Garden Desk

GardenDesk Has Moved!

2009-03-02T21:06:00.002-05:00

I have finally made the switch from blogger to typepad. All of the previous GardenDesk posts have been moved to www.gardendesk.com and all new posts will be over there.

If you have a blog and are linking to Garden Desk as Gardendesk.blogspot.com, please change it to just www.gardendesk.com.

I guess the rss feeds will need to be changed as well. I am working on that from my end. Sorry for the inconvenience. The new platform will allow GardenDesk to be even better.

My newest post is another about my new worm bin. I'd love for you to visit!

Thanks, and Happy Gardening!

Gardening Themed Fortune Cookie?

2009-02-27T00:55:00.002-05:00

My family and I love to eat Chinese food, and since there is a new Chinese take-out restaurant in our town, we've been eating it more than we probably should. Of course, the kid in me always likes getting the fortune cookie after stuffing myself.

Most of the time I don't pay much attention to the actual fortune, but this time I did a double-take!

It says "Your present plants are going to succeed."

Wow, that is so great! How did it know that I've already started my extra-early tomato plants under lights?

That has to be a typo, right? It makes me think - wouldn't it be a great idea to have fortune cookies for gardeners? Think of all the great advice they could give. Maybe I got the first fortune cookie for gardeners. Or maybe it is supposed to read "Your present plans are going to succeed." I am planning quite a bit for the garden this year, so I'd take that as well.

I guess this means the year ahead will be a great one. My plants or my plans will succeed!

This fortune can be for all of you as well. So make plans and grow plants; they're sure to succeed! Hey, the cookie says so. :)

A Political Statement; Rare on Garden Desk!

2009-02-26T11:26:00.005-05:00

I have always stayed away from discussing politics on this blog, but I just can't keep quiet with this. When it comes to public office, how does one know that he has reached true success? It certainly isn't that every constituent agrees with his or her positions. Can you consider someone successful if he gets elected to his State Senate? How about if he is elected to the United States Senate? Could the true measure of political success be attaining the office of the President of the United States? Barack Obama has achieved all of these political positions but I'm here to tell you that even becoming President is not his biggest honor. What marks his success even more than becoming president? I am here to report that Barack Obama's single biggest honor is.............

BARACK OBAMA IS NOW A CHIA PET!

Introducing the Chia Obama Handmade Decorative Planter!

Everyone needs one of these, don't you think? And since nothing with Obama is ever small or simple, there's not just one Chia Obama pose - there's two! If the above "Determined" look doesn't suit you, also available is the Chia Obama "Happy" pose!

President Barak Obama. Love 'em or hate 'em, you have to agree that he has reached the pinnacle of stardom. There is no greater honor than becoming a Chia!

Cha Cha Cha Chia!

I'm ready for the worms!

2009-02-24T22:13:00.007-05:00

12 years ago I wrote a newspaper article about raising worms as part of my Master Gardener certification. I had the privilege of interviewing a local expert on worm composting who taught me that the proper term is vermicomposting. Visiting her at her house I discovered that she had many "worm composting pits" in her back yard. What surprised me the most however, was that she also had a can-o-wormsin her kitchen! Ever since, I have wanted to buy my own can-o-worms. The Can-O-Wormsis basically a multi-tray composting system raised up on legs with a tap on the front to drain excess water as "worm tea".

Since this popular unit costs over a hundred dollars, I was never able to get one.

Last year, I finally decided to try my hand at vermicomposting in a makeshift plastic bin. It was fun and worked for a little while. My bin didn't provide adequate air for them and since it was sitting on the basement floor, ants invaded the bin. I made all sorts of mistakes and the worm farm failed.

This year, my wife said that she would like to try again if we could find a cheaper alternative to the Can-o-Worms.

I had my eye on this unit:

The 4 Tray Green Gusanito Wormswrangler Worm Farm Bin. It was available for $68.95 - much less than the can-o-worms.

Meanwhile, my wife found the Worm Composting System from Gardens Alive which also had four trays and a spout. It was $99 but they offer an online $20 off coupon. That got it close to the Gusanito system price. Since we already love and trust Gardens Alive, that's the one we bought. Besides, I had some other organic products to order from them. I don't think I could keep my garden organic without Gardens Alive's great products. By the way, if you are interested in the $20 coupon, you can get it here: $20 Off Any $40 Purchase

Sorry, I'm getting off topic a little here. That was the introduction to my post!
Here's the real post:

Our new Worm Factory has arrived and the worms will be here any day! It only took three days to get here after we ordered it. We quickly opened it up and spread out the pieces.

Our cats were very curious about it. Remember Our cats Macy and Maggie? They show up in our pictures from time to time. Hey cats, get off the table!

We began putting the worm bin together. I had to screw on the legs and attach the tea spigot.

Then came time to test the spigot.

It works! Although next time we use it, the water won't be that clear! All done except for the residents of the worm factory. It also came with paper bedding and a block of coir to add to the bedding. We have to start with only one tray and stack new ones up as the worms and their bedding/compost fill up the first tray.

To keep the basement ants from attacking again, and to prevent neglect, we will be putting this attractive new vermicomposter right next to our table and hutch in the kitchen dining room.

Weird, huh? We are excited. Does this seem strange to you, or are you a vermicomposter too? It will provide wonderful compost as well as conversation when visitors are here!

Anything to keep us thinking of Spring!

Step by Step How to build a Cold Frame

2009-02-22T20:19:00.012-05:00

Last year I posted about the new Cold Frame that I built and I was asked to write a more detailed how-to post. I bought the materials to make another one, but never found time to build it... until now.

Last year's cold frame looked like this:

It was basically a 4'x4' cold frame built by following the plans from one of my favorite books called The New Victory Garden by Bob Thompson.

The new cold frame I built was created in basically the same way but instead of the traditional 48" in depth, I made it 40" so it will fit the raised bed in my new greenhouse. That's the beauty of building your own cold frame - you can tailor make it to fit your needs.

The New Victory Garden was written way back in 1987. It was the first vegetable gardening book that I bought and I learned a whole lot from it! It truly was instrumental in my obsession with veggie gardening. There are many great things in the book including easy to follow plans for how to make a coldframe. I will attempt to explain the steps involved in the remainder of this post, but I'm sure I won't be able to do it as well as Thomson. Let's start with the materials needed:

All you need are some tools, exterior nails or screws, two hinges, a 4' piece of good plastic sheeting, 3 - 8' 2x6 or 2x8 untreated boards, two 8' 2x4s, two 8'a 4' piece of wooden dowel, 10 feet of 1x3" lumber and some furring strips. I'm sure I missed something in that list, but we will go over each step below:

Begin by cutting the 8' 2x8s in half to create six 4' boards:

The boards will basically be arranged like the last panel of the above picture. 4 boards make a box for the bottom layer. One more board goes on top in the back, and the last board gets cut diagonally for the sides.

This is probably the most difficult part of the whole process. Draw a line from one corner to the opposite corner and cut down the line. The way I accomplished this was to clamp it to my table. After the cut is made, you should have two identical diagonal boards.

Next, attach each diagonal piece to one of the side boards with small pieces of the 1x3s. Do the same with the two 4' boards for the back. You can use exterior 3" screws or galvanized nails. I used some of each.

Now that the back and sides have been created, we have to attach them. This is one of my favorite features of the Victory Garden's plan. If you simply nailed the sides together, you would have to build the frame in place because the entire unit would be too heavy to move. This design allows you to easily take apart the frame to move it around or store it.

Each corner is attached by using galvanize eye screws and wooden dowels. You alternate the eye screws in the corners and then slip the dowels in.

Next you build the lid or top of the frame that will be hinged to the frame using 2x4s. The front and back is made from 4' pieces and the sides from whatever length you are making (this frame needed to be 40" total front to back length, so the side pieces were 37"). The most difficult part of this is that the sides need to be cut at an angle so the lid fits securely. The easiest way to do this is by lining up a straight edge with the boards below.

The 4 lid pieces are then attached by nailing through the ends. You might find it easier to use an "L" bracket to line up each corner first.

After the lid is solid, you can attach it to the frame with hinges. Then you can add plastic to the top by stapling it down and nailing furring strips over the plastic.

The thicker the plastic sheeting you use, the better. I used 6 mil greenhouse plastic for this one. Last year I just used plastic from the hardware store and it was probably 4 mil. The book calls for wire fence to be put down first before the sheeting is attached. I did this last year, but didn't think it was necessary for this one. If you do use fencing beneath the plastic, use "U" nails to attach it to the top of the lid.

We're almost finished with our new coldframe now! After you've nailed down the furring strips over the edge of the plastic, trim the excess plastic away. Then you need to measure the middle of the front and drill a hole in it. This will be used to slip a carriage bolt through to attach a post that will allow you to vent the frame when needed.

My finished cold frame looked like this:

All ready to be taken outside and put in the greenhouse. It will soon house tender young plants to help me get a jump on the growing season. If you want to know more about the uses of a cold frame, see my post on Simple Green Frugal Co-Op or visit the library and get some books about it. There are many books available that include ways to use cold frames for season extension. Among my favorites are Four-Season Harvestby Eliot Coleman, Solar Gardening, Growing Vegetables Year Roundby the Poisson's, Gardening Under Plasticby Bernard Salt, and my new favorite where I got our greenhouse plans from - The 12-Month Gardenerby Jeff Ashton.

Now I just have to do more seed sowing! Oh, I almost forgot to mention the final step in building a cold frame - sweep up the saw dust and add to your compost pile :)

Eye Grow: New Fun Gardening toy for kids!

2009-02-19T21:54:00.006-05:00

You never know where you might find a fun garden-related item. I usually start looking at all of the garden centers this time of year to try to find a cure for my Spring Fever. Every once in a while you discover something when and where you're not even looking. This happened to me last weekend when my family went to Michael's craft store because my daughter was looking for something to use on her American Girl Doll website. That's where I found these cool little "Eye Grow" plants at Michael's.

The "heads" are actually a nylon mesh filled with soil. The top of head is contains ryegrass seeds that grow to become the hair.

These remind me of the Chia Pets a little, but I like these Eye Grows better. I think they are more fun for kids because they are pretty cheap and very colorful with big cartoon-like eyes. Each one comes with a sticker sheet of mouths so you can design the expression yourself.

I searched the Internet to find out more about them and found nothing. The company listed on the Eye Grow boxes is Sourcing International. When I searched for Sourcing International, all I found is a site about their Grow-A-Head products. Here is one of the pictures from that site, their grow-a-pets:

I've never seen these before. It's strange that they don't mention their Eye Grow products at all. I couldn't find any references to the eye-grow anywhere on the Internet.

I can't wait to start these growing. I am giving some of them to my niece and nephew, but I will post pictures of the ones we keep as soon as their grass hair has grown out. These are perfect for a little Winter gardening fun. A year or so ago, we had fun with the Magic Sproutz secret message plants in a similar way. Come to think of it, I haven't been able to find those again either.

So what do you think about the Eye Grow plants? Has anyone else seen these? Would you buy them if you saw them, or am I just a big kid for thinking they are cool? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Do Upside Down Tomato Planters Work?

2009-02-16T23:15:00.008-05:00

About fifteen years ago, we moved into our first small house. It had a nice little car-port complete with multiple hooks for hanging plants. The whole neighborhood was the same style house and there were so many beautiful flower arrangements hanging from the end of each carport. We followed suit and hung a few baskets of petunias.

I wasn't very excited about it until I saw a house with more than just hanging flowers. They had a hanging strawberry basketand a hanging container full of herbs. That got me thinking about other edibles you could grow in hanging pots, and before long I had a hanging basket of lettuce. Tomatoes were too big to grow in a hanging pot, but I managed to grow one out of the bottom. It worked pretty well and I was able to grow marigolds in the top part.

I never considered using anything other than a traditional hanging basket, but now there are containers on the market that are designed specifically to grow tomatoes from the bottom. I first saw these a couple years ago but resisted the temptation to buy one... until now!

I now have my very own Topsy Turvy Upside-Down Tomato Planter- as seen on TV even. I don't watch much TV and have never seen any commercials for this product. My daughters laughed when I showed them my new Topsy Turvy Tomato planter. They said, "That will go well in your Tomato Playground. It's like the one on the commericial". I guess it really is seen on TV. Some people are drawn to the "As seen on TV" slogan but I usually shy away from products with that claim. So what do I have with my Topsy Turvy Upside Down Tomato Planter (other than a mouthful title)? Will it work? I think it should work fine. It will be a pretty cool novelty addition to my container garden section this year.

It will be great, according to all that is written on the box. Here is the list of positives they cite:

Grow delicious & Juicy Tomatoes all Season Long

Hangs on Deck, Balcony or Patio (I would add Car-port)

Eliminates Weeding, Caging and Staking

Can Grow Organic Too! (Always)

Also grows other vegetables including Green Bell Peppers, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Eggplant, and more!

How it works:

Uses gravity as a vertical growing advantage

Vertical grow bag heats the plant like a greenhouse so the root system explodes

Gravity pulls the water and nutrients directly to the roots

It features:

Swivel top for easy turning

Simple to set up and maintain

Uses ordinary potting soil

Great for growing your own organic vegetables

UV-resistant, durable materials to last for years

I didn't make all of that up. It is what is written on the back of the box.

The Topsy Turvy isn't the only upside down tomato planter on the market. Look at this funny, but pretty cool Hot Pepper Vertical Grow Bag:

It seems that I am late to this vegetable hanging party. The more research I did, the more I found. The Topsy Tervy people also make a big stand up system called The Upside-down Tomato Garden. Check this out:

That is really cool - and you can grow flowers in the top part like I did so many years ago with my home-made upside down tomato planter.

So what's the verdict with these upside down grow bags? I would love to hear from those of you who have tride them before. Do they work? Do they work better than a "normal" patio container? Did you have fun with them, or were they a hassle to deal with? I will be answering all of these questions this season as I experiment with my Topsy Turvy Tomato bag. I think I will also try to make some home-made upside down tomato planters just for fun.

What do you think? Are they worth a try?

Valentine's Day is for Love... of Tomatoes!

2009-02-14T23:43:00.010-05:00

It has become a tradition now that I start my extra-early tomato varieties on Valentine's Day. After all, tomatoes used to be called "Love Apples" because of the belief that they were a powerful aphrodisiac.

Of course that's not the real reason I start my early tomato seeds on Valentines Day. As I described last year, it is easy for me to remember planting dates based on holidays. One of my major goals each year is to have ripe tomatoes about two months before my neighbors. The normal time around here to pick ripe tomatoes is late July or early August. Last year I harvested my first tomato on June 5th. It took quite a bit of effort to get that to happen. You can read about the entire season's efforts in the early tomato department here.

The goal for the first tomato harvest this year is... May 25th - Memorial Day!

Is that too ambitious? Is it even possible? I really don't know. This year's process for getting extra early will be about the same except now I have a greenhouse with permanent growing beds inside. If the greenhouse helps like I think it can, then Memorial Day is not out of the question. May 25th is exactly 100 days from now. If I can't hit Memorial Day, May 31st will be my secondary goal. I will outline all of the steps I take again this year as I go along. Today however was just the beginning.

Even though I now love using my soil blocker to start seeds, I still use the cell packs for the early tomatoes. I plant one 6-pack for each early variety and I put two or three seeds in each individual cell. Later I will thin to one plant per cell and when it comes time to transplant, I will pick the best plants available. Eventually I will have 2 of each variety to move outside in the greenhouse.

It makes it easy starting with six of each tomato cultivar because I can label the whole cell pack with tape and a marker.

The varieties I started today were Siletz, Sub-Arctic Plenty (World's Earliest), Orange Blossom, 4th of July, Early Girl, and since my new variety Mountain Princess has not arrived yet, I also planted some New Girl.

After covering the seeds with light soil mix, I added some hot water to the tray and put on the clear lid. It fogged up quickly.

I hope I can keep it warm in there so the seeds will germinate quickly. Usually they do pretty well in the Laundry room where the dryer and the furnace keep things toasty.

I plan to keep better records of each variety's progress this year. Last year 4th of July was the first to ripen. I wonder which one will win this year.

The 2009 tomato season has begun. Let the race begin!

Happy Valentine's Day and happy gardening!

Watch Out for Killer Compost!

2009-02-09T00:24:00.001-05:00

That is the title of a report by Cheryl Long and Barbara Pleasant in the new bookazine, Mother Earth News - Guide to Growing Your Own Food.

I just bought this gem a few days ago and I love it. It is filled with great articles about how to garden better. Many great topics like organic pest control, seed starting basics, preserving your harvest and container gardening are covered. I enjoyed them all but this one little half page article jumped out at me most of all.

It documents Dow chemical's marketing of the herbicide Aminopyralid as a control of perennial weeds in horse and cattle pastures. It also spells out how the U.S. EPA has approved it even after a previous Dow chemical herbicide, clopyralied (Confront) was found to be the contaminant in compost that killed garden and nursery plants in Washington, Pennsylvania and New Zealand.

The major problem with Aminopyralied is that Dow's own research showed that Aminopyralid is expected to remain in manure for over a year! Many times there is enough herbicide residue even in the composted manure to kill tomatoes and other vegetable crops. This is a real concern for organic gardeners like me who rely heavily on compost and often acquire manure from elsewhere.

Dow's Aminopyralid was associated with the loss of thousands of home gardens in Great Britain last year! If you are always searching for compost ingredients like me, be careful where you get your manure. The Authors of this piece warn us to ask questions about safety before buying manure or compost that contains manure.

They end the article with these words about this problem: "Alert your friends and local composting facilities - gardeners work too hard to lose their food to corporate greed and government loopholes." I agree! That is why I am doing what they advise by telling all of you - my gardening friends.

Pick up a copy of Mother Earth News - Guide to Growing Your Own Food for more details. The article I'm referencing will make you angry, but the rest of the bookazine will cause you to get excited for the promise of the new season ahead. Just watch out for killer compost!

Thanks Cheryl and Barbara for this warning.

Greenhouse Snow and Ice Removal

2009-01-28T19:53:00.005-05:00

Over the past two days the weather here in Kentucky has been crazy. We received 6 inches of snow, then a half inch of ice and then 5 more inches of snow!

We don't usually get so much snow and ice so we wanted to make sure the greenhouse was okay. Ever since we saw on Throwback At Trapper Creek how snow can collapse a greenhouse structure, we have wondered how our new greenhouse would hold up. There is nothing growing in it yet, and the vents (windows) are still opened to allow the wind to flow through. Unfortunately that means there is no heat being generated to help melt the snow cover.

After the first 6 inches of snow, we could already see that the plastic was beginning to buckle under the weight.

So we decided to knock the snow off and the whole family pitched in.

Overnight the snow turned to freezing rain and ice. In the morning, the hoop house was covered in a half inch sheet of ice.

Again I had to use the broom to clean off the plastic. Removing the ice was easier because in broke into big pieces and slid right off.

Just about the time I finished with the ice, the snow picked up again at the rate of 2 inches per hour! When it finally stopped we visited the greenhouse a third time. By now the pile of snow and ice was getting pretty large. Luckily I had plenty of help clearing it away...

... as well as removing the rest of the ice.

After the work was done, there was plenty of time for fun!

Is it Spring yet?

Tomato Playground Part 2

2009-01-22T17:10:00.006-05:00

In my last post, I listed 5 fun things I am planning for my tomato garden this year (other than eating lots of tomatoes). Here is the list again:

See how big I can grow a tomato.

See how early I can produce a ripe tomato.

Grow at least 7 different colors of tomatoes.

See if I can grow a 15 foot tall tomato vine.

Make some time-lapse videos of tomato plants growing.

The first two were explained in that post, but now let me explain the others.

Number three is simply to grow many different colors of tomatoes - a tomato rainbow of sorts. Last year I accomplished this with my cherry tomatoes.

I grew several colors of full size tomatoes as well but they ripen at different times. I never really got a good picture of all the different colors together. This year I plan to pay more attention to the number of days it takes for each variety to mature, and have some of the plants timed to ripen together.

The next silly thing on my list is to grow really tall tomato vines. Climbing Triple Crop tomato is supposed to grow 15 feet tall. I have seen pictures in magazines of tomatoes growing on lattice up the side of a two-story house and thought that was interesting. My Chinese Red Noodle beans reached the top of my 8 foot trellis last year, so I had planned to build a new 10 to 12 foot tall trellis for them this year. Now I will extend that trellis for these tomato plants.

I plan to build these trellises with PVC pipe similar to what I used on my cinder block raised beds last year.

I love growing veggies vertically, so this trellis system may get a little complicated. I will write much more about it when the time comes.

The last thing on my list is to produce some time lapse videos. This idea has been brewing for over a year now. My nine to five job is at a video production company, so I'm not lacking the know-how. The difficulty will be in the discipline to regularly take the shots or the video. I want to make a wide shot time lapse of the whole vegetable garden as well as one of a single tomato plant from sprout to full grown. More to come on this as well.

A bonus idea for my tomato playground will be to grow some as hanging plants. I want to make something similar to the topsy turvy upside down tomato planter, or the hanging tomato baskets. Last year I saved some fending and big seed sacks for this purpose, but I haven't yet worked out the details of how to make this.

So those are my ~~five~~ six odd tomato goals. What about you? Please tell me that I am not alone in having strange goals and experiments in the garden. Do you ever do things other than planting, tending and harvesting the vegetables? Several things come to my mind other than these tomato tricks. Have you ever tried for giant veggies, grown cucumbers is a bottle or forced squash into a "face mold"? Are you going to try any of these crazy things this year? Please give me more ideas!

I think it makes things more interesting to garden for food and fun. Do you?

Tomato Gardening is my Playground!

2009-01-20T12:24:00.003-05:00

My last post about growing 35 different tomato varieties attracted some great comments which made me realize that many of you out there think I'm crazy. Chris actually called me nuts, but then he added that it was in a good way. Alan who is an actual farmer seemed to think I was being wasteful. He was very nice but in a normal way of thinking, he is right.

When it comes to tomatoes however, I don't think normally. I wanted to take a few moments here to explain my oddity. Tomato gardening is my playground. Not only do I love eating massive amounts of tomatoes, but I love growing them and trying crazy things with them. This year I have 5 fun tomato growing goals:

See how big I can grow a tomato.

See how early I can produce a ripe tomato.

Grow at least 7 different colors of tomatoes.

See if I can grow a 15 foot tall tomato vine.

Make some time-lapse videos of tomato plants growing.

Let me explain these endeavours a bit more. The first one was simply growing a giant tomato. Last year two of my tomato fruits weighed in at almost 2 pounds.

I didn't do anything to promote this, but supposedly there are things you can do to help increase fruit size. You can allow each plant a lot of growing space and compost. You can pick off all but one or two fruits when they are small to put all of the plants energy into the remaining fruit (talk about wasteful - but fun). It also helps to grow varieties that have the ability to become large. Two of my selections from Baker Creek this year are for this purpose. Delicious produces 1 to 3 pound fruits. Someone once broke the world record with this variety by growing a 7 lb 12 oz. tomato! Another potential giant is Omar's Lebanese, a pink pink tomato that promises 2 - 3 pound fruits.

#2 was to see how early I can harvest a ripe tomato. This is a game I've been playing for a couple of years now. I live in northern Kentucky, zone 6a, where main season tomatoes are harvested in late July/early August. In 2007 I got my first ripe tomato on June 15th. Last year, I put the plants outside earlier and added a makeshift greenhouse tent to protect them.

That helped me beat the previous year by ten days as I picked my first ripe tomato on June 5th.This year, since I now have a real greenhouse to help me, I hope to get ripe tomatoes in May!

I would like to further explain the other 3 goals, but this post is getting a bit lengthy and it is getting pretty late. I will save it for my next post. Hopefully after explaining the fist two goals, you can better understand that I grow tomatoes for food, and for fun!

Do you still think I'm crazy?

Is Growing 35 different tomatoes this year too many?

2009-01-14T17:34:00.005-05:00

I really appreciate all of the suggestions I received in the comments on my previous post about what new heirloom tomatoes to try. I really did take them into consideration and choose a number of them to try this year. It has been a really hard decision. Matron's comment said it best with her statement "There are just too many varieties to choose from!!"

Every year while it's cold outside, I like to plan the upcoming garden out on paper and choose what varieties to grow - almost like you would choose what players to have on your team. I want to assemble a championship team like those competing this weekend in The NFL conference championship playoffs. In the NFL they have a 53 man roster, so I should have 53 tomato varieties right? If only I had room for that many. I have narrowed down this year's tomato team to 35 varieties, so let me announce my starting lineup:

A football team consists of different player position groups; lineman, running backs, receivers, defensive backs etc. My tomato team is also arranged in different groups.

All of these are heirloom varieties except for six. The hybrids are designated with an (H) after their name.

First up are the early tomatoes. This is a big passion of mine so this group is heavily represented. They are:

Returning from last year,

Siletz

Sub Arctic Plenty

Orange Blossom

4th of July(H)

Early Girl(H)

This year's rookie is "New Mountain Princess" from Baker Creek, chosen because it can be ripe in 45 days.

The next group is your normal "Red" tomato category which is what has managed to stick around even with the wonderful other colors and flavors added. Also returning from last year:

Celebrity(H)

Burpee Super Beefsteak(H)

Park's Whopper(H)

Delicious

And the rookie in this category is "Climbing Triple Crop" from Pinetree Seeds because it can grow up to 15 feet tall. Cool!

The next position group is the Pink tomatoes:

Brandywine (my all time favorite)

Pink Flamingo

Caspian Pink - recommended by Connie on my last post

Mortgage Lifter - recommended by Kelli Simone

Omar Lebanese - new this year because it is supposed to produce mammoth 3 to 4 pound tomatoes!

The Orange tomatoes this year will be:

Kentucky Beefsteak

Pineapple - recommended by Connie

Persimmon - recommended by Throwback at Trapper Creek

Garden Peach - recommended by Jen and Janet

and Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge, which looks really cool.

Black/Purple Tomatoes will be represented by:

Black Krim - the veteran in my garden

Black Brandywine - invited because I love pink Brandywine

Prudens Purple - recommended by Happy Girl

Japanese Black Trifele - recommended by Patrick and Melinda Are they really pear shaped?

Starting for the Yellow Tomatoes:

Yellow Brandywine - mentioned by Harmony

Dixie Golden Giant

Lemon Boy(H) - for my Father-in-Law

The Green (even when ripe) Tomatoes this year will be two returning favorites:

Aunt Ruby's German Green

Green Zebra

Small but powerful - The Cherry Tomatoes:

Sweet Million(H) - Red

Sun Sugar - Orange

Aunt Ruby's German Cherry - Green

Black Cherry - Black mentioned by Melinda

Finally, last and least - this year's White Tomato:

White Tomesol - the punter on my tomato team.

Wow, I'm exhausted now! There you have it - 35 tomato varieties. The re-cap:

28 Heirlooms

7 Hybrids

6 Early Tomatoes

5 Red Tomatoes

5 Pink Tomatoes

5 Orange Tomatoes

4 Black/Purple Tomatoes

3 Yellow Tomatoes

2 Green Tomatoes

And a White tomato in a Green Garden!

I am also trying 11 kinds that I have never seen and listened to nine of you from my last post's comments. Thank you to everyone who made suggestions.

So, is 35 too many? Too few? How many different varieties are you going to try? Are you growing more than just red tomatoes? Heirlooms or Hybrids?

I can never get enough tomato talk!

Looking for new "strange but good" heirloom tomatoes

2009-01-09T12:01:00.002-05:00

If you have visited my blog in the past, you probably know that I am addicted to tomatoes. I'm sure my wife wishes that I could stop with that statement because she too loves tomatoes. Unfortunately for her, I also have an unusual fascination for wierd tomatoes - the stranger the better, as long as they still have great flavor.

Eating plain red tomatoes is a bit boring to me. I would rather my BLT look something like this:

or this:

The first picture featured Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes and they are fantastic! The second picture was a new heirloom variety that I tried last year called Kentucky Beefsteak. Since I live in Kentucky, I am particularly proud of it. It boasts tasty large orange fruits.

Of course my all time favorite unusual colored tomato is Black Krim. It isn't exactly black in color, but look at them in comparison to the red Roma tomatoes:

Another new unusual heirloom tomato from last year was Green Zebra:

It has great flavor and the markings make it very interesting to look at. I do wish it produced larger fruits though. Here it is plated with red Brandywine (the king of flavor) and Black Krim:

Not every wild and wacky variety that I try turns out to be great. This is why I think my wife gets aggravated with my obsession. For every variety that "makes the team" there are two or three that don't get invited back. Last season's disappointments included the White Tomatoes. How cool is a white tomato? Unfortunately when you take all the pigment out of a tomato, some of the tomato flavor goes with it. They do look cool though:

The above picture is Great White and the below picture is White Tomesol:

Actually, to be fair, the flavor is still good but pretty different. I may still grow some this year, even if for no other reason than the novelty of it.

So this year I am perusing the seed catalogs and seed company website in search of more "strange but good" heirloom tomatoes. My keeper list from years past include Brandywine, Black Krim, Orange Blossom, Ky Beefsteak, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Kellogg's Breakfast and possibly White Tomelsol. A clear winner in the Pink Tomato varieties have yet to surface.

So help me out - am I missing out on a truly great heirloom tomato variety? What is your favorite? Least Favorite? What should I be looking for for my new rookie sensation this year? I'm a bit worried. I have successfully found worthy varieties to join the rooster each year, but I'm not sure about this year.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Doesn't this make you crave a garden fresh BLT?

Today is one of my favorite days in the garden season!

2008-12-18T21:59:00.010-05:00

I would have to say that my favorite day in the garden is the first ripe tomato of the season. My second favorite day just might be today - the day the new Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog arrives!

As I stated last year, Baker Creek is my favorite seed company AND my favorite catalog. This year's catalog is even bigger than last year! It is full of rare and unique heirloom seeds. There are detailed descriptions and loads of beautiful color pictures!

You definitely know what you are getting when you order from them. I never get the feeling that they are hiding anything or are trying to make their varieties sound better than they really are. Everything that I have grown from them has done well and has grown just as they describe. Their 2 foot long Chinese Red Noodle Beans were amazing. Baker Creek helped me grow many colors of heirloom tomatoes - red, yellow, orange, green, black and white. This was fun to do in the full size tomatoes as well as with the cherry tomatoes.

If you are not yet familiar with Baker Creek, you really should visit their website. They are located in Missouri but have collected heirloom seeds from around the world. The owners of the company are Gere and Emily Gettle and they are great people. Here they are pictured in the front of the catalog with their daughter Sasha:

I was lucky enough to meet them because another cool thing about them is that they host many garden festivals at their site. They have built a whole little town called Bakersville to host these occasions. My family and I drove about 12 hours just to attend the Spring Planting Festival earlier this year and we had a wonderful time. I posted about our trip when we returned home. In that post, I put on a record 30 pictures of the Baker Creek Festival! You can see that post here.

I would love to go again this year - maybe to their end of summer harvest festival!

Well, I better end this post so I can start looking at this new Baker Creek Catalog! How will I decide what to buy? I think the size of the garden will have to be doubled again this year!

I can already tell that I'm going to like this year's edition even better than the previous years because their are several pictures of little Sasha with the veggies.

How cute - and have you ever seen such big cabbage heads?

Garden Fresh Thanksgiving Produce!

2008-11-26T22:12:00.000-05:00

I finally reached a goal that I have been striving for - fresh organic vegetables from the garden for Thanksgiving. The stoop houses worked and I picked loads of broccoli and four heads of cabbage a couple days ago. I know those aren't traditional Thanksgiving veggies but fresh coleslaw and broccoli casserole will go nicely with potatoes from the garden, turkey and all the other trimmings.

We have had an unusually cold November this year. It sure was strange picking from the garden the other day when it was only 12 degrees Fahrenheit outside!

Look at the ice buildup on our newly constructed greenhouse:

The greenhouse is not any warmer inside than outside because I never finished building the vents. Right now the bottom 2 feet along the sides are still exposed and there are several opened windows. I need to fix that soon so I can use the greenhouse this winter and early spring.

Luckily the temperature under the small hoop houses is higher than in the greenhouse and the outside. It has stayed warm enough to keep the broccoli and cabbage from freezing.

See the water droplets on top of the broccoli? Those are actually little beads of ice.

The only casualty under the stoop houses was the lettuce. It still looked good, but after picking it and bringing it inside, I could tell that it had been frozen. For lettuce harvesting now, we will have to turn to our indoor lettuce growing under lights.

It is a little extra work keeping the garden going in the Fall and in the cold, but its worth it! I've got cabbage and broccoli ready to be prepared tomorrow along with the other Thanksgiving goodies!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Building Stoop Houses to help with Frost Protection

2008-11-09T19:05:00.007-05:00

In last week's post I showed you my broccoli plants and this week the heads have continued getting larger. We have been lucky enough to have no frost this week, so the leaves have not been damaged any further.

The Cabbage and lettuce beds are also looking great.

Frost is coming back tonight however, and we are in for a very cold week or longer. If I keep only using the row covers over the broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and lettuce, the season will finally be over.

I don't want harvest season to end, so today I put up more hoops and plastic sheeting to make mini greenhouses. In The 12-Month Gardener, Jeff Ashton calls this type of frost protection a "Stoop House".

That name is appropriate because to tend to the vegetables, you lift up the side of the plastic and "stoop" down.

How to Make a Simple Stoop House:

My raised beds are framed with untreated 4x6 lumber and are four feet wide. Ten foot PVC pipes bend over the four foot span to make nice hoops. The key to doing this is providing a way to attach the pipe. I used 3/4" diameter pipe and attached pipe brackets to the outside of the raised beds.

I found it to work best if I put two brackets per pipe on each side. The top bracket was the 3/4" size and the bottom one was the 1" size. This kept the arch at the correct angle.

After getting the brackets attached, I slip one side of the pipe in.

Then I bend it down and slip it in the brackets on the other side. A pipe should be place every three to four feet. One of my stoop houses is covering a 4 foot by 12 foot bed and the other covers two beds that are four by four.

After the hoops were up, I put the row covers back on to add a second layer of protection.

Then I put the 6 mil plastic sheeting on. Greenhouse plastic is best, but I just used normal plastic sheeting from the hardware store. I have greenhouse plastic I could use because I bought extra when we built our greenhouse last month. I'm saving that plastic to expand the actual greenhouse next season. Besides, these stoop houses are temporary and will work just as well with regular plastic.

I staple the plastic directly to the wood frame on one side.

I only staple to one side, not the other or the ends. That way I can easily vent one side or take the plastic completely off during sunny days. You don't want to keep the plants completely covered on sunny days because the hoop house can quickly heat up and damage or kill the plants. Remember, these stoop houses contain cold-tolerant vegetables. The main purpose of these mini greenhouse poly tunnels is to keep frost off of the plants. At least until it gets really cold, I will probably pull back the plastic each morning, and batten down the hatches every evening. This is what the stoophouses will look like every night:

I sure hope they work. I want to be able to still be eating fresh salads and broccoli in December.

I'm back!

2008-11-05T14:07:00.003-05:00

If you tried to come to this site in the past day and a half, you noticed that it was down. Sorry about that. There was a major problem with my DNS control ip address registered with the domain name. It wasn't able to talk to blogger and redirect my blogspot pages to gardendesk.

Hopefully it is back now.

It has made me look into some other things though, and I think I will be migrating this site to typepad along with Veggie Garden Info. I haven't been able to add to veggiegardeninfo.com for some time now due to a problem that I can't seem to solve with wordpress. If I move it to typepad as well, I can resume adding content and links to all the great garden blogs out there. I understand typepad fairly well now thanks to my 14 year old daughter who has a site about American Girl dolls hosted there.

See, when us old people can't figure out computer issues, it always works to turn to a teenager who has had the Internet all of her life. My daughter will help me get everything squared away!

Anyway, enough with the rambling. It was awful having gardendesk down. I'm glad its back. Sorry for the inconvenience. The next post will be about gardening again :)

Fall Gardening Continues

2008-11-02T18:45:00.004-05:00

This week the weather is going to be nice, but last week's low temperatures got down in the 20s. I have been keeping everything covered with row covers.

The hoops are there to put plastic over when it gets really cold. I still need to cut a piece of greenhouse plastic to go on them.

This is one of the beds that broccoli is growing in.

I did cover the hoops with a small piece of plastic and sheets on the coldest nights, but we have had frost several other nights with just the row cover as protection. The broccoli florettes still look good, but some of the leaves were damaged by the frost.

A few of the broccoli heads are large enough to pick now, but there are others that still need a week or so. Next weekend we will undoubtedly be eating fresh broccoli and broccoli casserole. Hopefully, there will still be plenty left at the end of the month as well for Thanksgiving. Yum!

Picking Carrots, Planting Potato Onions

2008-10-26T21:25:00.003-04:00

Today was a beautiful Fall day here in Kentucky. I cut the grass for the last time this season and cleaned up sticks and leaves. I also was able to work on the greenhouse a bit more.

My younger daughter came outside about when I was finishing up and asked if there was any gardening that she could do. Of course there is always something to do in a four-season vegetable garden, so she got to work picking lettuce and carrots.

Then, together we got a growing bed ready by adding compost and turning the soil over. Here, she planted some more garlic and potato onions.

Not many people are familiar with potato onions. If you like onions and have never grown potato onions, I strogly suggest that you look for some to try. They are a bunching onion similar to shallots, but they actually produce round bulbs. Here is what they look like while they are growing.

Last year was the first time we grew them and they were great. We ate them just as we eat regular onions. They are even easier to grow than regular bulb onions. They are planted in the Fall, and sprout in the Spring about the same time that daffadils do. They aren't harvested until mid to late Summer. It is a long time from planting the bulbs to harvest, but other than watering, he gardener has nothing to do for them. The potato onions that we grew are an heirloom variety so any bulbs not eaten can be planted again in October for the following season. That is what we did today and I can hardly wait to harvest them next summer.

It is really great to see garlic and potato onions growing tall and green in early Spring. For our vegetable garden, that has become the official beginning of the new growing season. It'll be here before you know it.

First Fall Frosts; Gardening Continues!

2008-10-21T15:37:00.005-04:00

Our first Fall frost hit pretty much on schedule, and now three out of the last four nights we have seen heavy frost.

For my friends and neighbors who have a vegetable garden, this marks the absolute end of the season as they peer out at their now dead tomato plants.

For me however, vegetable gardening continues. Frost simply marks the beginning of an exciting Fall garden. This weekend my family transplanted the last of our broccoli and cauliflower plants, planted garlic and potato onions and harvested lettuce and other greens. My daughter enjoyed planting the garlic.

We have lots of cabbage and broccoli coming on, but full heads won't be ready for another week or so.

Our best Fall garden success so far has been with salad crops. In just a couple 4x4 square foot beds we have been picking all the salad we can eat for the past month, and hope to continue for at least another month.

Lettuce, greens and Brassicas all grow well when it is cool. Many gardeners raise them in the Spring but don't think of growing them in the Fall. Now that it is freezing at night though, the trick is to keep the plants from freezing. This week it is only getting down into the thirties, so covering them with row covers is enough protection.

Soon I will cover the beds with hoops and plastic or cold frames for added protection. The last of the lettuce transplants will be planted inside the insulated greenhouse beds to hopefully extend salad season into December.

Growing vegetables in the Fall and Winter is a little extra work, but I think it is worth it. It was pretty neat being out in the garden in the cool air this weekend as the Canadian Geese sang above me on their journey south.

The geese show that nature is getting ready for Winter, so I must ready my garden for it as well.

How about you? Those of you who are also headed into the cold season, do you continue growing or harvesting in the Fall and Winter? All tips and pointers are welcome.

Garbage Can Potato Harvest!

2008-10-15T11:09:00.006-04:00

I like to try new things in the garden. Every year I find new things to grow and new methods to try. One of the "experiments" this year was trying to maximize yield by growing potatoes in a garbage can. I have been receiving many questions about the status of these potatoes. Well, we finally knocked over the can to see if it worked.

The idea is that you plant the seed potatoes down in the bottom of the can. As the plants grow, you fill more soil around them. Eventually, the can is filled to the top with soil and the plants are growing out of the top like this:

With proper nutrients and moisture, the potato plants send out new tuber growth all along the buried stems. The hope is that at harvest time, the garbage can would be filled with potatoes. You can see my first two posts about this idea here and here.

So it is finally time to harvest these garbage can potatoes. Here we go:

Wow, looks great doesn't it?

I could stop with the above pictures and say that everyone should switch to this method, but I won't. I always say that the purpose of this blog is to document happenings in my organic garden - to report what works and what doesn't.

Writing about what works is more fun, but this potato can actually didn't work very well. Here is a picture of the complete harvest:

That's not any more than I would have gotten if I had just planted these potato plants in the ground. So what happened?

First of all, I had four or five plants growing out of the can in the first picture of this post. All but one plant died in July. This is what the can looked like before I knocked it over:

All of these puny little potatoes might have come from this one plant. The bigger problem I think I had was that the plants didn't get enough water. When I try it again next year (and I will), I think I should change my soil mix. This mix was mostly compost, peat and regular garden soil. Next year I will add sand and have much bigger drainage holes at the bottom of the can. I want to be able to water more often and more thoroughly without the worry of being too wet.

What about you? Do you have any ideas about how to make this concept work? I know it can work. We have done it before on a smaller scale. My daughter had success with this last year with potatoes in her garden bed by enclosing two plants with wood and raising the soil around them. I know other gardeners who have raised potatoes like this in tires and even in garbage cans. What is the secret? If you have had success with this, please let us know. I know I've read about this on other good blogs but I don't remember where. If you have posted about this, please share the link for us. And if you haven't written about it, but have had some success with potato growing like this, please give us some tips.

I'm sorry to say that I am not an expert on this yet (obviously), but together I think we can perfect this method. It does work - but how?

Simple Green Frugal Co-op

2008-10-13T00:54:00.004-04:00

I am excited to announce a new co-operative blog being put together by Rhonda at Down to Earth called simple | green | frugal co-op

Simple Green Frugal is by a group of writers from around the world who focus on simple, green and frugal issues from a variety of experiences and viewpoints.

I am honored to be one of the writers. Come check it out!

Why we built our poly tunnel hoop house

2008-10-09T23:20:00.004-04:00

I have wanted to have some kind of a greenhouse for the past 15 years but to buy a pre-built greenhouse that is big enough to turn around in costs many thousands of dollars. We have found that with many home improvement projects, it is much cheaper if you can do it yourself. So for the past year or so, I have been researching how to build your own greenhouse. I read many books and magazines and these are my favorite books about building a greenhouse, hoop house or poly tunnel and how to use them after they are built:

Some books speak only of how to use a greenhouse structure but the best are those that teach all of that AND a way to actually construct a hoop house. Through my long search, I have whittled the books down from dozens to my favorite four. They are Four-Season Harvestby Eliot Coleman, Solar Gardening, Growing Vegetables Year Roundby the Poisson's, Gardening Under Plastic by Bernard Salt, and my new favorite where I got our greenhouse plans from - The 12-Month Gardenerby Jeff Ashton. These four books convinced me that I MUST have a greenhouse.

Using row covers, cloches and cold frames for a few years showed me that I could extend the growing season in the Spring and Fall. A Poly Tunnel is one step further in that direction. Consider what Eliot Coleman's wife Barbara Damrosch wrote in the Forward of his book. Damrosch is an expert in her own right and I love the way she writes. After explaining the harsh conditions that each season hits the gardener with, she says how we can overcome those things with cold frames and a hoop house. She writes "Imagine, instead, a scenario in which spring work begins more gradually, summer spares time for other outdoor pleasures, fall is a gearing-up rather than a giving-up, and winter, best of all, is a time to reap a fresh harvest with almost no work." Yes, Barbara, that is what I want! And with the tough economic times we are in, my family needs to grow much more of our own food.

Speaking of economics, what did our greenhouse cost? We put much more wood in the end walls than you have too, which raised our cost. Even still, I got all the materials for a 14 foot by 24 foot greenhouse including an exhaust fan and professional greenhouse plastic for around a thousand dollars. It probably could have been done for much cheaper but we wanted a permanent structure. (The dimensions of our greenhouse in the previous post are 14x12, not 14x24. We will build the 2nd half next year after the retaining wall is constructed.)

The design we used from Jeff Ashton's book originally came from an organic farmer named Steve Painter. Painter built his greenhouse in 1970 and other than changing the plastic and a little maintenance, the structure is still the same to this day! How's that for permanent?

Okay, so exactly what can you achieve with a poly tunnel? Bernard Salt lists many advantages in Gardening Under Plastic.He says spring is 6 weeks early and winter is 4 weeks later, bedding plants are grown very cheaply, half hardy perennials survive the winter, flowers are not damaged by wind storms, animals can not get to the crops, tender crops are more easily grown, and rain doesn't stop the gardener from gardening.

Eliot Coleman states that putting a layer of protection over a crop is like moving that spot a growing zone and a half warmer. For me that means our tunnel takes us from zone 6 to zone 7.5 (if there were such a thing). What's beautiful about this is that I plan to have a smaller plastic covered hoop over the inside growing bed, which will take that bed to zone 9. We're talking Florida temperatures here in Northern Kentucky! That's why I'm hopeful that we can keep things growing in the winter.

Since we just built our greenhouse and haven't been able to see any of these benefits yet, here are my two favorite things about it so far; My daughters really like it...

and it looks really good next to the garden.

Here we are digging potatoes with the hoop house in the background.

By the way, we finally tipped over our potato garbage can so I will be writing about it soon. The girls had fun with that too. It is so great to garden together as a family!

Greenhouse Almost Finished!

2008-10-07T07:14:00.003-04:00

My wife and I literally worked all weekend to get our new greenhouse built.

It was much more involved than I thought it would be. There is still a little more work to do but we are very excited to have the plastic completely covering it now. It is 14 feet wide and 12 feet long, but next year we will expand it to 24 feet long. I am calling it a greenhouse because the book that I got the idea from calls it that. Also, the plastic covering is called "greenhouse plastic". This kind of structure could also call this a poly tunnel or maybe even a hoop house.

Instead of explaining the whole construction process here, why don't I just show some quick pictures? Later I will write a more comprehensive "how to" post if anyone is interested.

I think from the previous post, I left you here, with the PVC pipes being put in place:

Even before that phase, we first had to make a spot to put the green house. We wanted to put it in front of the garden by the fence where the early tomatoes were last year, and the kid's garden was the year before that. This spot was too narrow so my wife had a great idea to build a retaining wall to extend the space out another 6 to 8 feet! We had to move a lot of dirt to back fill the wall, but it worked out well. Later we will finish the other half of the wall and fill it too.

This wall created the perfect footprint for our new structure.

We had to drive metal stakes in the ground at each corner and every 4 feet in the middle and then cut them to the right height.

Is that straight? After the metal pipes were secured, I put the big PVC pipes over them.

Here's a picture of my wife consulting the book at this point to see what the next step would be. We got this particular style greenhouse idea from a great book by Jeff Ashton, called The 12-Month Gardener: Simple Strategies for Extending Your Growing Season. I plan to buy a copy because it also has a lot of great cold frame and cloche ideas. More on the book later.

After the PVC pipes were secure, we had to frame up the ends with 2x4s and add pipe supports to the wood and the PVC hoops. In the above picture, I am putting tape over the wire used to tie everything together in order to protect the plastic sheeting.

My daughters came out to check on the progress and decided to come on in. After the walls were finished and everything secured, we stretched and stapled the plastic on the end walls.

After the end walls were done, it was time to tackle the top plastic sheeting.

My wife and one daughter lifted it up to me while my other daughter took the pictures.

We got it put in place, used about 1,000 staples connecting it to the framework, and trimmed off the excess.

We finished just before the sun went down. At this point, the outside temperature was about 65 degrees. Inside the greenhouse it rose to 100 degrees! I still need to install an exhaust fan and get vent windows put together to control the inside temperature but I am encouraged by the fast temperature rise. I built insulated raised beds in half of this polytunnel and we plan to grow salad crops in there all Fall and Winter and then start many early plants in the Spring.

We have more to learn about how to care for plants inside a greenhouse, so any advice is welcome.

Happy Fall Gardening!