomatoes. I love getting repeat customers, they are so excited to pick out new flavors and colors. I like to think of it like a theme park for tomato lovers! Tomorrows another day.

 

Green Grape Tomato

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Green Grape Tomato

What can green do for you? Don’t let the color fool you. this is very, very sweet cherry tomato and it bursts in your mouth with a satisfying juiciness. They are ping pong sized and turn a lovely golden green and give to the touch when they are fully ripe. Yum. They look beautiful in a salad with other colored cherry tomatoes such as black cherry, sungold, sweet million, italian ice and the pink sugary.

Another View of Sweet Treats – On The Vine

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Another View of Sweet Treats - On The Vine

Here I captured them on the vine. They produce in trusses of fruit.

Sweet Treats Cherry Tomato

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Sweet Treats Cherry Tomato

Sweet Treats was a new one for me last year. I love, love, love this cherry tomato and will grow this variety again. It was one of the first to ripen, had loads of dark pink, ping pong sized cherry tomatoes that were deliciously sweet. I had so many that I actually canned several quarts of them for fun and made some sauce. Because I didn’t want slip the skins off of them, I cooked them and then ran them through a sieve to strain them. They made an incredibly sweet and mouth watering sauce. The plant is very big, for us it was over 6 feet tall and very bushy. Definitely needs staking.