Mid-week musings from an early morning walkaround

In a few hours we are off to the airport to retrieve our daughter Sara (she who provided this new website for me to use) - first time we will have her here in a year and a half.  We can't wait.

Deer.  arggh - they are really good at eventually finding weaknesses in the motion detector sprinkler coverage. BrandyFred and Dwarf Beauty King were the two targets....some nibbles, but the plants will recover.

an interesting irony - the hardest tomatoes to germinate using my typical process is Mexico Midget. Yet - when the volunteer tomatoes appear, they all tend to be that variety, or Coyote - both tiny, their identity is confirmed when they ripen. Pics below of volunteers growing with weigela in a half whiskey barrel, and in the garden in a row which was amended by spent potting mix of many years.  Not the foot prints - so, deer again (and argggh! again). This garden is not protected, and the deer successfully located not only volunteer tomatoes, but a few potatoes that I planted after they sprouted in our pantry.

We were visited yesterday by a fellow tomato enthusiast and talented gardener and speaker Brie Arthur. Check out my Facebook page for our first dive into Facebook Live video, and a few pics. It reminded me that although gardening can be quite solitary, spent in countless hours of work serenaded by just the birds, having an interested visitor to share results is absolutely energizing.

Below, find the first victim of our eggplant addiction, just a week or so away from capture. It is not surprising that this first eggplant is part of my work on dehybridizing the very early and productive hybrid Orient Express. I named this particular selection Skinny Twilight...it will soon be joined by its cousins, Twilight Lightning, and Midnight Lightning.  A few seed companies are testing them this summer, so I hope that they appear in a few catalogs soon.

The sight below makes me happy!  That's it....must get to work (and to the airport!) (psst - one more thought - as I've said before, authors benefit greatly from book reviews - mostly they help us to become better writers, better able to reach our audience with words that are meaningful.  So if you have Epic Tomatoes or Growing Veggies in Straw Bales - go for it - no matter which etailer you got it from...and you can use Good Reads too!...thanks!)

Weekly update - and the first of Tomato Stories - Caitlin's Lucky Stripe

I've been pondering a picture of the day - or perhaps picture of the week. There is so much to discuss, show, and ponder - and ripening is only beginning. Instead, I've decided to start a series of brief tomato stories. It's Monday - seems like a good time to start something new.

First, just an overview of where things are:

Recent weather: This has really been as ideal a tomato growing season (at least here in my driveway) as I can recall. Warm (but not overly hot) days with ample (but not impossible) humidity, and enough, but not too much, rain. 

General garden observations: Vigorous growth, excellent fruit set, and lack of critters is all good. Foliage disease is appearing, as well as some blossom end rot. Lower blemished foliage shows a mix of some early blight, some septoria leaf spot. It is worse at the back side of the plant (away from the sun), or in the center of the plant...not surprising, since those are the areas that dry the slowest...poor air circulation, lack of direct sun. The plants are also setting fruit and afternoons are hot...and I am in containers, which all stress the plant. Every other day, it seems, I make the rounds and remove the blemished foliage, which opens the plants up and seems to slow the progression of diseases up the plant. The tomatoes in straw bales, not surprisingly, are dealing with it the best. 

Current activities:  Blemished/diseased foliage removal (see above), plant tying to keep them vertical, a bit of plant topping if they reach the top of the support, feeding (roughly every week and a half), watering (daily), making new crosses between indeterminate and dwarf varieties to expand possibilities in the dwarf category, and some photography.

The Driveway Garden on June 27

Caitlin's Lucky Stripe tomato

Lucky Cross and Little Lucky are two favorite tomatoes that I've grown since (with the help of a gardening friend Larry) discovering/stabilizing/naming them in the early 2000s. They originated with a bee-produced, unexpected cross between Brandywine and a neighboring plant in my garden. Little Lucky is a potato leaf variety with medium round yellow fruit that have red marbling and a wonderful, sweet flavor.

In 2008 I was walking through the garden at Coon Rock Farm (they were growing my plants at the time for their sales and restaurant supply), and noted one Little Lucky had slightly larger, slightly oval to heart shaped fruit that had distinct stripes - yellow, but with fine pink vertical stripes. I took one tomato from the plant and saved seeds. Though I suspected it was to be a mini-project to stabilize, I decided to name it for my daughter, and christened it "Caitlin's Lucky Stripe".

Over the years, it has been quite variable (not unexpected) - sometimes just pink (no stripes), but always tasty and prolific. I sent Bill Minkey (a superb gardener and one of the main tomato gurus offering varieties through the Seed Savers Exchange) a sample, and he loved it - saw stripes and sent me seeds. I am growing one plant this year, and it is very encouraging - loaded with fruit that are showing distinct stripes. It won't take long to ripen and we can assess how we are doing in achieving stability.

Unripe fruit on Caitlin's Lucky Stripe

What a great tomato dinner....It was about tomatoes, and food, and so much more.

We gathered at Bridge Club on June 23 and were treated to a night that was a swirl of energy, great food and wine, and friends, both familiar and new.

However, everyone there participated in something far more important. We all played a part in the continuing lives of living things - our generic heritage, on this night represented by heirloom tomatoes.

The role that the seed savers, farmers and gardeners play is obvious. What is equally important is the awareness of great varieties, which is where chefs and cooks and restaurant customers fit in. If a tomato variety is wonderful, chefs will seek them, diners will eat them - but they will also talk about them and share the experience through stories with friends.

Perhaps some diners will become gardeners themselves, or inspire their family members to do so. If and when that happens, it represents the future for heirlooms - a process where they will continue to be grown, seed saved and passed on. If all of this goes well, people in 100 - 200 years or more - will experience the delight of tasting a Cherokee Purple, or Green Giant, or Lillian's Yellow Heirloom. 

That is what came to mind as I sat with my wife Susan and tomato friends and enjoyed this most excellent event. 

One small piece of one project among many in this year's garden

Many of you know about, or at least have heard about, the Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project. I've been dabbling in it (well, co-conceiving and co-leading it, as well as deeply participating in it myself) since 2005. We've achieved much, but there is (and always will be) more places to take it. I will write more about it in a future blog, but want to keep this one focused (if not particularly short and sweet...)

One of the more interesting subplots in this year's driveway...er, garden - is the Steamy story. Last year I started to do some crosses to provide starting points to fill in a few of the current gaps in our Dwarf releases - paste and cherry tomatoes. It all starts with a cross; I choose an indeterminate for pollen, and a dwarf to receive the pollen. 

It is no secret that Sun Gold hybrid is one of my favorite tomatoes. I've been curious about the ability to work Sun Gold's unique flavor into dwarf varieties. By applying Sun Gold pollen to a partially opened blossom on Dwarf Pink Passion from which the anthers were removed, I succeeded in creating a new hybrid which named Steamy. (Why Steamy?  Heart shaped, passion, sounds pretty steamy to me!).

The result of a cross - an F1 hybrid, which is what you get when the seeds from the tomato resulting from a cross are planted - is the expression of the dominant traits. Sun Gold is indeterminate (dominant), regular leaf (dominant), yellow skinned (dominant) and orange fleshed (recessive). Dwarf Pink Passion is dwarf (recessive), regular leaf (dominant), clear skinned (recessive), and red fleshed (dominant). By this reasoning, Steamy hybrid would produce a tomato intermediate in size between Sun Gold and Dwarf Pink Passion, with yellow skin and red flesh, on an indeterminate regular leaf plant.

Above, you will see the two parents - Dwarf Pink Passion - astride the resulting Steamy hybrid, as grown and photographed by a garden friend, Linda Black, in California. (Thanks to one of our favorite seed vendors (and one of the major companies to list our new dwarf tomatoes, Tatiana's TOMATObase,) for the great pic of Dwarf Pink Passion, and my Californian dwarf project friend for the pic of Steamy hybrid).

The story of Steamy is actually even more interesting - and challenging. The single fruit that resulted from my cross wasn't large and had few seeds, and suffered from blossom end rot. I saved what I could, and managed to get a seed - one single seed - to germinate last summer. The seedling was weak, and I knew it wouldn't ripen fruit before frost - so I dug it up and mailed it Linda. She grew it over the winter and it produced the fruit you see in the center, above - and as predicted, it is a medium small red tomato - and another thing learned - a cherry X a heart provided an oval. Tomato genetics is endlessly fascinating.

Because that is the only Steamy F1 plant anywhere (unless I repeat the cross this year), I asked Linda to take a cutting and send it to me - and so Steamy F1, descended from the single seed I got to germinate, is growing in my driveway, ready to provide me with fruit and lots of seed....

...to go dwarf hunting with. The next step in this is to save as much seed as possible from the newly created hybrid. It really doesn't matter what the hybrid tastes like; flavor is complex with tomatoes and inheritance, and the flavor of a new hybrid doesn't necessarily correlate to the offspring.

Linda sent me some saved seed from those red tomatoes in the picture above, which I planted this spring. When the saved seed from an indeterminate X dwarf hybrid is planted, you will get 75% indeterminate plants (which are typically tossed - we are breeding dwarf tomatoes, meaning, unfortunately, some great indeterminate leads are being thrown aside) and 25% dwarf plants. The dwarfs are quite evident early on, being half of the height as the indeterminate seedlings, and with visibly thicker stems and foliage. After doing this for 10 years, I've gotten pretty good at spotting the dwarfs among the indeterminate seedlings, and all of those who participate in this project can say the same. 

I was delighted to find some dwarfs among the seedlings, and I went ahead and planted all four in straw bales in my driveway. The plants are healthy, stocky, and already setting fruit. I've photographed the small green tomatoes on each of the plants, seen below, and there are some surprises showing up already. Shown below is one of the Steamy F2 plants, and then the fruit on all four.

I crossed a heart with a cherry, and you will see a variety of shapes - from nearly round, to egg shaped, to a long paste shape. This is a story that can only be partially told - a few weeks remain before we know the final size, shape, color - and best of all - flavor - of these four varieties. If one or more of them seems well worth pursuing, seed is saved, then sent to volunteers next year to try to replicate what I found this year. If they are really promising, I will give one or more names. It is always best to grow as many as possible from this point on, as color, size, flavor, and shape continues to vary greatly.

Eventually - and hopefully - when we are at the 5th, or 6th generation, things will begin to settle down and we can start to work toward finishing any of the promising new varieties. By the 8th, or sometimes even 10th, generation, we can call it a stable new variety. If people are sharing and growing and enjoying it 50 or 75 or 100 years from now, it will be considered an heirloom!

I hope that the story of Steamy brings a bit more clarity for you with respect to our utterly addictive, fun project. Who knows...you may decide that you are ready to jump in and join the fun. All you need to do is ask.

__________________

Here is a bit of a PS....

Thanks to all who purchased either of my books, Epic Tomatoes and Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales. It's hard to believe that it's been only 1 1/2 years since the tomato book was released - it seems like I've had a decade of wonderful experiences over that time.

I've learned something over that time - there is great value to authors when our books reviewed - it helps to make the books more visible (which leads to more sales, and more speaking opportunities) - and even more important, feedback is very helpful for me continually improving what I write.

So if you find the time and haven't done so, whether it is at Amazon, Good Reads, Barnes and Noble - honest reviews of my books are always highly valued and deeply appreciated.

It's all starting to happen now...something new to discover each day!

Yesterday was one of my favorite kinds of summer (well, close enough...) days - up early, out early, breaks just for cold drinks, lunch, and dinner. It began with giving all of the plants some well deserved nutrition (during which I learned that it takes about an hour to feed all that was in need). Next came a round of genetics - carrying out new, and repeating, some crosses. I will talk more about that in a later blog, but I was delighted to find that a few that were begun in early June succeeded.

Finally, I pulled up my portable seat to each plant, armed with scissors and twine, and carried out the next round of supporting (tying to the stakes) and pruning. Soon, topping will be part of the activity as well; when indeterminate tomatoes are growing 3 inches per day, it doesn't take long for them to reach the tops of the stakes. Much of the pruning consisted of removing lower spotted foliage infected with early blight and/or septoria. It does seem to greatly slow the progression, and certainly makes for a better looking driveway of plants.

By mid afternoon, the intense sun meant that it was time to give everything a deep drink. Once all of that was finished, I armed myself with a small voice recorder and carried out a thorough assessment of every plant; this information was transferred into an Excel spreadsheet last night (my cats and dogs always look at me oddly when I am playing these back - they hear me but my mouth is not moving).

A bit of data following the day's documentation:  Fruit has formed on 95 of the tomato plants. Open flowers adorn another 35 plants, and unopened buds on 31 plants. The remaining 7 plants are a big behind, but healthy. The eggplant are looking great, with one variety (Skinny Twilight) already showing buds. Quite a few of the peppers have open flowers.

How about a few pictures? The following is a gallery view - just hover your cursor to the right or left to advance the pics.  There are some driveway views, some unusual foliage (Silvery Fir Tree with carrot like leaves, Variegated foliage) and fruit, and the eggplant Prosperosa

The late spring/early summer garden routines are underway.

As I write this I am listening to a wonderful band called Hammock - an album of theirs called Oblivion Hymns. It is quite indescribable, haunting, peaceful, and beautiful. 

It's hard to know where to begin. The magic combination of well-hardened seedlings, appropriate planting mix, black containers, sufficient direct sun and warm temperatures is literally launching the tomatoes (and to a lesser, slightly delayed extent, peppers and eggplant) upward and outward. Though it was a relatively cool, wet spring, recent weather is about as good as it gets for vigorous growth, good fruit set and a low incidence of disease.

What routines are referred to in this blog title? Daily garden walks, plant tying and pruning and troubleshooting, watering - and weekly feeding. I am also beginning to create new hybrids for our dwarf tomato project, but really thinking outside of the box and looking to incorporate some very unusual foliage characteristics. I walk around with a hand held recorder and make observations (at night I transcribe them into my excel garden log). Documentation through pictures and videos will soon follow. It won't be long before harvesting, tasting and seed saving joins the routine. 

If it isn't evident in my words above, I will say it here - I love this time of year. I love all parts of the year related to the garden, but this is the best - noticing the daily changes, feeling excitement in the anticipation of the unveiling of mysteries - and this is a garden loaded with mysteries, mostly early generations from our dwarf project. I can't recall a garden with more interesting (to me, anyway!) little projects woven in to the overall plan. There will be so much for me to share with you in the weeks ahead, and I can't wait.

Here are a few pictures taken today, and my first cell phone camera video update.  I have a few more to post in the coming week - one on pruning suckers that is an improvement on my previous one, and today's garden walk about.

View #1 of the driveway on June 4, 2016

View 2

All in the families - a look at progress with some cherished driveway tomatoes

I've blogged before about the "family" section of my driveway garden - a selection of named varieties shared with me during the past few hears via mail, at speaking engagements - each one representing the truest, most appropriate term of "heirloom" tomato. 

Each is off to a great start - and here are the pics to prove it. If you click at each edge, you can advance the carousel of pics.

Pictures above are Abraham Brown, Aunt Edna, Uncle Joe, Maris Family, and Swolka family.

But wait - there's more (of course). I also took pics of some that, despite not being family heirlooms, are special for various reasons.  You can see these below.

This grouping includes Abraham Lincoln, Everglades, a High Anthocyanin Pink Cherry, Stick and Yusopov.

Finally, a few view of the driveway and the bales, so that you can gauge progress.

After watering, I spent some time doing an audio update, which I will transcribe tonight. I was very pleased to note how many plants had buds, flowers, and even in some cases, small fruit! 

A driveway of many projects, now planted. Bring on the sun and warmth....

As I sit here listening to the incredible new Radiohead release (A Moon Shaped Pool, one of those musical creations that gets better and better with each listen), it feels like a good time to share news from the garden. The season gets so busy so quickly that information gets lost. From planting to staking, tying to watering, feeding to troubleshooting to harvest, it all becomes a blur. 

Let's start with a picture.

This is what the driveway garden looked like on May 21

Planting began on May 9 - most of the garden edging bales were planted with dwarf tomatoes. Most of the indeterminate non-dwarf tomatoes were also planted, in 5 gallon grow bags, on May 9. Another significant planting into grow bags occurred on May 12 - newly made dwarf crosses (my work last summer) - all of the new hybrids - as well as the first of the dwarfs from those crosses (F2 generation), as well as peppers and eggplant. A few remaining tomatoes went into bales a few days ago (see - I already am confused by exactly what I did when!).

Planting is one thing - getting it all into a final arrangement is quite another. That work happened on May 20 and 21. The driveway is now a combination of rows (eggplant, peppers), and rows of plant clusters (tomatoes) - each cluster of plants around a large container of spent planting mix, into which went the supporting stakes (that happened the last few days). Today I took my big ball of twine and did my first supporting tie for those indeterminate tomatoes that have adjacent stakes. Lots of staking remains - and once staked, regular tying and pruning (removal of suckers) and eventually, topping. This is the work that stretches out delightfully all summer long, culminating in the eagerly anticipated harvest.

The final count for this year's garden - 164 tomato plants, 35 pepper plants, 18 eggplant. That's a whopping total of 217 plants, 50 of which are in straw bales, the rest in containers of various sizes, most of 5 gallon capacity. I am going to be doing a bit of watering, I suspect!

Here are a few more pics - the eggplant and pepper rows, and a "tomato plant cluster". Just click on the pic below and it will change to the next one in the sequence - total of three pics.

Home sweet home. A rainy day in the garden

Where are we? Back in Raleigh?  Saturday's near 7 hour drive was followed by Sunday's 6 hours at Longwood Gardens, followed by yesterday's near 7 hour drive home. But was it ever worth it. More on that in a future blog - I've got loads of pics to download from both of our phones. I want to do justice to the magnificent garden that we just visited, and to the three hour course on tomatoes that I was so fortunate to be able to deliver to over 30 fellow gardening enthusiasts.

Here's what I returned to: a garden that was well-tended by my daughter and her boyfriend, a set of tomatoes still adjusting to their new homes in straw bales....indeterminate tomatoes clearly loving their new 5 gallon grow bag homes....peppers and eggplant still trying to decide if they are happy or not in their new locations.

Today it is gently (and occasionally a bit more vigorously) raining, and the plants are loving it. I've heard pileated woodpeckers whooping it up in the woods behind our house. Cardinals and brown thrashers are singing their little hearts out. I've got a to-do list a mile long. Big plant donations, so SEEDS and at the Durham Main Library, will take place on Wednesday and Saturday (our annual morning Plantapalooza!), respectively. 

The plant donations formally end our seedling season but open up space in the driveway for my garden to expand into roomier groupings and rows, and that is what will keep me busy in the coming days and weeks. Positioning the plants will be followed by staking, then tying, pruning, feeding - culminating eventually in harvesting, tasting, seed saving and preserving. It is all a continuum - the February seed starting was preceded by months of planning, which came after assessing the previous season. There is no time off from gardening - each month carries with it a critical step. Every one of those steps is enjoyable, informative, challenging, and something to eagerly anticipate.

It's mid May, it's raining, everything is getting ready to blast off into vigorous growth. This is a great time in the never ending gardening calendar.

...and now for something completely different - getting ready for Longwood Gardens

Sue and I are ready for a big time blast of nostalgia. Before putting down roots of surprising longevity in Raleigh (with its clay and rock-filled soil, plethora of weather events - at least since we've been here - and infinite list of tomato growing challenges), we lived in Pennsylvania. We started in Villanova, eased westward to Berwyn, then finally West Chester, and our 8 years there were delightful; it is where I first joined the Seed Savers Exchange and dove head first into heirlooms. It is where our daughters were young (Sara), or just entering the world (Caitlin). Tomato growing has never been easier than those PA gardens, especially after working 16 yards of mushroom soil into our garden. Oh, to have been able to relocate that soil when we moved down here.

Over our 8 years, regular visits to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square was a constant. We experienced it often in each season, and we ended our days there exhausted after so much walking, but exhilarated by that which we saw - whether it be the azaleas, various themed rooms in the big glass house, water lilies, or endless beds of colorful flowers.

I've been spending much of today getting ready for a long-awaited return trip to Longwood Gardens, and Sue and I can't wait. The reason for the visit is that I was asked to provide a course on tomatoes - and on Sunday, at 1 PM, that is what I will be pleased and fortunate to do. This will be my first long duration (3 hours - better make my jokes good ones...), demo-filled opportunity to take a group of gardeners from history through selection, from seed starting to seed saving, aided by a presentation. To call this a personal bucket list event is an understatement. It will certainly be a trip, and event, I will remember always.

As for today in the garden....I just came in from watering everything. A second motion detector sprinkler is now in place, since a visit by deer now would be quite devastating. One week from today I will be bringing loads of plants to Durham for our annual Plantapalooza...more on that when we get back. It feels good to have most everything in place and settling in, though the real work begins next week - getting it all arranged, staked, and ready for daily observations, nurturing, and maintenance. The clock is ticking - ripe tomatoes are now only a few months away!