Flying Tomato Farms

I have been watching some of my tomato and potato plants very closely in the last week, as some of their leaves are rolling up quite dramatically, and I’m a nervous wreck about having to rip out half of my potato crop and a third of my tomato crop.

But it looks like the problem here is a physiological disease–not a viral or bacterial one. Simply put–it’s the stress of the wet weather that is making the plants’ leaves curl up into tight little rolls. Thankfully (if I’m right in my diagnosis, and I sure hope I am!), this should resolve itself once things get a little more stable in terms of temperature and moisture, and it should not affect the plants’ production.

I am still a little concerned that all this moisture could incite a breakout of early blight or anthracnose–I remember a particularly wet spring on Vermont Valley Farm where our deliverable tomato harvest was cut by two thirds by those black, sunken patches developing on most of the fruit.

I am hoping that my system of mulching will help prevent the kinds of conditions (mainly soil splash onto the leaves and fruits) that favors a disease outbreak, but as nervous as I feel about saying this after last summer’s prolonged drought–it needs to dry out a little!

Strangely enough, though it’s generally recognized that heirloom tomatoes are more susceptible to this leaf curl problem, my biggest problem is on the determinate (bush) tomatoes. I think that’s because of where they are in the garden–a heavier clay area. The indeterminate/heirloom varieties seem unaffected, with the exception of the Japanese Black Trifele plants in the lower part of the north central garden.

I’ve also noticed that while one of the rows of Australian Crescent fingerling potatoes is affected, the other row further up the slope of the garden is unaffected (obviously, the lower part is staying moist longer). The Peruvian Purple potatoes are also quite badly rolled and curled–the soil is fairly heavy there, too.

Other than worrying over my nightshade members (well, the peppers and eggplant are just fine), I pulled the cover off the first row of carrots I’d planted and weeded them out, except for the accompanying dill (it volunteers wildly in that area of the garden). I’ll weed that out (um, I mean harvest it) for deliveries on Tuesday.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on the affected tomato and potato plants, and if things get any worse, I’ll consult the extension folks for a professional diagnosis.  Stay tuned….

It rained hard all night, but it seems to have let up at least for the moment.  So, I walked out in the mud with my first cup of coffee and started pulling Easter Egg radishes.  They are a lovely mix of white, red, pink, and purple (or at least they will be by the time I’ve washed the mud off and brought them to market).

I will also have the amazing Goddess salad mix, a little asparagus (I hope–get there early!), rhubarb, and likely a few other goodies.

We’ll set up our pop-up tents as usual, so you can browse without getting soaked if these showers keep up all afternoon.

Vermillion Area Farmers Market

Thursdays 3-7pm

Clay County Fairgrounds (Corner of Cherry & High Streets)

See you there!

And immediately following the market, there will be a “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” meeting at the Buffalo Run Winery (far west Main Street), 7pm.  If you go, please tell Pat (Garrity, who is running the meeting) that the farmers market folks will be a little late–we’ll need to pack up.

*No cans were opened in the production of this dish.

You will need a standard box of macaroni and cheese mix. I used Annie’s Peace Pasta with Parmesan.

Walk down to the garden and pick a few leaves of fresh spinach. Rip out a few garlic greens from your wild patch. Green onions could work, too. Or the reasonably good-looking parts of an onion you found sprouting in the bottom of your pantry.

Turn on the stove, and throw some olive oil in the pan. Start browning the pound of random hamburger you bought, thinking you might make burgers on the grill.

Throw the garlic and spinach in the sink and fill with cold water while you investigate the fridge. You are starting to get very hungry, and wondering if there will be enough food for both of you.

There are a few sort of dessicated baby portabella mushrooms? Good. Grab those, and those bits of sweet red pepper and the core end of that awful supermarket tomato you bought for sandwiches. Maybe there is about a third of a bar of jalapeno cheese that looks like it was left out on the counter on a hot day, then re-refrigerated. Grate that.

Chop the pepper and the garlic and throw them in with the meat. Throw those mushrooms in too, so they can rehydrate in the meat juices. Start the water for the pasta.

Now you are thinking there most definitely will not be enough food. So you open the freezer. There is a baggie of summer squash from 2006. Use only half, in case the freezer flavor is too strong. Some dried tomatoes from the same year! Throw a bunch in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Reserve the water. That will make up for the lack of flavor in the supermarket tomato.

When the summer squash has thawed in the meat mixture, sprinkle the cheese packet from the pasta over all of it, and add two of the four fast food butter pats (make sure they are real butter) you found in the fridge. Add a little of the dried tomato water.

Find a little sort of dried basil-smelling stuff in the pantry and reduce to dust between your fingers, over the pan. Mix well.

Have you cooked the pasta yet? Good. Drain it and toss it with the remaining two fast food butter pats, then dump on top of the meat mix and throw in the flavorless tomato (it’s for color) and the fresh spinach, chopped. Add a little more dried tomato water, if needed, and then the grated, slightly melted and re-formed jalapeno cheese. Mix again. Maybe add some freshly ground black pepper.

Serves two people who are hungry enough to be non-discriminating. Don’t tell them what you put in it.

Results may vary.

I am giving a tour of my gardens for Community Gardeners, CSA members, and all other interested parties tonight (Wednesday).

We’ll meet at the Community Gardens (behind the Washington Street Arts Center, 202 Washington Street) at 6:30pm and carpool out.

It’s only a couple miles, so it won’t take long to get there.  You might want to bring boots, as it’s a little muddy from last night’s showers.  Hope to see you there!

Mowing and hoeing and weeding and watering to get ready for tomorrow night’s garden tour. We’re meeting at 6:30pm at the Vermillion Community Gardens, located behind the Washington Street Arts Center at 202 Washington Street, and we’ll carpool out. It’s a relatively short jaunt (we’re only about 3 miles north of town), so it won’t take all night.

I finally passed the 100-tomato mark, and decided that 102 tomato plants is probably enough for this year. So many fantastic varieties! I can’t wait to try all the new ones. When the various varieties start to bear, I’ll provide a detailed list of their colors and sizes for easy identification.

Also seeded summer squash (4 varieties) and Minnesota Midget melons now that it’s really warm out. The midget melon is a small cantaloupe that is just right for one or two people, and it bears well and dependably in this climate. Chances are I won’t be growing any other melon varieties this year because of space limitations, though I did seed some big watermelons on an island in the Missouri River. You never know….

All that plastic! I re-use plastic grocery bags for your deliveries, but I have to use new not-previously-used bags for the greens, etc. in order to be safe. I would like to switch to using cloth bags, but that would require members to remember to leave out their previous week’s bag every Tuesday so that I could pick it up when I deliver. Let me know what you think. In the past, I’ve tried biodegradable cellulose bags for greens and herbs, but their cost continues to be prohibitive. I’ll keep checking around for a better price.

THIS WEEK’S DELIVERY:

Radishes! Plus spinach, salad mix, and asparagus.

The radishes are a blend called Easter Egg, and I seeded them in late March. Can’t believe they took so long to mature, but here they are. These are fairly mild as radishes go—regular watering helps keep them from being blistering. Radish greens are edible too—some people make soup or stir fry with them.

The spinach is a blend of both Space and Bloomsdale Long Standing. I seeded it in early March as well, and then over-seeded when it was slow to germinate. No worries about eating this spinach raw, but you can certainly cook it if that’s your pleasure.

In case you’re wondering about all the E.Coli and Salmonella scares with raw greens (spinach especially)—most of those greens were contaminated through the irrigation source. Many of the large commercial farms use open ponds for their irrigation water, and that water is easily contaminated because it’s used by wildlife (they need to drink, too), and the water doesn’t generally flow or aerate. That environment can be a good breeding ground for bacteria, and bruised or damaged leaves can take the bacteria up into the plant during harvest (which is why washing tainted greens doesn’t really help). Greens can also be contaminated in the process of handling. Interestingly enough, watering produce with tainted water does not usually cause a problem—it’s when the produce is harvested with the tainted water on it that the leaves take up the bacteria.

I learned all this fascinating and disturbing information at a farmers market conference—apparently government scientists have been trying to force cantaloupes to drink bacteria-tainted water and become infected, but so far, according to the extension food safety specialist, they’ve been unsuccessful. I’m thinking that’s good, though I’m disturbed by the implications of their trying to infect produce with potentially deadly bacteria.

I irrigate my greens using our well, which taps into the Vermillion River aquifer (not the river itself, but its underground source). I periodically sterilize my harvest tubs as well, and the manure I use for greens is well-composted and applied before planting. But even though my greens are unlikely to be contaminated with anything but a little garden soil, I remind you to wash them in every newsletter to clean out any remaining dirt and critters, and to freshen them up for your table.

Well—enough of that! Now for the rest of the delivery:

The salad mix is a blend of lettuces—Black Seeded Simpson (lime green), Lolla Rossa (red), and Buttercrunch (bright green), plus some baby arugula and rapini leaves, and a little dill and cilantro and purple chive blossoms—pretty, edible, and quite sharply oniony! This is a flavorful mix—a little spicy but not too hot, and it can stand up to a creamy dressing. I like bleu cheese or, I’ll confess—a good buttermilk ranch. I guess it’s my concession to moving to the Midwest.

This may be the last week for asparagus—I’ll try to get some in next week’s deliveries, but the warm weather last weekend started toughening up some of the spears.

You can also visit me and all the other growers and producers at the Vermillion Area Farmers Market. We set up on Thursday evenings from 3-7pm at the Clay County Fairgrounds, corner of Cherry and High Streets.

Remember to

WASH YOUR VEGGIES!

Ok, I’m tooting my own horn a bit (if Arachne’s punishment was to be turned into a spider, what will mine be?  Will I be turned into a slug to eat lettuce all my days?).

But one of my absolute favorite things to do in the garden is to custom blend a salad mix, which I call “Goddess Mix.”  Today’s CSA members will get one that may be the best yet: three kinds of lettuce (buttercrunch, black-seeded simpson, and lollo rossa for a dash of red), rapini leaves, baby arugula, cilantro, dill, and purple chive blossoms.  There are a few random baby red russian kale leaves in there, and a few baby osaka purple mustard leaves as well.

After harvesting for deliveries this morning (it was chilly!), I snapped a few images.  Here’s one of the prettiest romaine lettuce I’m growing this year:

This variety is called Freckles, and though it doesn’t do well in the flats, it does great once transplanted to the garden.  I’m transplanting the bulk of my romaine this year because a) I’m growing it in a fairly weedy spot, and b) I want to be sure of having nice, full-sized heads.  I’ll be transplanting more romaine babies in between these bigger heads, and then will likely start a third round for transplanting.

Not only are the chives in bloom, so are the green onions, which have a lovely white flower that is very attractive to beneficial insects and butterflies.

Milkweed is another plant that is a good one for butterflies, and I allow this “weed” to grow in a couple spots in the garden.  Below, you’ll see it in a patch of cilantro (OK, and lamb’s quarter–a “weed” that’s good for us humans to eat).

And I’ll finish off this post with one of my obligatory windmill shots.  If you’ve got it, film it!

Finally passed the 100 tomato plant mark today after setting in 2 Costaluto Genovese, 4 Zapotec Pleated, and 4 Black from Tula.

But mostly I just hoed and weeded and mulched in anticipation of garden visitors on Wednesday night.

One thing I haven’t gotten in the ground is flowers.  And I have all these lovely zinnias (pink! red! yellow! purple! green!) and calendula and marigolds and fernleaf fiddleneck!  Maybe at the end of the week….

I’ll have radishes and salad mix at the farmers market this week–and likely more of the green stuff than I did last week.  I’ll also likely have a few tomato plants in reasonably good shape that I am just not going to try to get into my own garden, and I’ll bring some bunches of rhubarb, too.

It was a long, but lovely day. Spring has burst its seams, and we spent the morning visiting with family before heading out to the country. I beat Harry out there, so I headed down to the gardens and planted 14 hills (actually, they’re divots–not hills) of four varieties of summer squash, plus fourteen divots Minnesota Midget melons (this is a single-serving cantaloupe that does well in our unpredictable climate).

If you’re wondering why divots instead of hills–I do a lot of planting to conserve and collect moisture. Raised beds and hills are great if you need to increase drainage, but I tend to loosen the soil well enough that that’s not a problem. I’m more worried about things drying out than staying too moist.

As I hadn’t yet seen Harry (we’d made a mushroom-hunting date), I started digging holes along the cattle panel trellis erected last week. Twenty-four holes, twenty-four tomatoes. I had a wheelbarrow full of a sloppy manure tea (Thursday night’s storm contributed the rainwater), and I used that to get in a variety of cherry, slicing, and paste varieties.

That puts me up to 92 plants–though I haven’t yet gotten in any Zapotecs and Black from Tulas yet, and I do have a few more of most of the varieties I’ve already stuck in. I am thinking those will go somewhere in the no-man’s land between the eastern and northeastern gardens sometime this week.

Then there was that mushroom-hunting date. I generally don’t like to hunt with other people, as it throws off my mushroom mojo. So, when Harry started finding a few that I’d overlooked, I headed off to a different area.

Problem is, where we hunt, you can wander for hours and get a little turned around. One minute you know precisely where you are, and then you get so focused on the ground that you look up and realize you’re in a totally different place. I didn’t find anything for the first hour I was out there, and had just started making my way back when I stumbled upon a patch of morels half hidden under the new foliage. Then I couldn’t stop looking.

I finally wandered back about 2 1/2 hours after we’d set out, thirsty and hot and ready for a cold drink. Headed home with our stash, which is now drying in the dehydrator (I lost a couple from the first hunt to rot–not taking that chance again). I poured myself a gin and tonic and started thinking about supper. Then I started thinking that if I finished that gin and tonic I might not get around to supper, so I headed up to Jones’ with one thought in mind: grinders.

Grinders is the term for hoagies, or sub sandwiches, that I grew up with. When the thermometer hit the mid-eighties, our summer meal plans were usually big, cold, elaborate sandwiches. Sometimes we ordered them, but my favorite was when we got all kinds of fixin’s and made our own at home.

So, I asked the deli guys to slice a half pound of three meats and three cheeses, and while they were doing that, I grabbed up some Kaiser rolls (couldn’t find sub rolls), some red wine vinaigrette dressing, alfalfa sprouts, and a fake tomato.

There is no such thing as a real tomato this time of year, unless you happen to have leftover canned versions in your pantry. There is definitely no such thing as a “fresh” tomato. But, I am not always such a purist. About once a year, when the temperatures climb and the urge for a hoagie hits, the idea of a tomato is enough.

This may draw gasps of dismay from some, but you know, if I’d gone up to the deli and ordered a sandwich, or I’d gone anyplace else and ordered a hamburger or chicken sandwich, I’d have gotten the same thing. Lettuce may grow virtually all year round in these parts, and an onion is almost always easy to come by, but the “T” in BLT is a three-month window of tropical enchantment for us.

So I bought the fake tomato, which probably contains genetic material from some foreign species to boot. But it looks OK on my sandwich, and with all the other ingredients, its lack of flavor isn’t that noticeable.

I guess I comfort myself with the fact that my buying one or two fake tomatoes once a year isn’t going to keep them stocking the shelves with them. And that once-a-year folly makes me realize, for at least another 12 months, that a real tomato is worth the wait.

Thanks to the strong storms that rolled through from about 2-3am, I’m taking a much-needed break from the gardens today and working on my summer classes–responding to the first round of composition drafts and literature reading responses.

I was feeling really run-down and overwhelmed yesterday–got to the farmers market with what I could get harvested yesterday morning and sold out quickly, so I packed up and left an hour early–taking that time to visit my house and wash all the backed-up sinks-full of dishes and 3 loads of garden-work-related laundry.

While at the market, I did pick up 5 bags of Vito’s excellent straw mulch and 3 black raspberry plants from Gail for the perennial beds we’re planning on the western hill, but after the market declined Amy’s offer of more seeds to plant, and walked her to the door, fearing she’d leave them in the mailbox if I turned around (kidding, sort of).  I’m scared of the abundance right now–really.  Those 100 crowns of asparagus are coming next week, I think, along with 5 more black raspberry plants.

Did the math over dinner at Leo’s Lounge, and discovered that with the 4 San Marzanos I got in during a quick-and-dirty transplant session at about 8pm last night, I have 68 tomato plants in the ground already.  Not too bad!  I’ve still got space for 24 more plants along the newly-constructed cattle panel trellis, and that will put me within easy reach of the 100-plant goal I’ve set for this year.

But today is about desk work, a much-anticipated nap (I’ve been up since 4am, when I got up to use the bathroom and cold, wind-driven rainwater was dripping through the fan vent onto my head!), and I think I’ll take those three extra bunches of spring garlic greens from Vito, chop them, and throw them in the dehydrator.

My house will be redolent of garlic!  Ahh.  Much better than muddy laundry and dirty dishes!

So far, it looks like I’ll have some buttercrunch lettuce, green onions, and asparagus–probably some fresh cilantro.

The jams and jellies folks will most likely be back, and Mike with his spring garlic and onions, compost and mulch as well. And we may have a few more folks show up–last week we had lots of garden plants and some fun tie dye clothing.  I bought two tomato plants–a variety I’d never tried but have wanted to: Costaluto Genovese.

And of course I am still trying to figure out how to get all the rest of those tomato plants in–put in sixteen yesterday (Japanese Black Trifele, Principe Borghese, and a San Marzano) and have identified spots for 28 more plants after having constructed a new trellis Tuesday evening after deliveries. Thankfully, Harry heard me driving posts and came down to help post-drive, wire, and carry the third and final 16-foot cattle panel section.

Spent over two hours mowing yesterday in anticipation of next Wednesday’s garden tour (we’re meeting at the community gardens behind the VAAC–202 Washington Street–watch for the time). Spent an hour and a half watering everything, plus went down and got one very full wheelbarrow full of horse manure after negotiating entry with the resident equines. Then it tipped over in the back of the truck–so I’ll still have to hose out the bed before packing up for market.

I need to do some serious hoeing and weeding in the next week, plus seed more summer crops (melons, summer squash, pole beans). This weekend promises to be busy!

Hope to see you at the market today–Clay County Fairgrounds from 3-7pm.