Flying Tomato Farms

I get a lot of questions about heirlooms and hybrids, buying and saving and starting seeds, so I’m providing a few simple working definitions for some terms you might see when shopping for garden seeds and starting plants, along with some further notes of possible interest.

Open-Pollinated (O.P.): a stable variety that breeds true from seed.  Not a hybrid.

Heirloom (H.L.): An heirloom is by definition an open-pollinated variety–one that has been around for one hundred years or more.

Hybrid (F1): F1 hybrids are seeds from two parent plants of the same species that have been cross-pollinated by plant breeders.  The F1 hybrids you find in garden seed packs are, in almost any case NOT genetically modified. The reason for this is mostly because GMO companies spend a lot of money on developing varieties, and selling a few packs of garden seed to home growers doesn’t really pay.

Many home gardeners are growing their own food precisely to avoid this kind of stuff.  However, it’s not a bad idea to check up on the GMO policy and parent company of your seed supplier–NK Seeds is owned by Syngenta, for example. That doesn’t mean their garden seeds are genetically modified, but it does mean your purchase may be going to support GMOs.

Organic Seed: Organic seed is simply seed produced in accordance with the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) rules.  Hybrid seed can still be organic seed, as long as it follows the rules.  What organic seed can never be is genetically modified (unless the NOP rules are changed to accommodate GMOs, and that’s pretty unlikely).

Seed grown under organic cultivation at a non-USDA certified farm cannot technically be called organic seed. That means the seed I grow and save is not technically organic, but then I’m not trying to sell it on a large scale anyhow.

Consider also that if you want to get into technicalities, all garden plants are hybrids–that is, they didn’t spring fully formed from the forehead of the Garden Goddess. OP and heirloom varieties are simply well-stabilized hybrids.

Even open-pollinated and heirloom varieties can show some variation in their offspring. Too, if you’re planning on saving seeds from your open-pollinated or heirloom varieties, you might want to do a little reading on how to keep the strain pure (if you’re into that). Once you plant those seeds in your garden, they can get into all kinds of sexual mischief with others of their species and their kids will reflect that.

However, variations in open-pollinated plant offspring can allow for re-selection and improvement of a favorite variety over the years if you’re into seed-saving.  Currently, I am improving (for my purposes) an heirloom Red Pear tomato for thicker necks and better crack-resistance simply by continually saving seeds from those fruits and plants that display the desirable trait.

You can save seeds from F1 hybrids. It’s just that their differing parentage may cause their kids to revert to a number of traits different than what the hybrid seed produced.  For example, the “volunteers” (plants that sprouted from last year’s dropped fruits) of my Sun Gold F1 cherry tomatoes yielded fruits of differing size, color, and flavor.

Direct Seed: This means to put the seeds directly into the garden soil. If your packet says something like “sow as soon as the ground can be worked,” that’s an indication to direct-seed.

Transplant: Your packet may also say “sow in flats or pots.”  This generally means to start the plants inside.

Days to Maturity: Depends on the preferred method of planting, usually indicated on the pack.  If it’s a direct-seeding scenario, then the days to maturity is usually from the time the plant germinates–or pops above the soil surface.  If the preferred method is tranplanting, the days to maturity is usually from the time you set the plants out in the garden (having followed their guidelines for when to start your seeds indoors).

Some crops that are usually direct-seeded can be transplanted. Head lettuce can be started indoors and transplanted–this isn’t as good an idea for leaf lettuce, as you’ll want to sow it much more thickly for ease of cutting. Corn can also be transplanted, which can get you ahead of the ear worm cycle.

Generally speaking, root crops such as carrots and beets should not be transplanted–though celeriac is an exception, as it’s such a long-season crop. When transplanting root crops, it’s important not to disturb the roots too much–since that’s the part you want to grow big for eating.

Some crops that are usually tranplanted can also be direct-seeded, but this can present a problem in shorter-season climates. The idea behind starting tomatoes, peppers, etc. inside is to be able to get a good crop before the frost.

If you think of anything I’ve missed here, feel free to mention it in the comment section and I’ll add on. This post is merely intended to be a simple de-mystifying guide.

I had started out thinking I’d make a couple of posts on the various projects I undertook today, but just as I didn’t accomplish what I thought I was setting out to do, I’ve decided not to over-tax my weary mind and body by attempting multiple posts.

It occurred to me this weekend, after speaking with last year’s farmers market manager and taking a look for myself at the mess which is West Cherry Street, that we’d better get on figuring out how access to the market is going to be affected starting on May 21st, our first official day of business.

Walked down to City Hall this morning (pretty fancy new digs down there) and talked to the City Manager about the issue.  He directed me to Ron Peterson and Kevin Highman at the SD DOT in Yankton and Project Manager on site, respectively.  Left Ron a message this morning, and he and Kevin collectively called me back this afternoon.

Overall the city and state officials were very helpful and accommodating.  I even got a call in to the Chamber to get the market set up with signs directing traffic to the market from the north side access road.

Headed out to the farm early this afternoon, thinking I’d get something planted, some new beds set up.  But Harry needed help with a few implements out at another farm place, so we headed out a couple miles north and west to pick up a sickle bar mower (with a cast iron engine–HEAVY!) and an old tiller for parts.

He did feed me after that escapade, and then I headed back in to do some more course work.  I thought I wasn’t going to get back out there, but after taking Vega to the dog park this afternoon, I realized the wind had died down enough and it hadn’t started raining–I could still do it!

So I ran back out there and laid out the last two beds in the west garden, planted one of the beds I prepped yesterday with arugula and row-covered it, and worked up another row in the northeast garden and put in yet another round of spinach.  I think I’m getting close to having enough now–and the first two beds are now up and growing.

It’s in my blood, I think, to go absolutely crazy with the planting ahead of a projected two days of rain.  So, the image I’m about to show you is actually before I did the work this evening–an image I took the first time I went out today.

One of the beds within the marking twine lines is already planted and row-covered, and the lines are moved over to the left of where you see them now.

The final project of the night is a mushroom-barley soup, modeled after the Moosewood cookbook’s Hungarian mushroom soup–with morels left over from the last season, garden dill from the freezer, and delicious raw milk I got from my friend Amanda in Brookings yesterday afternoon.

YUM!

I case you are wondering about how the Cherry Street reconstruction project will affect Vermillion Area Farmers Market accessibility from Cherry Street this 2009 season, rest assured we’re working on the issue.

I have met with the City Manager and put in a call the the State DOT coordinator for the project in order to work with all parties to ensure vendor and customer access this market season.

Currently, the plan is to stay put in our Clay County Fairgrounds location.

One of my favorite comments people make about the weather (besides using “weather” as a term only indicating the severe stuff), is that, in terms of the weather, it’s been “a strange year.”

I tend to think that, too, until I go back and read my notes on past seasons (kind of like how every year I panic about how long it’s taking my peas to emerge until I look back and realize it always takes that long).  However, this year turns out to indeed be a strange year.

Looking over my trusty garden journals for the past few seasons, patterns start to take shape.  Since I am one to take seed packs at their word when they say, “plant as soon as the ground can be worked,” I can look back over the past few years and see just when that was possible.

This year, as faithful readers may know, I started planting out on March 16th–sugar snap peas and spinach are my earliest crops.  Last year, that early planting date was March 25th for spinach and the 26th for peas.

My note on March 27, 2008 reads, “Yesterday I planted about 90 row feet of sugar snap peas along the trellis constructed last year.  The day before I planted spinach along the west side of the garden.”

On April 7 and again on the 10th, I noted the “unusually” cold weather following the early planting window–the note on the 10th reads, “Hardly anything is coming up yet with the chilly weather.  I am trying to clean and plant and hope!”  It seemed to break by the 14th, when I commented, “Finally some signs of life–black-seeded lettuce, a few radishes, some spinach and cress are up.”

In 2007, I started planting peas on March 26, though I started constructing the aforementioned pea trellis on the 24th, which would indicate I could have planted at that time (you can’t drive posts into frozen ground).  On April 9th I noted, “it has been in the teens and twenties for the past week.”

In 2006, I started planting peas on March 29th, and put trellis up on the 27th–indicating I could have planted two days earlier than I did (at least).  I didn’t record a cold snap that year–just heavy rain and small hail on April 6th, and “terribly windy, dry, and warm for the past two days” on the 11th.

Looking at the past few years altogether, I can say that this season the early planting window came about a week earlier than usual.  I can also breathe a sigh of relief (not that I was really sweating it–yet) about how cold it has been getting the past few nights (and tonight’s low is predicted at 18 degrees last I checked).

The notes on the 2007 season tell me that even having planted a number of crops as early as I did, and even though it has been getting really cold at night, everything should still be just fine.

In the end, with the cold weather over the past week, I’ll be just about where I was for the past few years in terms of the planting schedule when the cold weather breaks–that is, feeling like I’m way behind when I’m pretty much right on time.

First I planned to wait until the new moon, then I planned not to wait, and then I got sick and had to wait.

But I finally got those little seeds in the germinator flat this afternoon.

I filled my germinator flat loosely with soil and brought out all the seed packs and labels for each variety. Using my finger, I lightly packed down the seedling mix in each channel of the flat to make room for seeds and more soil to top them.

As I seeded each channel, I added the variety’s tag and wrote the order of the varieties seeded in my garden journal.  Just in case something happens with the labels, I can still consult my chart to make sure I know what’s what.

I also seeded that last row with tomatillos, which look different enough from tomatoes that if both the labels got lost and the flat got turned around, I’d still be OK. As you can tell, I’m pretty careful with the seeding and labelling process–when growing 19 varieties of tomato in one flat, it’s important to have a back-up plan to make sure I can tell the difference between the plants.

I generally plant from twelve to fourteen seeds in each channel, though I do plant more if the seeds are more than a couple years old.  I also note the age of the saved seeds in my journal, and whether I’m out of any variety, so I can plan on saving seed from those varieties this season.

This is the final image of the covered-over seeds in the germinator flat.  They’ll go down next to the peppers and eggplant on the light shelf and get a good soaking with water.  Once the plants get big enough (and I have a nice day to sit out on my steps to do it), I’ll transplant them into four-packs where they’ll have a little more room to grow.

I’ve been corresponding with the Mayor, and now the City Manager, about various ideas for improving downtown Vermillion, especially in the wake of these findings about the impact of bringing in a Wal-Mart.

One of my suggestions was to improve access and safety for cyclists in downtown Vermillion.  I haven’t been riding my bike as much as I used to (preferring to walk), and part of the reason for that is the danger of riding on the streets downtown.

With the diagonal parking and big pickups blocking everyone’s view (had to get that in), cars backing out of parking spaces are a huge danger to downtown cyclists on the streets.  Too, there is an injunction against bicycles on the downtown sidewalks, though it is not enforced.

In my view, all things being what they are, it’s a darn good thing that it’s not enforced because there are always a number of kids using those sidewalks to bike home from school.  Yes, they could take back streets, but as a mother, I’d rather have kids in a safer, more public environment rather than on a back street where they could be whisked off without witnesses.

So, I asked Mayor Christopherson about making the downtown streets safer for cyclists so the prohibition could be enforced equitably.  He gamely responded to my other concerns, and forwarded my question about the sidewalk bicycle prohibition to City Manager John Prescott.  Here’s the response I received this morning:

Typically the regulations prohibiting bicycle traffic on downtown sidewalks comes from the potential conflict between shoppers and bikers in an environment where one group may not be expecting the other. Let me explain a little better. The shoppers are walking out of businesses thinking about their next destination or other items. They are not anticipating or thinking about bikes which can move at a different speed and direction down down the sidewalk vs. that of pedestrian traffic. The potential for collision and injury are why cities typically have no bikes on sidewalks in the downtown area. This is different than the hike / bike path where users are warned of and expect the two types of traffic.

The no bikes on sidewalks probably isn’t enforced very strongly as it is typically not a problem in most situations. At the same time, we don’t want to promote bicycle use on the sidewalk and create the potential conflicts referenced above.

Hope this helps.

John Prescott
City of Vermillion

Maybe I’m taking it a little too personally, so I’ll put it out to the readership: does this feel a little patronizing to you? Of course, it may be that many of the questions he gets are from people who haven’t thought too much about the problem or the context behind the issues they’re asking about. It’s actually a very good description of the possible conflicts.

What bugs me about the response is that it doesn’t address the problem of dangerous streets coupled with an unenforced ordinance that forces those who would obey the law to endanger themselves by doing so.  Mr. Prescott’s response simply explains why the ordinance is in place and why he guesses it isn’t enforced.

I don’t know about you, but I’m really not a fan of making an ordinance and then only selectively enforcing it.  If the safety issue is big enough to pass the ordinance, then the ordinance should be enforced.  If enforcing the ordinance creates other safety issues, then the ordinance should be reviewed and changed, or struck from the books.

Too, the “one group not expecting the other” rationale illustrates the inherent danger in forcing law-abiding cyclists into a situation where the group not expecting them (motorists) is rather unlikely to be physically injured by the unexpected meeting.

Cyclists on the sidewalks typically (though not always) operate with the recognition that a collision with a pedestrian is fairly likely to physically injure the cyclist, too. I’d argue that a situation in which both parties might be physically injured tends to make both participants more mindful, while a situation in which only one party is likely to be physically injured does not inspire the same level of care on both sides of the equation.  Studies, anyone?

Anyhow, here’s my response to Mr. Prescott:

John–

I understand the rationale behind prohibiting bicycles on downtown sidewalks.

What I am suggesting is that we find ways to make cycling on the downtown streets safer, so that the prohibition can be enforced without endangering the cyclists (especially the kids coming home from school). It doesn’t make sense to have a prohibition that is not enforced, or not enforced equitably.

Further, pedestrians seeing the “bicycles prohibited” sign and therefore assuming that bicycles are, in fact, prohibited, may be further endangered by assuming there won’t be any bicycles on the sidewalks.

Alternately, it might make more sense to have a “Watch for Cyclists” sign on the sidewalks (and the interior of front doors in downtown businesses) than to have an unenforced prohibition that might serve to endanger more people than it keeps safe. Or, perhaps, a “Walk Your Bikes” edict for the sidewalks downtown that could be enforced–though the idea behind a bike is to ride it, not walk it, which gets us back to making the streets safer for cyclists.

Respectfully,

–Rebecca M. Terk

I’m hoping this exchange won’t backfire in unintended ways. I would certainly hate for the “solution” from the City to simply have the police start citing everyone for riding their bikes on the sidewalks because it’s so much safer than riding on the streets.

I would like to believe that (because our downtown beautification plan has included putting more bike racks downtown) the answer would be to take a serious look at the problem and find workable solutions that keep both cyclists and pedestrians safe.

Nettles, chives, and spinach

Just got back from the gardens, and boy, was it brutal out there.  The wind was whipping about, and everything was mud and cold.  I had to disconnect the hose line to the well head and the spray wand from the hose to keep them from freezing and breaking over the next few nights.

There was just a little bit of spinach that volunteered from last year’s spring sowing gone to seed, and it came up again this year.  I pulled a couple of the tiny leaves, plus a few thin blades of chives, and scissored a few of the very small emerging nettle clumps to add to the minestrone soup I’m making.

By the time I got back up to the trailer, my hands were so cold I had to run them under warm water in order to tell the difference between the pain from the freezing temperatures and that from the nettle stings.

Nothing’s up yet that we seeded starting on the 16th–that’s good, though.  They’ll fare better if they stay under the soil until this cold snap passes.

As the dog and I started back toward the truck to leave, a pale, fine dust started sifting down and collecting against Vega’s black fur.  Confused for a moment, I reached down to brush it off, and it melted in my hand–snow.

It hasn’t yet sunk below freezing, but it will tonight.  I’m concerned about all the perennials and bulbs coming up here at home, all the trees budding out with the last week’s gorgeous spring weather.

Even my heirloom apple trees (Northern Spy & Cox’s Orange Pippin), usually more circumspect in their spring awakening, are pushing out little silvery nubbins. The hyacinths are up, and even some Asiatic lilies near the foundation.

It’s pretty likely the flowers will have their little tops frozen, so beyond the crocuses that’ve been blooming, I might not get many more spring flowers for all the planting I did last fall.  I might cover the big red Dutch tulips in the middle of the yard, but beyond that, I’m just going to let the chips fall.

And the next few days will be COLD–highs during the day will still be above freezing, but nighttime temps will be well below–in the “hard freeze” range–mid twenties.

We might even get a little snow toward the end of the week, which would actually help to insulate, but I’m afraid that won’t help the trees much, nor the bulbs and perennials subjected to severely chilly (for them, anyway) temps over the next couple of nights.

The garden seeds sown last week will likely fare much better.  A similar cold snap occurred last year, at the very end of March/beginning of April.  I feared I’d have to re-seed some crops–beets and arugula especially–that I’d got in early, but that didn’t end up being the case.  They were just a little slower to emerge.

I am going to don the muck boots and head out to take a look at the gardens after last night’s wind storm and deluge. I wanbt to see if anything’s coming up yet that I might want to throw a floating row cover on for the next few days just to be safe.

After that, I’m coming home to finish the minestrone I’ve started to keep myself and H warm and toasty. I’ve got some kidney beans simmering (the second half of the batch I soaked for making Italian sausages and beans last week), and I pulled out the last bag of frozen roasted summer squash and yellow beans.

I’ll add an onion, a goodly portion of crushed-and-chopped garlic, a chopped fennel bulb, a can of organic diced tomatoes (woefully not my own–I’m out), and some star-shaped pasta.  I should probably pick up some organic carrots and celery at the store, too, since I can’t imagine minestrone without them.

While that’s simmering, I’ll turn on the NPR: South Dakota’s KUSD upstairs while I’m doing dishes and Iowa’s KWIT when I’m down in the basement working on the next seed-starting project.  My little fifteen-year-old boombox with the broken antenna only gets the Iowa station in its basement home.

I’m not sure I should even say I’m planning on starting the tomatoes today, as I’ve been saying that for over a week now.  Let’s just say something will get seeded, and I’ll report on what that was in my next post–later tomato time, same tomato channel.

Of all my favorite South Dakotan vernacular phrases, one of the best is, “there’s weather coming!”

“Weather,” in the South Dakota vernacular, in anything particularly severe and/or unexpected and/or different from what we’re currently experiencing. We were eating breakfast at the Cherry Street Grille Sunday morning and heard one diner proclaim it to another across the aisle.

I’m not sure there is a counterpoint term for what we get the rest of the time, since “weather” is reserved for what we’re getting today and in the next few days.

Here, it’s severe thunderstorms and flood watches and warnings.  We’re under a tornado watch, and a couple counties west of here there’s a tornado warning.

Center state, there’s a combination of blizzards, tornado watches, and flood warnings, and West River they’re shutting down I-90 west of Chamberlain at 6pm because of the blizzard conditions.

Ah, the land of infinite variety that is the great state of South Dakota!

I was looking forward to the rain today as an excuse to stay home and rest up from the frenzy of bed-prepping, tree-thinning, trellis-erecting, and planting that I’ve been engaged in all week.

It didn’t really rain that much–I probably could’ve gone out, but instead I focused on a little clean-up at home.  Trimmed back many of the perennials–anise hyssop, sedums, and globe thistle are all coming up under the leaves, and I’m a little concerned about the coming colder weather (27 the projected low next week) and its effect on the new growth.

So, I kept the leaf cover on for the most part–though I did rake off some of the thick layer of mulch on the new raised bed and pull it over to the part I haven’t filled with soil yet.  I’ve been dumping kitchen compost in that area all winter, and after pulling the decomposed leaf mulch over the top, I added more leaf mold from the bin out back.

Once the bin was mostly empty, I added more bagged leaves I got from my neighbors last fall (“What’re ya gonna do with all those leaves?” says I, and they says “Toss ‘em,” and I says, “I’ll take ‘em!”) and a new layer of kitchen scraps for what will be my new home compost bin.

Then I raked the leaves off the lawn part of my back yard down toward the rock wall in a continued attempt to level that area off and perhaps make it into a semi-shady garden bed someday.  Part of that semi-shady plan was also to judiciously trim and remove some of the smaller trees in that area.

I’d been feeling pretty ungenerous toward that scrubby little hackberry tree that’s growing back there, and I’d decided to take it down once the birds came and cleaned off the berries.  As of this morning, the berries were still completely covering all its branches, but this afternoon, a cloud of cedar waxwings paid a visit, and the tree is picked clean.

So now would be the time for taking that tree, right?  Except after seeing all the lovely yellow-banded birds cavorting amongst the berries, my tender feeling for the tree re-emerged, and I think I’ll have to keep it.  There are plenty of other saplings popping up in the backyard that can go, and the clump of mulberry trees can be thinned, too.

This afternoon I spent some time in the basement re-screening my worm compost (and found three more worms hiding in there!) and then mixing a new batch of seed-starting medium.  Then I spent some time cleaning peat dust out of my mucus membranes and off my skin.  It doesn’t even matter if you wear a regular dust-mask, that stuff is terrible!

Coming on the heels of that last admission, perhaps talking about the cooking is a little distasteful, but I was pretty well cleaned up when I started that pot of French onion soup.  I’d made a quick-and-dirty batch the other night for H because he’s suffering from a cold, but today’s batch is a thoughtful, well-caramelized delight.

French onion is one of the simplest soups–just four or five thinly-sliced yellow onions cooked low and slow in a couple tablespoons of butter they they turn to mush, then a little sugar and balsamic vinegar added to help caramelize them to a nice brown color.

I add a little white wine at this point (about half a cup) and I also add thyme or rosemary to the onions when they’re cooking.  Then simply add beef stock–(about two quarts) and heat through.  You can float a toasted slice of rye bread and some grated cheese on top and broil it before serving, or just eat it straight.

Dinner tonight will be the onion soup and the leftovers from some Italian sausages and beans–red kidney beans simmered in a spicy tomato sauce with sausage.  I actually used the Bluebird Locker German sausage, but if you add a good amount of mortar-and-pestled fennel seed to the sauce, the effect is about the same as Italian sausage–that is, really good.