LOTS of Tomatoes!

After mostly ignoring my tomatoes for most of September, we came home from a weekend away to our biggest daily harvest in 3years of growing tomatoes: 1 St Pierre, 1 Jaune Flamme, 1 Black Prince, 11 Sungolds, and 12 Super Sweet 100s!

The Super Sweet 100s and the Sungolds are still the best producers with the Jaune Flammes close behind. The Black Price and St Pierre are doing ok, but not exceptional and the Green Zebra are still struggling. Hopefully if we continue to get some more warm weather the rest of the fruit the plants have already put on will ripen, otherwise we'll be pickling green tomatoes!

Tomatoes (Part 3)

It’s been about 11 weeks since we planted our tomatoes and the Love Apple Farms fertilizer combination has proven to be quite efficient. My Sungolds are currently 8’ and growing with several of the others close behind. Several of them will definitely grow taller than their supporting cages! The plants have become so lush you have to look very closely and carefully to see the developing fruit. So far we’ve harvested and eaten a couple of Super Sweet 100s, a couple Sungolds and three lovely Jaune Flammes. And there is clearly more to come! In general I don’t think the plants could be happier and provided we can get some sun and warm weather sometime soon it looks to be a promising harvest.

Here are some more details about how each varietal is doing:

Super Sweet 100: creating a tall (7’ so far), lankier plant, not particularly bushy, but putting on lots of fruit; Brendan reported the couple we’ve harvested were quite sweet; in more sun than the others, may be affecting fruit production.

Jaune Flamme: put on fruit pretty quickly and continues to grow (about 6’ so far) ; in more sun than the others, may be affecting fruit production; 3 tomatoes harvested so far with a couple more almost ready to eat.

Green Zebra: this one seems to be struggling, but it’s still growing and trying to put on fruit; some of the leaves started to look shriveled even when properly watered and the end of some leaves are starting to die; I haven’t been able to find any pests of signs of disease, luckily whatever is wrong is not spreading to the other plants.

Sungold: amazing grower, already about 8’ tall; two plants in one cage with this much fertilizer is clearly not enough room, only plant one per cage next year; starting to produce fruit, putting on lots of flowers so should be a heavy producer.

Black Prince: another great grower, about 7’ tall so far; bushier/dense plant, slower to develop fruit but seems to be starting to develop more; in a little bit more shade than the others, may be affecting fruit production.

St Pierre: good grower, about 6’ tall so far; bushier/dense plant, slower to develop fruit, only a couple visible so far and less flowers than some of the other plants; in a little bit more shade than the others, may be affecting fruit production.

I may try planting them in a different area of the yard next season both to rotate my vegetables to help improve and not exhaust the soil and because there is an area that gets more morning sun which may help the fruit ripen.

Tomatoes (Part 2)

After transplanting my tomatoes into the one-gallon pots to help them get established the started to take off! In about three weeks they were all at least a foot and half tall and it was clearly time to get them in the ground.


I knew I wanted to try some of the fertilizing tips from Love Apple Farms, and was able to wrangle up some of them, but the more specialized ingredients proved hard to find. in the end I was able to get the worn castings, the bone meal and discovered I already had a tomato and vegetable food. It’s a different formula than recommended by Love Apple Farms, but since I already had it I decided to use it instead of buying something new.

I also visited our local fish monger, Monterey Fish Company, and they were able to give me four HUGE fish heads with full skeletons—although I got some very interesting looks when I told them I wasn’t going to eat them, but was going to plant them instead… Since they only had four heads and six holes for the tomatoes, I used the bodies and tails in the other two planting holes. This was by far the ickiest and smelliest thing I’ve done for my garden—Brendan was highly entertained listening to me squeal as I took an axe to the huge fish trying to get them into manageable pieces to plant with the tomatoes.


We dug the holes as deep as we could to make sure the raccoons didn’t dig up the fish heads and then planted the tomatoes along with all the fertilizers I’d rounded up. It seems we dug them in deep enough because they all survived the evening visit by our local raccoons without incident. My tomato food package also recommends feeding the tomatoes every 12 weeks after planting so I’ve marked the calendar for continued tomato pampering. Now we water, wait and hope we get a bumper crop this year!

Tomatoes (Part 1)

After last season’s paltry tomato turnout I’ve decided this season to try just about anything to make sure this year we get plenty of wonderful tomatoes. Last year my parents bought me a tomato from Love Apple Farms and I joined their mailing list to learn more about my tomato and receive tips about growing vegetables in general. Recently I’ve been getting lots of emails from them with all sorts of great tomato tips. I’m incorporating what I can into my tomato strategy for this year and keeping my fingers crossed!

Here are the varieties I’ve purchased this year:
St. Pierre (an early, old French market variety, great tasting, small Early girl size fruit; Flatland Flower Farms seedlings from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery)
Black Prince (deep garnet fruits load up on these plants that stay fairly small, medium-sized and full of juice and good, rich flavor; Sunnyside Organics seedling from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery)
Green Zebra (clusters of med-sized cherry, ripens with green stripes and amber flesh; Sunnyside Organics seedling from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery)
Sungold (heavy yielding English hybrid, clusters of golden cherry tomatoes; Edible Schoolyard Plant Sale seedling and Sunnyside Organics seedling from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery)
Jaune Flamme (small bight orange fruit, great flavor; Edible Schoolyard Plant Sale seedling)
Super Sweet 100 (supersweet tomato that can produce a 100 small cherry tomatoes on a single strand; Edible Schoolyard Plant Sale seedling)

In addition to the information I've listed below, Love Apple Farms also sent some great planting tips, including transplanting the seedlings to one gallon pots to help them get more established before planting them in the yard, and a laundry list of things to help amend the soil and hopefully produce happy plants.

Here is my shopping list of things to put in the bottom of our tomato planting holes:
1. A fish head (for slow release nitrogen and calcium).
2. Two handfuls of Sustane 4-6-4 all purpose dry organic fertilizer.
3. One handful of bone meal (for extra calcium and phosphorus).
4. Three or four crushed chicken egg shells (for even more calcium).
5. Two aspirin tablets (for added immunity to disease).
6. A handful of worm castings (for all around good health).
7. A tablespoon of humic acid (for stress help).
8. A teaspoon of mychorrizal fungae sprinkled on the root ball.

For even more information and tips from Love Apple Farms visit these links:
Love Apple Farms website
Instructions on How to Grow Better Tomatoes
Hot to Plant A Tomato

Love Apple Farms Top 10 Coastal Tomatoes (in general they suggest focusing on small-fruiting tomatoes, for example cherry types and others just a bit bigger):
Black Prince
Jaune Flamme
Matina
Japanese Oxheart
Black Plum
Brandysweet Plum
OSU Purple
Siletz
Gajo de Melon
White Cherry

Brussels Sprouts

While I've been a Brussels sprout enthusiast for a while, I've recently converted my husband into a fun, especially when I cook them with bacon. So we decided to try to grow sprouts ourselves even though I had been warned that they could be difficult. Last October I got some lovely seedlings from Berkeley Horticultural Nursery and got them in the ground in mid-November. To try to combat the slugs I turned to the copper tape again, but this time stuck it to the outside of some one gallon plastic pots that i had cut in half to help keep the tape in place.



This new slug prevention worked like a charm, the only maintenance I had to do was make sure that after it rains that the copper isn't then covered in mud and to keep them free of weeds and low-hanging leaves that provide the slugs with a bridge to get to the plants.

And so we've been watching and waiting for our sprouts to actually appear. And waiting...and waiting... Then all of a sudden they started to flower! Which with fruit bearing vegetables like tomatoes is a good sign since it means you will soon have tomatoes, but is not a good sign with greens, including Brussels sprouts. After some more research it turns out the these guys are VERY time sensitive and I planted them too late, even though the seedlings were not available at BHN until about October when I bought them. So now we have plants as tall as me happily flowering plants but nothing to eat!



So I'm going to let them go to seed and start my own seedlings based on the recommended planting schedule I've dug up in my research. The recommendation is that you count 6 months backwards from the first frost in your area and that's when the seedlings should go in the ground. So starting in June once I have seeds I'm going to start seedlings and put them in the ground starting in July and some experimenting with the planting timeline to see what produces the best results. Fingers crossed that this winter we'll actually get to eat some home-grown Brussels.