200th post / ripening tomatoes...

This is the 200th post!

...So due to personal employment matters, I've been absent from the garden since mid august. I was growing tomatoes at home, my favorite "must grow".

The frost is coming. Probably not this week, but soon.

So, I wonder how to handle the green tomatoes.

I found the following advice from the University of Minnesota:

http://www.extension.umn.edu/info-u/nutrition/BJ763.html

Ripening Tomatoes and Green Peppers Indoors

When fall frost approaches, home gardeners can pick unripe green peppers and green tomatoes to ripen indoors. Following are post harvest guidelines for your peppers and tomatoes.

SELECTING AND PICKING

* Pick ripe, nearly ripe and mature green fruits before frost occurs. Mature green tomatoes are those with a glossy, whitish green fruit color and mature size.

* Select fruits only from strong healthy vines, and pick only those fruits free of disease, insect or mechanical damage.

* Remove stems to prevent them from puncturing each other.

* If dirty, gently wash and allow the fruit to air dry.

STORING

* Store tomatoes and peppers in cardboard boxes, 1 to 2 layers deep.

* If you have a cool, moderately humid room, simply place them on a shelf.

* Keep fruit out of direct sunlight. They may be stored in the dark.

* As tomatoes ripen, they naturally release ethylene gas, which stimulates ripening. To slow ripening, sort out ripened fruits from green tomatoes once or twice per week. To speed up ripening, place green or partially ripe fruits in a bag or box with a ripe tomato.

Ripe tomatoes keep in a refrigerator for about 1 week but will lose their flavor. Green peppers keep for 2 weeks. Green, mature tomatoes and peppers stored at 65-70 degrees, will ripen in about 2 weeks. Cooler temperatures slow the ripening process. At 55 degrees, they will ripen in 3-4 weeks. Storage temperatures below 50 degrees will slow ripening, but results in inferior quality.

If tomatoes and green peppers are stored where the humidity is too high the fruit molds and rots. If humidity is too low, the fruit shrivel and dries out. Since homes vary in humidity levels, you will need to learn by trial and error what works best.

Tomatoes and green peppers ripened indoors are not as flavorful as vine ripened fruits. However, compared to store bought, you will be delighted with your own home ripened tomatoes. For more information, call your local Extension office.

quick visit

I harvested 3 cucumbers and a dozen jimmy nardello peppers.
i cut the grass which was a hot but easy chore- done in 10 minutes.
i turned on the water for 60 minutes.

The watermelons, squash, canteloupe, and cucumbers are having a prouductive year.
tomatoes and peppers could be a bit better.

plans for 2007

not even finished with the gardening season of 2007. And now, I'm making plans for 2007.

The main idea is that we're going to reconcieve the vertical bed as a "modified raised bed" and not a "square foot bed"-- the difference is that I've now realized after a couple of years that although my zig-zag design looked cool on paper, it has unanticpated problems-- that major one is that its very tough to get into the middle of the beds to go after stray vines.

I think what we'll do is only raise the verticals on one side (say, the side opposite the house). Modify the planting so the spacing is 12x24.

Or...

An alternate plan would be to plant the climbers on one side of the bed. use non vining crops in the other side of the bed-- still sticking to the sqaure foot plan. We could also use one 4 foot row from one of the boxes. I noticed that this year we only used about 24 of 32 spaces.

In any case, half of the vertical trellises won't be used.

Also, we will order new seed for 2006-- its been a few years. I really want to grow Creole (nod to Louisiana), Brandywine (Sudduth's strain), Hillbilly, and Cherokee Purple next year.

Still want to plant at least one paste/roma type as well (read about a flavorful market variety called Classica at tomatogrowers.com).
I'd like to try another cherry/grape tomato instead of reisenstrabe.

A couple of tried and true hybrids for productivity.

I'd like to have a very early tomato (Early Girl, or Stupice or maybe a hybrid for cool climates-- i read about tomatoes bred for alaska!).
my idea is to plant one of these Early Tomatoes around april 15th and sheild it in case of frost. And then, plant another Early Tomato on July 15-- so it produces through until frost.

i guess that's 7 varieties... might need to pare that down.

We will order my jimmy nardello pepper seed and maybe look for another interesting pepper. The rest we can get at the nursery.

Also-- shaker yard long beans for next year! And all the usual types.

review of Jim's tomatoes

I'm growing 4 hybrids and 1 heirloom at home. The most productive seem to be a tie between Mr. Stripey and Lemon Boy. After that, better boy.

Pink beefsteak is producing intensely flavored tomatoes-- the best of the bunch. According to my literature, it should have been the size winner and late season. Ironically, it was the first to ripen and the sizes have been about the same as better boy, if not smaller. But I was hoping for the later season on it, because everything is ripening at once-- it was supposed to be 10-20 days later than the rest.

Mr. Stripey hasn't resulted in a striped yellow/orange. Its a solid yellow with faintly orange streak. I was looking for the novelty factor. Nothingl like its picture Oh well. its a big, productive plant. The flavor is good but mild.

The least distinguished of my tomatoes from home is Bonnies Best. The tomatoes don't distinguish much from Better Boy. The plant is less productive. I won't really bother with this one again.

I expect the tomatoes at the honors garden to start producing in two weeks, since we set them out so late this season.

the heat is on (but almost over)

weather.com has a nice table chart of averages for just about every location in the USA. I was looking at the average high temps for 41099. It would be easier to visualize with graph showing the day by day average highs and lows.

in any case, the temperatures peak in the 87 to 88 degree average from July 5th to August 12. The average high temperatures begin to fall after that point.

So, in theory, we're almost through the thick of it. The average high returns to the lovely 70's about September 14.

I stopped back up at the garden to go over the areas we cut once more with the mower. I figured with the first cutting happening once the grass was about 6 inches long, we'd have a cleaner cut if it happened the next day. I cut some diseased tomato vines and trained many more vines up the trellises.

reel lawnmower

Aaron and I put together our new reel lawn mower on Saturday.

My father had told me several times that reel lawnmowers were heavy, awful things that did a terrible job of cutting the lawn compared to a power mower.

However, we are only responsible for cutting around the gardens where the NKU Groundscrew lawnmowers can't reach. Its about 400 sq ft, max. So it seemed crazy to pay $200 for a modest power mower. So when researching reel mowers, I found out that although the design of the mowers haven't changed much since the were invented in the 19th century, the materials have changed considerably-- making them much lighter and easier to use. The biggest difference is that reel mowing should be down more often than conventional power mowers because the blade will roll over long gras rather than cut it.

So we plopped down $90 and both took turns mowing. It felt like a moment out of Tom Sawyer when the neighborhood boys paid to whitewash the house. It was fun! It was quiet!

I think that we should be cutting grass weekly from now to november. I can take weekends.

We fixed our sagging vertical trellises, trained vine up and watered. Aaron pointed out that the pasilla peper plants never flowered. Looks like mule seed. We harvested tons of cucumber and peppers-- a few jimmy nardellos and lots of banana pepper.

On our to-do list is giving the garden a dose of fish emulsion and keeping up the watering schedule.

quick visit

i trained more vines up the trellis. the garden is growing like mad. I still feel like the vertical bed is planted too densely. though i did read from a agriculural experiment (university or virginia or mississippi) that tomatoes will yield more pounds per acre when planted at 1 ft intervals-- but have larger fruit at 2 ft intervals.

it looks like deer have learned to lean in from the fence to eat leaves off of the trellisses-- there's a grazed appearane to the cucumber and squash leaves about 36" off the ground. I don't want to meet a rabbit that can do that!

i think the zuchini is a bush variety and not the vining sort. oh well!

i watered the strawberries, 2 gallons per bed. i turned the water on at the sprinkler for 60 minutes for the vegetable beds.... what a timesaver!

I'm going to bein new york from July 27 to August 2.

mini-harvest

i went to the garden last evening. I had a mini harvest. I picked 3 way-too-big cucumbers, 8 banana peppers, and a zuchini.

the garden on the other side, the class garden, is going crazy. The weeds are staying low on that side-- for once. I think the densely planted squash has helped. Most of the corn and beans are obscured. Probably be a real challenge to pick.

It looks like soon it will be time for us to get the reel mower- within two weeks. Got some long grass.

had a big rain last night and it's still drizzling this morning. The weather pattern from early june to early was quite dry. But now its shifted to ideal for two weeks. Can't complain about that!

recovery

i checked the rain gauge on saturday afternoon. it looks like we got slightly over a half inch of rain over a three day period last week. the soil was still quite damp, so watering was just not needed.

i trained about a dozen vines up the trellis. i weeded for about 20 minutes. mostly outside the boxes. the grass seed is coming in ok. not really the best season for it.

i noticed a ton of bees in the fruit flowers, so i wasn't prepared to check for fruit (severe sting allergies). it seems we have a watermelon about the size of a golfball that's beginning to grow.

and then it rains...

...and the forecast looks fairly wet for the next 7 days. which is just fine with me. the grass is starting to brown on lawns everywhere. it's been a little dry.
still, even if rain was predicted today, it wouldn't have kept me from watering the garden. I think the best irrigation practice is to water deeply every 4 to 5 days. Unless its actually pouring down when its time to water-- just go ahead and turn on the faucet. in the past, suspecting that it might rain has lead to under-watering our plants.

Getting Dry

It feels like it's been a long time since we've had a good deep rain. I'm not sure how long it's actually been.

I watered the garden today and the strawberry patch (about 4 gallons per raised bed). I put the timer on for 70 minutes for the sprinkler. The water pressure seemed a little low today.

I hadn't seen the garden since July 6. Thankfully, nothing was wilting (Aaron watered last week too). The squash, etc. are vining like mad. It looks like it's planted too densely. But I know we followed the directions, so it shouldn't be too dense. I didn't have the time to really check for any new fruit. I saw some cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen.

Today, I just trained the vines up the trellis and then started up the water. Pulled a dozen weeds. I moved some of the strawberry runners back inside the box.

The newly planted grass (where the garden used to be) could use a deep watering too. Only one sprinkler, however. And I didn't have the time to wait tonight for the garden to finish its watering cycle.

I drove away considering that I'd probably stop by the garden less often if the watering was completely automated. Maybe total autmation isn't the best idea for me. At least if the gardens not in my own yard. I need a reason to drop by. If I only had more time in my schedule to really observe what is happening in the garden. Next week, maybe.

What happened!?!

Finally, blogger started functioning again on the ftp server at NKU. It had been down since May 20th or so. Finally got working today.

Needless to say, a lot of gardening happened since May 20.

We decided to go with planting grass seed around our sqaure foot beds rather than mulching over weed barrier. And thus, we've planted a grass blend that met our needs-- drought tolerant and high traffic tolerance. The grass has sprouted. We're keeping it watered.

I bought a little timer that controls how long we water. Very useful, as now we can set the sprinkler on before we leave for the day and it shuts off automatically. It cost about $8.

I fertilized everything again with the espoma plant-tone about July 1. Hopefully i'll get around to using the fish emulsion and epsom salts this week or next.

we've had a lot of challenges this year with rabbit and deer. We put up a simple fence using bamboo and fishing line. The deer seem to respect it. The rabbit do not. They've eaten the tops off of some tomatoes and peppers. They pretty much decimated the japanese edamame soy beans.

Hopefully the technology will continue to function and we'll keep blogging...

an evening in the garden

i needed to get out of the house so i went up to see what i could do in the garden.

i put 1 tablespoon of espoma plant tone per sf. in the strawberry beds
i put 1 tablespoon of espoma plant tone per sf. in the herb bed
and a tsp. inside of espoma plant tone some of the little pots.

i cleaned out a bit of the overgrown areas in the bed with the bulbs and hostas. just abou 20 minutes worth of work. there's alot that could be done there.

since we now have a greatly reduced area, we could redesign that section.

perhaps add a couple inches of mulch to cut down on weeds?

maybe we can shape that giant shrub/tree that grows there? like a bonsai?

also, we discussed putting grass down instead of mulch around the SF beds. and getting a push reel (old fashioned) lawn mower.