Early tomatoes

My tomato plants look magnificent, but with our continued cool and cloudy weather they are being slow to set fruit. Nevertheless, we have started harvesting our first ripe tomatoes.  The winners for first ripe fruit this year are Flamme and Bloody Butcher.  Of the 60 plus varieties I am growing this year, there are a few that I am likely to strike off the list for next year.  At the top of the list is Argentina.  I am growing 4 plants of this variety, 3 in the garden and one in the green house.  All of the plants have the curious feature of having mostly brown and drying leaves on the lower half of the plant.

Brrrr

We are approaching the end of an exceptionally cold and rainy June. Even with the shelter of a hoop-
house covered with row-cover fabric my tomatoes are having a hard time setting fruit.  The varieties that have managed to set fruit thus far include –

Slava

Bonnie Best
Brad’s Black Heart
Box Car Willie
Flamme
Marmande

Loading the Ark

We have had rain 28 of the last 30 days, and no end in sight. Seeds are rotting in the ground for many of my plantings,  This could be the worst year ever for tomatoes, but so far, they are doing OK, pampered as they are with black poly at their base and row cover overhead.

Planting Tomatoes

I spent this Memorial day 3-day week-end finishing putting tomato plants out in the garden. The plants are planted through 3-mil black polyethylene, and covered with Agribon+ AG-19 Row Cover, layed over 10′ hoops of 1/2″ steel conduit.  Here is what I planted – (63 heirloom varieties in all).


Ananais Noir 

Anna Russian

Argentina
Aunt Ginnies Purple
Baselbieter Roeti
Besser
Black Cherry
Black Krim
Black Pear
Bloody Butcher
Bonnie Best
Box  Car Willie
Brad’s Black Heart
Burrakers Favorite
Bush Beefsteak
Camp Joy
Carmello
Coyote
Cuostralee
De Barao
Delicious
Earl of Edgecomb
Early Wonder
Flamme
Forme de Couer
Fred Limbaugh
Gill’s All purpose
Green Zebra
Holland
Ilses Yellow Latvian
Impulse
Italian Tree
Kimberly
Koralik
Manitoba
Marglobe
Marmande
Mexico
Money Maker
Mule Team
Napoli
Neves Azorean
Nyagous
Old German
Panatero Romanesco
Pink Ponderosa
Porter
Purple Russian
Red Pear
Riviera
Russian Roma
Rutgers
Saint Lucie
Salisaw Café’
San Marzano Redorta
Sasha’s Altaio
Sausage
Sebastopol
Slava
St. Pierre
Stupice
Tigerella
Wisconsin 55

Late late Spring

Last Spring was the coldest wettest Spring on record.  This Spring is worst.  April 19 is the average date of last frost in this area.  This year we had a hard frost on May 10.  This on top of record-breaking rainfall.  Now, however, real Spring has started like someone threw a switch.  Day-time temperatures are hovering around 80 and sunshine is forecast every day for the next week.  Now that the soil is dry enough it is a real race to get the garden planted.  Anticipating that planting date would be late, I started a lot of plants in pots in my greenhouse. This includes cucumbers, summer and winter squash varieties and even corn.  Here is one of my darling baby cucumber seedlings.

Potting Soil

Although it is still spitting snow in this cruddy Pacific Northwest La Nina Spring, it is time to get tomatoes seedlings started.  Last year I had a major disaster using commercial potting soil.  There is virtually no regulation of what can be sold as potting soil, and the quality of commercial potting soils, especially at the low price end of the market, is incredibly variable.  Even for reputable commercial producers of potting soil, quality control can be problematic. Commercial potting soils typically contain compost made from home yard waste.  Home gardeners are notorious for using huge quantities of herbicides such as Weed-n-Feed.  If your potting soil contains significant quantities of Weed-n-Feed, guess what – your plants are going to die.  I experienced exactly that last year when every tomato seedling transplanted into 4 inch pots containing a particular batch of commercial potting soil died.  I lost 500 plants. Disasters like this could probably be avoided, or at least minimized, by buying premium brands of potting soil, but the price for these products is prohibitive.

Enough of that, from today forward I am producing my own potting soil.  This isn’t a simple matter, however, because recipes for potting soil are hugely variable, and there is almost no reliable information available about how they compare in performance.  Comparing about 20 recipes from different sources, I have come up with a consensus recipe.

Potting soils generally have three types of ingredients.
1) Organic matter, to provide aeration and moisture retention.  Good sources of organic matter include sphagnum moss, coir (coconut fiber) and compost.
2) Materials to promote drainage, including vermiculite, perlite, and sand.
3) Lime.  Organic matter, and especially sphagnum (peat) moss is extremely acidic (typically pH 3). Addition of lime is required to bring the pH up to near neutrality (pH 6-7).
4) Fertilizer.  The main requirements for fertility are nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, typically given as a nitrogen-phosphate-potassium percentage ( for example a 4-10-1 fertilizer is, by weight, 4% nitrogen, 10% phosphate and 1 percent potassium.  A good ratio of the three components for vegetable is 1:2:1. I am not a stickler for staying strictly organic, but I like to go the organic route when I can. Blood meal is a widely available organic source of Nitrogen.  The stuff I have is 13-0-0. Bone meal is commonly used for phosphate.  My supply is 3-15-0.  Wood ash is a good source of potassium, and since I sometimes heat my house with a wood-stove, it is free.  Wood ash typically has a nutrient composition of 0-1-3.

An optional additional ingredient is garden soil.  This will increase water retention, and will provide some additional fertility, especially in the form of micronutrients that may be lacking in the other components. 

Here is my recipe-

1 part soil (sterilized)
1 part sand
1 part composted horse manure (sterilized)
1 part peat moss

And for each 5 gallons of this mix, add 1 cup lime, 1/2 cup blood meal, 1 cup bone meal and 3 cups wood ash.
The garden soil and the composted manure are sterilized by baking in my home oven at 200 degrees, until a temperature of 180 degrees F is reached.  You may worry that baking manure will smell, but my horse manure has been aged for 2 full years, so it is completely odorless. The sterilized manure and soil is passed through a coarse sieve to remove rocks and sticks.
The ingredients are thoroughly mixed in a wheel barrow using a hoe, and then stored until needed.  Because I raise horses, I have a large supply of bags that originally contained 50 lbs of grain.  The bags are high-density polyethylene – perfect for storing potting soil.
Here is garden soil baking in my oven.

Monsoon

We have had 48 hours of continuous rain, over 6 inches total.  The veg garden is a mire, hardly conducive to doing any Spring prep work.  Spring beckons, nevertheless, so today I seeded a 50-cell flat with celery, spinach and coriander. It will sit indoors on a warming mat for a few days, until the first sprouts appear, after which it will move to the greenhouse.

Looking ahead to tomato season, I ordered 150 recycled 1 gallon plastic pots from Nursery Pot Liquidators on eBay.  Their price is terrific and from my experience with them last year, I expect the quality to be good.

My garden calendar says that today is the time to seed a variety of vegetables indoors, for transplant later into the garden.  Hmmm – that doesn’t seem right, since we just had 18″ of snow, and more is forecast.  Oh well, what the hell.  Seeded the following in a flat, on a heating pad –

Early cabbage
Early red cabbage
Flat leaf parsley
Black Tuscan Kale
Romaine Lettuce
Early globe onions
Bunching Onions
Leeks
Red Sail Lettuce

Manure with a backstory

Growing vegetables in nutrient-poor mountain clay soil would be impossible without loads of well-rotted horse manure.  If you want to learn more about the source of this manure, read my wife’s memoir about life on High & Dry Farm, Horses Never Lie About Love, recently published by Simon and Schuster.