Onions
Posted on Wednesday, February 23, 2011 · Leave a Comment
As we lurch toward spring, I rejoice that I am still eating food from my garden. My spirits are lifted when I start a stew by sautéing my own onions and garlic, then adding my whole frozen tomatoes. I grow vegetables not only for the money I save and the flavors I savor: I grow things like onions because they keep well and it makes me happy to cook with my own veggies, especially now, in the depths of winter.
I start onions by seed in early March. Most gardeners plant onions sets, those little bulbs sold in mesh bags or measured out by the pound at garden centers. Not me. I like to start onions from seed because I think I get better and bigger onions that way.
Here’s the deal: onion sets were started by seed last year but grown so close together that they never got to be full size onions – they became those little sets. My onions, on the other hand, will start off life in flats indoors and will be given luxury treatment.
Most members of the onion family are easy to start by seed, including onions, leeks, scallions and shallots. The onion family plants like fertile, loose soil that is rich in organic matter and that stays lightly moist. Very dry or very wet conditions won≠t work too well. None of them compete well with weeds.
I like to start onion seeds indoors in a nice rich planting medium, a 50-50 mix of potting soil and compost. The seeds are pretty small so you will need to take some care in placing them. One easy way is to fold an index card and place some seeds in the crease. You can jiggle them off the card one at a time, or push them off with a pencil.
I don’t make divots in the planting mix for onion seeds (because they are so small), I just drop the seeds on the soil surface, press them down, and sprinkle a little fine planting mix or agricultural vermiculite to cover the seeds. Vermiculite is a heat-expanded mineral that is sold at garden centers and is used to add fluff and water-holding abilities to soil mixes.
Onion seedlings are happy growing an inch apart or even less, so I use containers the same size and material as the 6-packs, but that have no divisions in them. I drop seeds fairly close together – half to three-quarters of an inch apart. That way I get 24- 36 onions per container. Later, when it is time to plant, the plants will separate easily without damage to their roots. I will plant them an inch or two apart, and thin to 3-4 inches by mid-summer, eating the thinnings.
Keep the growing medium indoors lightly moist, not soggy nor dry. After a month of growing, you soil medium may become a little depleted of nutrients. The solution? Mix up some fish-and-seaweed fertilizer and give them a dose once a week. If you have a sensitive nose and are growing them in a space where you spend time, you may want to skip the fish and just water with a seaweed fertilizer as the fish solutions can offend some noses. Both versions have not only the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium of chemical fertilizers, they also have calcium, magnesium and lots of the micronutrients that a chemical fertilizer does not contain.
Like all seedlings, young onion plants need plenty of light to grow well indoors. I hang fluorescent lights about a foot above the tops of the seedlings, moving up the lights as the leaves get taller. I hang my lights from jack-chain so that I can adjust the height of the lights easily. But the real trick for having good sturdy plants is to give them a trim every couple of weeks. When your plants are about six inches tall, cut off two inches. Repeat as needed.
Copra Onions
For years my favorite onion for storage and cooking has been one called “Copra”. Then last fall a rumor was flying around in farming circles that Copra was being discontinued. I was disappointed because it is such a good onion – it’s tasty, and I’ve kept Copra onions from one year until the next year’s onions were ready to start eating. But like most rumors, it turned out not to be true.
There is only one big producer of Copra seeds; they own the rights to Copra, and sell to seed companies like Johnny’s Seeds. That producer has found another onion that they judge to be of superior flavor and saving ability, one called “Patterson”. I have gotten some Patterson seeds and will start some this year to see if they are really as good as Copra – or perhaps even better. I’ll report back next year.
Another way to grow onions and to by-pass the seed starting work is to buy small plants. Most garden centers and many seed companies sell started onions in the spring. They are generally sold in bundles of 50. They often look dried out and miserable, but once in the soil they green up and take right off.
You can plant your onion seedlings outdoors a month before your last frost, and harvest them when the tops flop over in august. Dry them for a couple of weeks in a shady, rain-free spot. Then next winter you can eat your own onions on those gray days when you need something to perk you up. It works for me.
Gardening as We Get Older
Posted on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Garden writer Sydney Eddison has been one of my favorite garden writers for a long time. Years ago I wrote that reading her book, The Self Taught Gardener (Viking Penguin, 1997) was like getting advice from a kind auntie who encouraged you to garden and to create something uniquely your own. Since reading that book of hers, I have read four of her others – all wonderful – including her most recent, Gardening for a Lifetime: How to Garden Wiser as You Grow Older (Timber Press, 2010).
This most recent book is a quiet reflection about how Sydney and her friends have dealt with growing older and having less energy, money and time while also having more aches and pains. I’m closing in on 65, and this book speaks to me. I realize that in the years ahead I’ll have to modify my gardens to make them less labor intensive. And, like Sydney, I’ll have to learn to accept imperfections.
Books by Garden writer Sydney Eddison
Sydney Eddison has written a very personal book, largely about how she has modified her own gardens, and how she has come to realize that getting help in the garden – either volunteer or paid – is necessary as we get older. Her beloved husband, Martin, passed away after 45 years of marriage in 2006. He is no longer available to mow, rake leaves or to cheer her on. She has come to accept the fact that her gardens will no longer be immaculate. Here are some of her tricks and tips:
Simplify the garden palette. Sydney≠s book is about her flower gardens, which I visited in 2001, and which were, at that time, just about picture perfect. She has eliminated many perennials, substituting handsome, low-maintenance shrubs. She has given away plants that require staking and cutting back. She keeps plants with nice foliage, and also eliminates things that multiply too fast, taking over the garden – the thugs, if you will.
One of her older friends decided to grow just 3 colors of flowers – blue, yellow and white. That helped unify the color scheme and eased making decisions about what must go. Giving away favorite plants is never easy, but Sydney says it gets easier with practice.
Make lists, she suggests, and prioritize what needs to be done. If you now need help pruning a massive hedge, decide if you wish to pay someone to do it every year – or pull it out.
Sydney≠s land includes some nice forest, and she praises forest as a place for simple, low-maintenance gardens. Plant clumps of daffodils along a woodland path, and some shade loving plants and you have a garden. Most aggressive weeds do best in full sun, so weeding is less a problem in shade.
Mulch is important: “It virtually eliminates weeding in the flower beds and helps retain moisture in what is otherwise a very dry situation, and eventually the mulch decomposes and improves the quality and texture of the soil.” I agree. She mulches flower beds with leaf mulch, and her soil is as good as any I have seen.
I disagree with her position that edging flower a bed – digging a little moat – is not worth the time. I think edging dresses up a flower bed and keeps the lawn from crawling in. But I am 15 years her junior, so I may see it differently in years ahead.
Sydney’s book The Gardener≠s Palette: Creating Color in the Garden (Contemporary Books, 2003) taught me much of what I know about color theory for the garden. In it, she spent considerable time writing about container gardening, and how interesting plants in pots can add much to a garden or terrace. In her new book, Sydney points out that containers can be a boon to aging gardeners, too. They are easy to install, virtually weed-free, and can be dramatic – but do require more watering than plants in the ground.
Sydney Eddison
As gardeners age, so do their gardens. Sydney writes about losing mature trees that succumbed to age, insects or storms. But, ever cheerful, she points out that sometimes losing a tree is a blessing – it opens up a view, or allows more light into what had become a shady garden.
There are many nuggets of information in Gardening for a Lifetime. For example, I learned that you can cut an overgrown rhododendron, azalea or mountain laurel right to the ground in the spring, and it will send up vigorous new growth – allowing one to start all over. And I will want to try some plants she mentions, including a shrub called Sapphireberry (Symplocos paniculata ) which is hardy in zones 4 to 8.
Most of all, I am encouraged by Sydney Eddison≠s determination, as she approaches 80, to stay in her house and to manage her gardens – because I hope to do the same. She points out that, “Gardens don’t have endings like novels. And as gardeners, we don≠t want them to be finished. In any case, real life works in ways we cannot anticipate and will never understand.” She accepts what life has brought her, and shares her knowledge of making do with what she has in pleasing prose. Whether you are young or old, winter is a good time to read this.
Menu for the Future
Posted on Wednesday, February 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment
This winter I’ve been participating in a discussion group organized by the Catamount Earth Institute that looks at food and agriculture in America, and what each of us can do to live more sustainably. We’ve been discussing readings from Menu for the Future produced by the Northwest Earth Institute. The readings support my belief that growing some of our own food is important, and that when we need to supplement the garden, we should try to buy locally grown, organic foods.
Here are some interesting statistics from Menu for the Future: For grocery store food, the average item has traveled 1500 miles from field to table. Every calorie of food we eat costs 10 calories of energy derived from petroleum. These calories include fertilizer, tractor fuel, pesticides, packaging and transporting our food.
Grains, vegetables and fruits require less energy to produce than meat because animals generally are fed grain – and an animal is not an efficient converter of its food to the meat that we eat. Thus it takes 68 calories of input to produce 1 calorie of pork that we eat, for example. Still, like most, I eat meat – though probably less than the average American.
Compared to other industrialized nations we spend a lower percentage of our income on food than any other country – roughly 10%. Consumers in Italy spend more than 25% of their income on food, the French 16% and the Japanese about 19%. And why is that, you may ask? Industrialized agriculture in America is subsidized by our government in the form of payments and tax breaks.
We also allow our industrial farms to pass on to us many hidden costs: the cost of polluting our land and water, the cost of health care for low-income farm workers, and the cost to our own health of eating foods that make us fat and unhealthy. Not only that, huge corporations act as middlemen getting more of the money spent than the small family farmer. Roughly 20% of your dollars spent on food goes to the farmer.
So what can we do? Plant a garden. Grow as much of our own food as possible and buy from local farmers, reducing the petroleum costs of transportation. Buying organic foods reduces the carbon costs of producing and shipping chemical fertilizers and the production of pesticides. But organic food costs more at the cash register. And in winter, much of our organic fresh produce, like conventional produce, comes from California, Florida or South America.
So let’s look at gardening. A very small garden, say 10 feet by 12 feet in size, can produce a lot of vegetables, including some that can easily be stored and used long past summer. I planted 12 tomato plants in a 10 x12-foot garden last summer, and each plant produced – by my estimation – 5 to 8 pounds of tomatoes. I ate some fresh, made sauce, but I also froze many tomatoes whole in zipper bags. That’s quick and easy. I am eating and using those right now- I run the tomatoes under hot water, rub off the skin, cut them up to use in soups and stews as I would a canned tomato.
Potatoes are easy to grow and keep. A 3-foot wide bed 12 feet long can accommodate up to 24 plants, each of which will produce 2-5 pounds of potatoes, depending on the soil, variety of potato, and amount of sun and water the plants receive. At the top end of production, one small bed can produce 120 pounds of good organic food! Stored in buckets in a cool spot with high humidity (35-50 degrees with 90% humidity), potatoes can be stored 6 months or more.
lettuce
I≠ve been growing lettuce all winter in pots on my windowsill and have to admit that the production is minimal. Right now my lettuce, which I started outside in September and potted up and brought inside in late October, is reaching for the sky. The plants are not getting enough light. Since I want to eat with little impact on the environment, I have avoided using artificial lights. There are such things as LED grow-lights which use a fraction of the energy of fluorescents, and I am investigating those.
So why bother with a garden? I want to eat pesticide-free food that I grow myself. Pesticide use on farms affects most severely the people who work in the fields. I care about that. But I also know that washing off fruits and veggies does not eliminate all chemicals, not since 1998 when systemic poisons were introduced. These are chemicals that are sprayed on the soil, seeds or leaves and are incorporated into the plant tissue, killing insects that take a bite.
We can scrub and peel, but if your lettuce or tomato has been treated with a systemic pesticide, you are going to ingest it. Even though the government allows this treatment, I don≠t want to eat those pesticides. No one knows how these chemicals will affect us in 20 years. Remember: DDT was approved for use in the home and garden for many years before the government banned it.
As I plan for my garden now I am keeping in mind what I grow best, and what I can save for next winter. Vegetable gardening, for me, is about eating good food that is healthy, and also about inflicting minimal damage on the environment.
Flower Shows
Posted on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 · Leave a Comment
I won’t pretend that when I was a kid I walked to school through drifts of snow or that the local hockey pond (in Woodbridge, Connecticut) froze solid. But all the old timers are saying that this winter is like the winters of yore. Maybe. All I know is that I am starting to get sick of cold and deep snow. So I asked my doc to write me a prescription: Go to flower shows. As many as possible. As soon as possible. Smell daffodils and look at blooming shrubs. Listen to experts talk, hang out with ordinary gardeners. See friends.
The season starts with two major shows at the end of the month: Providence, Rhode Island and Hartford, Connecticut, February 24-27, and I intend to attend both (and will be presenting on Thursday and Friday afternoon at the Rhode Island Show.)
The theme of the Rhode Island Show is “Gardening with Heart”. It is partnering with the American Heart Association and features 28 floral exhibits that link the display with a romantic movie – from Gone with the Wind and Casablanca to Sleepless in Seattle. As always, there are numerous vendors and educational talks. Admission is $18 at the door, $15 for seniors and students, and $7 for kids 6-12. For more info, go to www.flowershow.com. I hope to see you there!
The Connecticut show will be held in the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford from 10-8 each day except Sunday, when it closes at 6pm. Hope for a thaw before then, as they are offering to test your soil for free – just bring a half cup of soil (let it dry out). The show has more than 250 exhibits/vendors and 8 lectures every day. Tickets are $14 for adults, $12 for seniors, and $2 for kids 7-14. For more info go to www.ctflowershow.com.
The next weekend, March 4-6, has two more shows, including my favorite, the Vermont Flower Show. The theme of that show is “Sweet Dreams”, featuring a Medieval-inspired journey through woods, flowers and a castle. The Vermont Railway Society will have a model train display and there is a room dedicated to activities for children. I hope to bring my grandkids. The show is in the Champlain Valley Exposition Hall in Essex Junction daily from 10-6, or to 4pm on Sunday. Admission is $15 for adults, $12 for seniors, and $3 for students 3-17. More info at www.greenworksvermont.org.
The Central Massachusetts Flower Show will be held that same weekend in the DCU Center in Worcester, MA. It≠s not a show I’ve been to, but I chatted with a representative of the show and it sounds like it≠s a cross between a flower show and a home show. It’s called The Flower and Patio Show, and features many commercial exhibits. Admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors, and kids 12 and under are free. For more info go to www.centralmaflowershow.com/
The next weekend, March 11-13, is the Portland, Maine Flower Show at the Portland Company Complex, near the wharves. All tickets are $15 at the door, though advance sales are less. The theme of the show is ≥the Enchanted Earth≈. For more info go tohttp://portlandcompany.com.
Then comes the Boston Show, which runs from March 16-20 at the Seaport World Trade Center. The theme of the show is ≥A Burst of Color: Celebrating the Container Garden≈. It sounds like the problems the Boston had a while back have been sorted out, as the Massachusetts Horticultural Society is back and playing an important role. I recommend going to the show during the week when there are fewer attendees, and you may want to take a tour bus there to avoid the hassles of driving and parking. Tickets are $20, $17 for seniors and $10 for kids 6-17. In addition to the usual floral displays and vendors, this show has competitions for both professionals and amateurs. For more info, go to www.bostonflowershow.com.
Floribunda
Overlapping with Boston is the Norwich, Vermont flower show, called Floribunda, in Tracy Hall, from March 18-20. It is everything Boston is not: small, inexpensive and personal, with easy parking. I love this show. Your $5 admission fee (kids 12 and under free with adult) supports the “Community Projects Fund” of the Norwich Women’s Club. There are 20 vendors with plants, flowers, note cards, art and garden paraphernalia. There is a gala opening Friday night with wine and snacks (call Susan Pitiger at 802-649-1684 for reservations. Tickets are $40 or $75 per couple.)
flower show
And then there is the New Hampshire Seacoast Home and Garden show at the Whittemore Center in Durham, NH on March 25-27. With over 200 exhibitor booths, this is as much a home show as a flower show, but the cost is only $8 for adults , $6 for seniors, and $4 for youth 6-16. For more info, go to www.homegardenflowershow.com.
There are other shows, further afield if you wish to travel: Philadelphia March 6-13, Bangor, Maine, April 8-10, and Chelsea, England, May 26-28. But wherever you are, and no matter what your interest, there is a flower show for you. So mark your calendar, and plan to get an early taste of spring.
Gardener’s Latin
Posted on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Mrs. Pike, My high school Latin teacher, tried really hard to make Latin interesting. We even read Winnie the Pooh in Latin, but after two years I decided that I had been tortured enough and just said “no” to learning a dead language. Little did I know that later in life I would really learn to appreciate Latin as a way of naming plants that is logical and precise. Anywhere you go in the world, the name of a plant is the same – if you use Latin.
Many gardeners shy away from Latin in the garden as I did in the classroom. But it does make one feel a bit smug knowing that Rudbeckia is the botonist’s name for black-eyed Susan, and that Echinacea purpurea is the name for purple cone flower. And learning a few Latin names this winter will increase your stature in your local garden club.
Let’s take a look at how the system of names works. The system we use is called binomial nomenclature. Up until the mid 1700’s plant and animals often had long descriptive names that varied from country to country. Then Carl von Linné, a Swedish scientist who also called himself Linnaeus (a Latinized version of Linné) created a simple and consistent system for naming living things, both plants animals. Each organism was given a genus name and a species name.
Linnaeus used two words for each organism. The first, called the genus (plural = genera), the second word in the name is the species. The genus is capitalized, but the species is not, even if it is derived from a name that is capitalized. So canadensis, for example, indicates the plant comes from Canada, or northern regions but is not capitalized. Both genus and species names are italicized.
Each genus (with the exception of Ginko and maybe a couple of others) includes more than one species. The scientific name of maple, for example, is Acer and includes at least 51 species, all with resemblances to each other, primarily in regard to their reproductive parts. When referring to Acer species in print, it is customary to abbreviate the name to the first letter after it has been spelled out once (A. palmatum, for example). Acer spp. Refers to all Acer species.
Knautia macedonia
Pronunciation of scientific names is easy. Just pronounce all the letters you see as you would in English. (Darn it, as soon as I write that, the flower Knautia macedonia, a wonderful purple long-blooming flower, comes to mind and the “K” is not spoken. But you knew that). And it is better to refer to “scientific” names than Latin names, as some names come from the Greek, place names or names of scientists. If you find a new species, you can name it after yourself.
Some scientific names are the same as the common names. Clematis, Delphinium and Hydrangea come to mind. Rosa for rose is pretty close. Many species names give you a clue about the looks or habits of a plant if you know the Latin word. So, for example, any plant with a species name recumbens or prostrata will indicate a plant that is low-growing. Any tree with nana as a species is tiny, like my grandmother, whom we called Nana.
Let’s learn a few scientific genus names.
Trees
Acer = maple
Berberis = barberry
Betula = birch
Cornus = dogwood
Fagus = beech
Fraxinus = ash
Juniperus = juniper
Malus = apple
Quercus = oak
Salix = willow
Flowers
Allium = onion, allium
Aster = aster
Dicentra = bleeding heart
Geranium = Crane’s bill
Heuchera = Coral bells
Lavendula = lavender
Narcissus = daffodil, narcissus, jonquil
Pennisetum = fountain grass
Salvia = salvia, sage
Solidago = goldenrod
Some of those names you already recognized, or see the resemblance to English names. Genus names rarely give much of a clue as to the characteristics of a plant unless you know some of the others in it. But species names are much better clues. Let’s look at a few complete scientific names: Symphtum rubrum tells me that something about this plant is red, probably the flowers (they are). Tagetes erecta tells me that the plant (a marigold) stands straight up. A plant with the species name pendula is a weeping plant, with branches hanging down. A book that translates a few hundred species names is Gardener’s Latin: Discovering the Origins, Lore & Meanings of Botanical Names by Bill Neal. (Algonquin Books, 1992).
Learn a few latin names
There’s not too much to do in the garden just now, so go exploring. Get out a book or go on line and learn a few scientific names. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it will keep your brain from atrophying. Not all nice plants have English names, and you wouldn’t want to avoid a plant for that, would you? And Mrs. Pike will be proud of me.
Carrots
Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Carrots really are rather splendid. Raw, steamed, or made into a soup, they are almost universally pleasing. I have never encountered a child who would not eat a carrot, particularly if it is raw and slightly gritty, straight from the soil (though there must be some, I’m sure). Given a choice of vegetables sitting for hours on a steam table at a Grade B all-you-can-eat family restaurant, I will always pick carrots and leave the green beans or cheese and cauliflower to accompany my mashed potatoes and meat loaf, though I do try to avoid such establishments. But there is almost nothing one can do that will totally ruin a carrot.
Carrots come in a variety of colors: standard (Don’t-Run-Me-Over) orange, sunflower yellow, plum purple, radish red and ghostly white. Some get huge, others remain small and some are even round. They come from a family of nice plants: dill, Queen Anne’s lace, cilantro, caraway, chervil, anise, parsley and fennel. Those plants are in the Umbelliferae family, and if you squint you can see the word “umbrella” in the name, which is due to the shape of their blossoms – a broad canopy of tiny blossoms. The botanical name for that flower style is “umbel”.
I called Shep Ogden, one of the founders of Cook’s Garden Seeds (www.CooksGarden.com), to talk about carrots. I remembered that he had gone to India many years ago to look for specialty carrots. He told me that, yes, he had found purple carrots there and came back with a pound of seeds. Unfortunately, the carrots bolted (flowered and produced seed) almost right away – and a bolted carrot is not edible. He postulated that the carrots are day-length sensitive, and he had gotten his seeds from a zone where the days are all 12 hours long. Carrots are biennials, and should only bloom in their second year.
Since Shep’s early efforts with purple carrots, others have done breeding programs to develop good purple carrots suitable for North America. I’ve grown Purple Dragon and Purple Haze. My 7-year old grandson, George, grows purple carrots, and loves them for both their color and their flavor.
Sunshine and Orange Carrots
The Fedco catalog (www.fedcoseeds.com) lists a true red carrot that I will try this year, Atomic Red. For sheer size, a yellow carrot called Yellowstone is the most impressive: I have gotten single carrots weighing a pound or more and over a foot long. But even at that size they are not woody or bitter. I got my seeds from Renee’s Garden Seeds (www.reneesgarden.com) where they are part of a mixed-color packet called “Sunshine and Orange”.
There are tricks to growing big carrots, but anyone can do it. First, buy a variety is advertised as growing to be long – 8 inches at least. Prepare your soil so that it is fluffy and deep, with lots of organic matter. Raised beds are excellent for carrots. Thin your carrots early and often. That’s very important. By the 4th of July, carrots should be spaced an inch apart. Keep thinning and eating your carrots, and by mid-summer the carrots should be a couple of inches apart. Keep well watered, and top-dress with a little organic fertilizer around the 4th of July.
If you have heavy soil and can’t seem to get it fluffy, order short carrots. Renee’s Garden Seeds sells one called Round Romeo that should do well for you. Shin Kuroda is a short (5″) Japanese carrot that is sold by Fedco that should do well in heavier soils, too.
Carrots, promoted by Bugs Bunny as the way to have good eyesight, are indeed important for your eyes: a lack of Vitamin A can lead to poor eyesight and even blindness. The beta carotene in colored carrots is converted into Vitamin A in humans. According to a Department of Agriculture web site, 2 plots of carrots each a meter (yard) square, will produce enough carotene to provide an adult with all the vitamin A needed in a year.
I made a nice carrot soup recently, but didn’t measure all the ingredients so if you want to try this, you’ll have to improvise a bit. Cut up a leek (or onion) and a couple of cloves of garlic and sautée them briefly in olive oil in a heavy soup pot. Meanwhile, boil briefly a pound of carrots cut into chunks – until they soften up a bit. Then put them in a food processor and blend them into a puree, adding about a cup and a half of orange juice to the carrots. Add the carrots to the pot with the leeks and garlic, and add about 4 cups of water (or stock, if you prefer).
Other flavorings? I peeled a piece of fresh ginger about half the size of my thumb, grated it, and added to the soup. I added some hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper. I had some Thai tamarind paste, and added a couple of ounces of that – but if it’s not on your shelf, don’t worry. Same for a spice I got in Amsterdam a few years ago: Koek en Speculaas. It’s mostly used for baking and has a nice nutmeg-like scent. I can’t help but fiddle with soups, trying to find my own version of standards. You can play with your favorite spices, too. Fennel is good in carrot soups, and parsley.
So plan on planting carrots. They’re good tasting, relatively easy to grow, and good for you. Order some seeds today.
Tomatoes
Posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Tomato
My passion for gardening is only slightly more powerful than my passion for tomatoes. Yes, I get excited about flowers, especially rare, fragrant and beautiful ones. But tomatoes are really what got me into gardening. Fat, red, juicy tomatoes are what I dream of now, in mid-January. Sandwiches with thick slices of ripe tomato. Little cherry tomatoes that pop sweetness into my mouth as I eat them straight off the vine.
In 2009 my tomatoes – along with most gardeners’ tomatoes throughout New England – were devastated by late blight, which arrived just as they were ripening up. So I was very excited when I got my catalog from Johnny’s Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com) this year. On the back cover is the description of a newly introduced tomato, one that is resistant to late blight. Late blight causes the fruit and vines to turn black and the fruit to melt into mush in the course of just a few days. Last summer we were lucky – there were, apparently, a few isolated instances of late blight, but there was plenty of sunshine and almost no late blight anywhere. Blights of all sorts are most common during summers that are cool and rainy.
The new tomato from Johnny’s is called the Defiant PhR (F1) tomato. According to the catalog, this tomato has not only “high” resistance to late blight, but also has “intermediate” resistance to early blight. Early blight is what most of us get every year: lower leaves and stems turn brown, plants stop growing, and by summer’s end the plants support the tomatoes hanging on them, but are not producing any more. In my experience, planting tomatoes in new ground (where there have never been any before) pretty much allows one to avoid early blight for a year, perhaps because it is a soil-borne disease that gets on plants by splash up.
I talked to Andrew Mefferd, a product technician at Johnny’s Seeds, who told me that Defiant has very good taste, and is similar to Celebrity, a well known slicer. Apparently folks at Johnny’s Seeds have been working on late blight resistance for some time, and created this hybrid from one of their varieties, and a parent developed at North Carolina State University.
The Defiant is a determinate tomato. That means a tomato generally makes one large crop and then it is finished – which is great if you≠re canning. Apparently Defiant spreads out its fruit a bit more – over a 6-week period, perhaps. Many plum tomatoes are determinate, but most commonly grown tomatoes (Big Beef and Sun Gold, for example) are indeterminate, meaning that they will keep on growing and producing until frost (or blight) finishes them off. The Defiant is a 6-8 ounce tomato – roughly the size of a tennis ball. Andrew told me that it is a plant that can be contained nicely in a tomato cage (unlike some of the indeterminate varieties that can outgrow them in 6 weeks).
The Defiant
I was curious about how tomato hybrids are created, so I called Rob Johnston, founder and Chairman of Johnny’s, who was involved in the creation of the Defiant hybrid. He explained that tomatoes are self pollinating – they have both male and female reproductive parts on the same flower. In order to make a hybrid cross, a breeder has to “emasculate” a bud – remove the male anthers with tweezers or a thumb and forefinger, then pollinate the female pistils with pollen from a different variety of tomato, creating a hybrid.
It sounds like a lot of work to produce hybrids, but Rob Johnston explained that tomatoes are highly productive: a single cross will produce a tomato that might have as many as 200 seeds with that specific genotype. That first generation of a hybrid cross, like the Defiant, are called F1 (First Filial) hybrids. Their progeny, like the offspring of other hybrids, will differ considerably from the parent plant, so if you keep seeds from this year’s hybrid tomatoes, you will get a mix of tomato types. There are no hybrid beans, Rob explained, because each time you make a hybrid cross, you only get 5 seeds or so, making it too labor intensive to produce.
Heirloom tomatoes are open pollinated. That means that you just let the tomatoes use their own pollen to produce the next generation, and they are about the same every year. None of the work of hybridizing described above is involved. So normally heirloom tomatoes are less expensive than hybrids. There are modern varieties of tomatoes that are open pollinated, too, but someone had to breed them out for 7-8 generations, only keeping and re-breeding those that had the same characteristics as the parent.
Growing tomatoes and storing them for use now (I used 6 whole frozen tomatoes last night in a nice winter soup) is a real joy. I will certainly start from seed and grow more than a dozen varieties of tomatoes again this year. And I will include at least half a dozen Defiant hybrid plants as a way of hedging my bets in case of a cool, wet summer with late blight spores in the air.
I accept that growing a resistant tomato is not a guarantee. The catalog specifies “resistance”; not “immunity to”. Given the right circumstances, any tomato, resistant or not, can get the blight. But if this new tomato is tasty and productive, I am happy to buy seeds and grow it every year along with my others. I≠ll hope for a sunny, warm summer, and in another 2 months I≠ll be starting my tomato seedlings. I can”t wait.
Surviving From Your Garden
Posted on Wednesday, January 5, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Imagine that a massive earthquake disrupted bridges, roads and power lines. Power and transportation could be interrupted for months, even a year. How long could you survive on the food you grow? I asked myself that recently, and I≠m not sure I liked the answer.
The question was prompted by an interesting book: The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times Including the Five Crops You Need to Survive and Thrive √ Potatoes, Corn, Beans, Squash and Eggs by Carol Deppe (Chelsea Green 2010). The book is not so much a primer for survivalists, but a guide to gardening in any hard times √ personal or cataclysmic. What would happen, for example, if you could not tend or water your garden for a month or so due to illness or injury? Would your plants die of thirst or be swallowed whole by weeds? Ms. Deppe does imagine that climate change, or even war/terrorism might interfere with the food production system, but those ideas are just planted to provoke the reader, I think, to look at how and what we grow.
The author is gluten intolerant, which prompted her to look at flint corn many years ago as an alternative to wheat, something she could grind and use for bread and porridge. She grew dozens of kinds of beans for drying until she found those that could grow without irrigation or chemical fertilizers in the Northwest where she lives. She grew many kinds of winter squash to find those that store for months and those that can be dried to store even longer √ while still tasting good.
In praise of potatoes she writes, ≥After water, the most important nutritional factor is calories. A garden that is going to get you through hard times has to produce calories, not just salads. In temperate regions there is not crop capable of yielding more calories per square foot that the potato.≈ She goes on to note that potatoes also produce protein, second only to beans as a source of protein.
Lastly, Ms Deppe raises chickens and ducks for eggs and meat, though mostly for eggs. She does admit that in very cold climates (such as we have in New England) getting a flock of chickens or ducks through the winter is an expense √ they cannot forage for food, and must be fed. I have thought about having a flock of chickens or ducks for egg production but so far have held off. But ducks do intrigue me √ they are great bug eaters, love slugs, are easily contained and herded. Still they are messy and need extra care in winter.
The author really has done her homework on all the crops she describes, and presents lots of information I haven≠t found elsewhere. She covers not only what varieties to grow and how to grown them, but how to store and cook with them. Not only nutritional value is important, she notes, but also flavor √ and not all beans or squash are equally tasty.
I learned that three species of squash are grown in North America: Cucurbita maxima, C. pepo, and C. moschata. The first species, C. maxima includes Blue Hubbards, Buttercups, Kuri, Marina di Chiogga squash and Cinderella pumpkins. All these get their best flavor after a curing period of a month or more √ and may reach maximum flavor in 6 months. On the other hand, the C. pepos, which include delicata, acorns and spaghetti squash only need 7-14 days post harvest to reach best flavor, and start to deteriorate now, after Christmas. So if you have some, eat them up! Summer squash are also pepos that are best eaten when immature. The C. moschata varieties, which include butternut, can be among the longest keepers. I≠ve kept them 9 months or more. But she notes they lose their flavor in soups and stews and are best roasted.
The author also dries squash as a way to keep it. Some do well dried, others are tasteless, she says. The best is Costata Romanesca, a big summer squash with a ridged exterior that can easily get to be more than 2 feet long. I grew it last summer and one escaped my notice, growing to be over 3 feet long √ and winning the blue ribbon in the Cornish Fair for biggest zucchini. But, since the skin does not get as leathery as other big zucchinis, it can be cut into 3/8 inch rounds and dried, even when large. I am delighted to hear that, and will dry some this summer for winter stews. Ms Deppe gives instructions on building a sun powered squash dryer, including oiling the wood dowels before using. She is very thorough when giving directions.
If you have found that eating cooked dry beans gives you indigestion, try soaking according to her directions. Most beans need 12 hours of soaking with several changes of water and regular stirring to oxygenate and hydrate the beans before cooking. She maintains that the more often you eat dried beans, the better your body processes them.
The bottom line is this: if you want to produce all your food, or even most of it, and if you want to be independent from the food production system the supplies most of us, it≠s a lot of work. You have to do as Carol Deppe did, and make food production your primary focus. Quit your day job. But she has done a lot of the research for you if that≠s your goal. I think I≠ll try some of her ideas, but not become compulsive about it.
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