Bean Therapy in the 2019 Summer Garden

This has been a year of exploration of peppers, which I never bothered to grow since back in the day when my mother and I would plant tomatoes and peppers to make our own salsa casera. After I moved to California in 1988, I had no need to plant peppers and make the cooking sauce; out here EVERY supermarket has it, unlike rural Pennsylvania.

Last summer I began using peppers in my minestrone recipe, and found that they had become indispensable in my cooking. Box 7 became my pepper nursery, with Anaheim chilis and Italian White Wax peppers. And what the heck, why not plant a pepperoncini and a bell pepper as well?

Having no room set aside for the last two, I just jammed them in with my first planting of wax beans, which I'd started too early and looked like lame weeds. To my surprise, two weeks later, the wax beans had begun to leaf out like crazy, and the bell pepper and the pepperoncini were enormous and covered with blooms, while the Anaheims and Italian White Waxes were less than half the size.

Whaaat? Beans and peppers like each other?

Now back to tomatoes -- which I love like a crazy old cat lady loves kittens. This has been a crummy tomato year in the Pilarski Farmland. Seemed like every time the plants had a wave of flowers, the temperature went over a hundred, which shriveled the buds. And the first nine Shady Lady plants I put in ... they were not thriving. Since peppers and tomatoes are both from the same family, I began planting bean seeds in with the sad tomatoes.

And seeing how pathetic this year's tomatoes were, Bernie told me to go buy more plants, three more Shady Ladies, which I planted into the new bed with beans, not waiting around to see if they needed beanie buddies. This is Box 10, tomatoes planted with beans:

With Beans

You can't even see the beans in there, except on the edges. But boy oh boy, those tomatoes know the nitrogen-fixing beans are partying right along with them.

And then, this poor trio, which were the first plants this spring:

No beans

Admittedly, they're all husky plants, that's why Shady Lady is my go-to producer. But wow, what a difference. Same light, same watering system, same potting soil, same number of plants, same size box. Beans made a huge difference.

Next year, with bean buddies from the beginning, we'll be planting Anaheims again, as they are delicious in a number of dishes, and of course, jalapenos and a bell or two, but the Italian White Wax -- turned out to be so hot that when Bernie nibbled one, I thought he was going to pick up a frying pan and smite himself with it to put himself out of his misery.

They are now compost.

Look at What I Can Do!

I was cleaning up my various email inboxes and came across some Photoshop tutorials that I'd signed up to receive, and of course never looked at because I have no time (sarcasm) to learn anything new. One caught my eye, about being able to use text to reveal an image. I clicked on it, fully expecting jargon I would not understand about functions of Photoshop that don't exist on my ancient version of the program, Photoshop 7. (I have a couple books on how to use Photoshop 7 and can't seem to get through a single chapter without becoming annoyingly confused.)

"HAH!" is what I said when I pressed Ctrl + Alt + G -- and the image you see appeared, with the text revealing the image. I felt like I had just reached into my top hat pulled out a rabbit smoking a cigar. And it was so easy. I made a new file image and filled it with black, put text on a new layer, made another new layer, and pasted the image on it. Then the Ctrl + Alt + G thing ... presto!

The image revealed by the text is of the tomatoes sitting on the counter waiting for someone to eat them. We've had sliced tomatoes, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, salsa, tomato-onion-garlic-basil on pasta, salads with tomato, and we love them all. In fact, I'm going to go pick some more tomatoes right now. Day before yesterday, the total was 21 pounds 5 ounces.

I love tomato season.

Update: After picking the tomatoes, the season harvest so far weighs in at 29 pounds 4 ounces.

300

Not long after I planted my tomatoes out in the front yard, I was bullshitting with the owner of the empty house next door. "I got over 150 pounds of tomatoes last year, but I had a few unproductive vines. This year, I'm thinking I'll get 300 pounds of tomatoes out of here."

I hoped I wouldn't regret my words later, not wanting to be known as a bullshitter, even though I was in the bullshitting mode.

Then, as can be seen in the previous post, I had a record tomato picking day. A few days later, I added another 44-pound picking. And THEN, on July 3, I broke the record and picked 55 pounds of beautiful, beautiful tomatoes. At that point, I knew I'd get my 300 by the end of tomato season.

On the 28th of July, I hit my goal. 301 pounds of tomatoes from a small suburban front yard. 

 The vines are getting a bit weary at this point, and who can blame them? So I did a stout trimming on the indeterminate vines (Early Girl and Gladiator) and took off all the branches that are done with production or that looked like they would be unproductive. The Shady Ladies are still producing; they're not ready to be pruned just yet. 

I'll keep track of what I pick until the end of the season, of course. But no more bullshitting. I have no idea how many more tomatoes I'll get this year.

That's Kermit beside the tomatoes, being such a good, calm dog. And the picture of the yard is taken from the next door neighbor's yard -- a next door neighbor who will own the house starting tomorrow. Seems like a really nice guy, and he says his wife loves raising tomatoes. Wouldn't that be cool?

Record Tomato Harvest

This morning I enlisted Bernie's help, and we picked tomatoes.

On the tray in front, the variety is "Gladiator" a new variety this year, raised from seed.  On the left, in the low basket, is "Early Girl." The rest are "Shady Lady."

51 pounds, 10 ounces.

In one picking.

That's the most ever. Last year I think the heaviest day brought in 28 pounds. On the other hand, last year I had a number of unproductive loafer vines that just didn't produce worth a damn. This year I went with the big guns (plus Gladiator) because we have a use for some tomato sauce in the future.

Aren't they a bit pale to be picked, you may ask. Not at all, really. They will finish coloring up just fine sitting on my counter.  The ones below started out picked just as blushy as the ones on the table.

They are just as flavorful, too. But the reasons I pick them just as they start to blush are three-fold: one, the sun can cook them on the vine in the afternoon heat; two, if they color up, the bugs bite them and birds peck them; and three, if they get too ripe on the vine, they soften up and the weight of the other tomatoes on the vine crushes them. Tomatoes are not only delicious, but fierce.
 

Here's what I mean about bug bites:

These are Gladiator tomatoes, a paste-type variety with a thin skin. All they have to do is start blushing, and bugs nibble or sting them. They can still be used for sauce, but they look ugly and can rot quickly once the skin is breached.

Incidentally, the description of "Gladiator" from Burpee's Seeds says it's a patio or small garden tomato. That would be only if you don't want to see your patio or small garden until next fall -- all of the plants are wide and taller than I am.


I do have another variety in the yard, a San Marzano that was on the verge of being thrown out at the nursery; I'm a sucker for orphan tomatoes and just brought it home and tucked it in with the sunflowers and overgrown onions. If it produces a fruit, I'll be glad to taste it.

From left to right, Gladiator (8 oz.), Shady Lady (8 oz.), and Early Girl (6 oz.)

 High time for a BLT, I say.

28 Pounds

Yes, I did. I picked 28 pounds of tomatoes from my front yard garden.

Bernie snagged probably another pound for his salsa before I got to the scales.

This has been a great year for my tomatoes, with Shady Ladies and Early Girls vying for the prettiest production. However, the tomatoes in the silver bowl are on reserve -- no one who is ambivalent about the taste of tomatoes should eat them, because they are Bush Big Boy, and definitely the best-tasting tomato I've had since I was a kid, and Mom raised Big Boys.

I'm going to go eat one of them now.

P.S. Bernie and I froze five pounds of zucchini this morning, and seven pounds of sweet corn yesterday afternoon. That'll take the bite out of winter!

Gardening in the Time of Drought

There they are, fifteen pounds of tomatoes.

Half of them I picked yesterday, but quit when my back began aching. (I'd been out on the horse for over an hour.) The rest I got today.

We gave away about eight pounds a couple days ago, and Bernie used another eight or so making an incredibly delicious canned salsa. The salsa was so good that he could use this whole batch as far as I'm concerned. There are plenty more to come, too, depending on how bad this coming heat wave is. Sometimes it gets too hot and the fruit more or less cooks on the vine.

Only one cluster of grapes from our vine has ripened -- the rest look to be about a month away from edibility. No idea why one ripened so soon, but it was a delicious preview of coming attractions.

That many tomatoes during California's drought? you may well ask. And I will tell you in answer that the key is water management. Aside from a little square of grass in the front yard, which has two automatic lawn sprinklers on it, the entire rest of the property is on a drip system, which puts a small but adequate amount of water on individual plants.

What had been perfectly useless lawn was removed, and Bernie built planter boxes, which will eventually also be on a drip system. See the black tubing? That carries water to three small fern pines (podocarpus -- neither fern nor pine, really) and some tomatoes. Each plant has its own emitter; weeds get no water, empty dirt gets no water, sidewalk and gutter get no water.

Is it enough in high summer? Just about ... but we make up the difference from inside the house. Any time we run water, waiting for it to heat up for washing dishes or taking a shower, we collect that runoff into buckets. Some of those buckets go directly into container plants, but what is not urgently needed goes into my "well" -- a 33 gallon plastic garbage can, to bank against dry and excessively hot days.

Looks a little bit like Mars there, with no plants, but by next Spring, there will be drought-tolerant lavender, maybe a few blueberry bushes, and bark mulch to hold moisture and soften the view.

Ahh, the view. That's the back patio in the morning, more container plants, everything on drip or hand-watering, no lawn ...

... And all gorgeous. Fortunately my neighbor to the north used to live in the mountains near Santa Cruz. She's heavily invested in her urban forest, too; ground shaded by trees doesn't need as much water.

So far, so good.

June-ness

What is not to love about growing corn in containers on your patio?

This is the 2015 planting of On Deck Burpee hybrid container corn. I sit in its shade in the mornings, admiring the curving leaves and the gentle rustling sounds they make in the early breeze.

A few aphids tried to infest it, but I just hosed them off, and I haven't seen any since. During the time of the aphids, I saw some tiny wasps hanging around the corn; some gardening advice pages suggested that some species of wasps eat the aphids, and that I shouldn't use a pesticide -- which I'm glad of, as I'm not fond of chemical solutions.

As for my tomatoes, I sampled both Super Fantastic and Rutgers, and the wild tomato that over-wintered. Not impressed by any of the three. Very bland, not up to the huge flavors of Container's Choice or Early Girl. I was particularly disappointed by the wild one, as it is loaded with fruit.

Maybe it will make a good sauce.

Oh, the Color!

There they are, the first two tomatoes.

Yes, the one on the right is a little pale, but I was not about to let my first crop fall prey to slugs or birds or whatever. Once they start to turn color, tomatoes are ripe, but it is nice to let them hang out on the counter until the color is deep and they soften to provide the richest taste.

I love tomatoes. But maybe I love tomato plants more. I think the tiny yellow blossoms are cute, and the foliage is pretty. The smell of the vines is intoxicating to me, rooted deeply in the memory of my mother's greenhouse, where she started tomatoes from seed to sell, reserving a few for her garden and mine. When I wade in and tie my tomatoes to their stakes or cages, pruning a sucker branch here or there, tickling the blossoms to make them set fruit, the green stain on my hands and arms amuses me; watching the soap and water turn greenish as I clean up afterwards makes me smile. My tomatoes and I have had a close contact.

All but a few of my plants are in the ground. Most of them are in containers. I started with three Early Girl, known for flavor and -- earliness -- added two Shady Lady, that would be the ones in the picture to the right. Of course I made sure I had two Roma plants, for Bernie's salsa endeavors.

Then I bought two Rutgers, because the literature described their flavor as "incomparable." And because they were available, and I had some space, I found a home for a Better Boy and a Super Fantastic.

A spot was reserved for a wild tomato that came up last fall and over-wintered, much to my surprise. It formed the illustration for Anna Sykora's Piker Press article, "Crazy Tomato," and I was shocked that it made it to Spring. (It's a monster, with a scary amount of fruit and tendrils spanning four feet across, btw.)

One tomato plant made it home with me after I had a fervid conversation with a man I met at the hardware store -- he gifted me with a plant called "Delicious," a plant that has ended up on the endangered list in my garden after it failed to thrive. From its isolation ward spot near the avocado tree, it looks over at yet another plant, Container's Choice, that has a knack for vigorous growth and hiding ripe tomatoes under it's foliage.

And I was done with buying tomatoes at that point, especially since I found another wild tomato growing up near the Better Boy and Super Fantastic, the only non-container plants in the bunch.

Until the supermarket marked down its veggies, and I found a pony-pack of Beefsteak tomatoes whimpering at me. I bought a couple giant terracotta pots and another cage...

Day before yesterday, Bernie and I held a four-way taste test of ripe tomatoes from Early Girl, Shady Lady, Container's Choice, and Better Boy. Those are the cut ones in the middle, minus the Container's Choice, which was my favorite, and I ate it all before I thought to take a picture. Bernie's favorite was Early Girl. Then he made salsa from all the others.

Next day I picked another 16 tomatoes.

Today, Bernie is researching tomato paste and pizza sauce recipes.

I myself am waiting to find out what Beefsteak, Rutgers, and Super-Fantastic taste like.

And the wild ones. I love summer tomato season.

One Big Container Tomato

I have two Bush Goliath plants in a half-barrel in the back yard. They set a bunch of tomatoes in short order; last year the one Bush Goliath was the only plant to really produce many tomatoes at all, which is why I planted them again this year.

This monster, as you can see from the scales, weighs 11 ounces. Not all the tomatoes from that planter are that big, but a number of them have been. Big Red here is from a July 1st picking.

Yesterday morning, to add to excess, I picked tomatoes and finished up with a basket weighing over 14 pounds.

14 pounds of tomatoes can just about give you the hives just by looking at them. Can you say, "Get out the canner, quick!"

Garden!

There's the corn field! The tall ones on the left are corn specially bred for container gardening, from Burpee Seeds, called "On Deck." I was going to plant the right side with the same variety two weeks after the initial planting, but then I lost the packet of seeds somewhere in the house, so I just filled in with some random sweet corn variety. Even if I don't get corn from the plants, they are so pretty.

The onions are doing great. On the left are some planted shallowly, for slicing onions; on the right are onion sets planted more deeply, for scallions. We've eaten a few of them, and they are sweet and delicious.

And then there are the tomatoes.

These are Early Girl, another Burpee variety. I planted three of them in containers in the front yard, and they are breaking their green ties with the weight of their fruit. And they are early, to be sure. Within a week of their planting, they had all set fruit; I ate the first ripe one the last week of May.

I think that if I could be heartless and calculating, I'd thin the little green tomatoes so that the remaining ones would get bigger, but a 2 1/2 inch tangy-sweet tomato is just the right size for a snack, so I don't. I just tie more green tape around them to keep them from falling to the ground.

So far my ploy has worked and ants have plundered none of them.

And then there are Bernie's Romas, which are perfect for salsas and sauces, being meaty little beasties.

The Roma tomatoes just have a cage around them; they are fairly polite as tomatoes go, and don't require a lot of leash training, although as you can see, some green tape has been employed to keep those heavily-laden vines up out of the ants.

Bernie should have enough salsa to keep him in nachos until Thanksgiving.

Now these maniacs are my Marglobes. They tend to be a late-season crop, but they've gone a bit mad this year. That fence is six feet high, and the Marglobes seem determined to climb over it. Tomorrow I'm going to go in with nails and green tape and corral them so that they don't fall over and strangle the orange tree that is out of sight on the right.

Marglobes are an "heirloom" variety, thin-skinned and not too prolific. I like their taste, and their habit. They're almost secretive about their fruit, keeping it covered by leaves. Then you see a twinkle of red, and tunneling through the foliage, come upon big, beautiful orbs of juicy goodness.

I noted the first Marglobe tomato blushing pink this morning. With the temps in the 90s during the day, and no lower than 60 at night, it should be ripe by Saturday.

Alex's eggplant garden has never looked better.

Except for one point, the fluffy bloom-laden plant has not set any eggplants yet. Last year, the plants looked ratty and bug-eaten, but produced loads of black shiny yuckiness.

I'm not fond of eggplant like Alex is ... but Bernie learned how to make a killer eggplant parmesan, and so we're all waiting ... I'm ready to take a paintbrush to those blossoms and see if I can speed pollination along.

And finally, for this tour, we have the harvest of thumblike carrots. They're supposed to be short and fat like that. Their flavor is scrumptious, and they kept well in the soil until this week.

While we snack on these (should take us right up to NFL pre-season),  I'll try to get Alex to remember the variety and plant some more in September. I was dubious about container carrots until I tasted one.

Tomorrow's morning task: pick a basketful of tomatoes, and get some onions ready for a salad for lunch.

Do stop by if you can take some tomatoes off our hands -- I haven't even begun to talk about the Goliath tomatoes out back.

Look At the 'Maters on That One!

These Marglobe variety tomatoes are undoubtedly the most beautiful tomatoes I have ever grown.

Far from being in full sunlight, as the seed packet suggests, these have only limited sunlight over the course of a day, a bit in the afternoon, and then shade the rest of the day, morning and evening. Each of these lovelies weighs more than half a pound, with the biggest at .75 pounds.

Marglobes don't have the *BANG!!* taste that the wild tomatoes do -- they're a bit mild. But for consistency of later-producing fruit and prolific production, wow, I love them.

There are two other Marglobe plants, seeded at the very same time, in the garden on the north bank. They are weedy and feeble-looking. Unlike the producers of these huge tomatoes, they are in full sun. Will they produce this year? I doubt it very much. My corner garden by the fence is too much full sun, too hot, not enough ventilation.

Live and learn. Next year all my tomatoes will have shade in the afternoon.

Winter Day

Yet ANOTHER day in the 60+ degree range! We went to the hardware store today, and found that they were out of onion sets already -- this crazy warm weather has everyone jumping the gun.

I did have to go up to Manteca for a couple things, so we stopped in The Home Depot and picked up onion sets (they had plenty) and seed potatoes as well. In about two weeks, I'll be ready to plant, I think.

Coffee cans are sitting in the garage, waiting for me to plant Marglobe tomato seeds in them; I'll buy Bernie's Romas and maybe an Early Girl at the hardware. I've got a month and a half before I need to worry about tomatoes, though obviously, I've got them on my mind.

It's nearly time to close up the garage and chase the granddaughter indoors. I smell some fool's fireplace burning even though it's a "No Burn" day. With the warm afternoon, even with the sun going down, the neighborhood boys are playing football across various front yards, and Lil and a couple girls are playing their incomprehensible princess or wizard games. Howie is ready to go indoors where he has a slim chance of someone giving him a tidbit as supper is cooked in the kitchen.

Like the kids, I'm reluctant to admit that a winter evening is calling an end to activities in the open air.

Suddenly Inundated

That's three stews' worth of peeled and diced tomatoes, ready to go into the freezer.

Freak weather all this year, not the least freakish of which is weather that is spurring the tomatoes to ripen at an alarming rate in mid-October.

I decided to put this batch up after viewing how many tomatoes are coming ripe on my Marglobe and Bernie's Romas. Oog. I also negotiated with a neighbor to foist off on her the excess we're going to be picking in the next few days.

These are all Romas, firm-fleshed and medium-flavored. I'm thinking about stews with beef, thin slivers of celery, these tomatoes, fresh parsley, some potatoes, and green beans. With a skootch of Louisiana Hot Sauce. And French bread, just baked from the local bakery.

If that doesn't make you wish for December, nothing will, unless you're a kid with a Barbie Jones.

Marglobe

Unbelievable, that our tomato harvest starts at the end of September and early October.

Freakish chilly weather in May halted tomato plant development, then a tragically hot week cooked most of the tender unripe fruit on the stems. My primary producers, Better Girl and Shady Lady, went into shock and produced little to nothing this summer.

However, I did have a seedling or two sprout from some old Marglobe seeds. That would be the tomato on the left, keeping company with a Roma on the right.

Marglobe -- it's a name from my distant past, when I might have been four or five years old, and Mom was just starting her greenhouse business. I remember her talking about starting Big Boy tomatoes instead of Marglobes, even though most people in the neighborhood preferred the Marglobes. She ever after only grew Big Boy tomatoes, or Burpee varieties with the "Big Boy taste."

But knowing my mother's penchant for being contrary to what everyone else in the world considered the norm, I wondered about the choice. Did she really find Big Boy tomatoes to be superior to Marglobes, or did she veer from Marglobes just to be following her own solitary journey? I bought a packet of Marglobe seed and this year had a couple of late seedlings survive ... and finally produce a ripe fruit this week.

With great ceremony, I tasted the first vine-ripened Marglobe.

The skin was tender, the flesh delicate, the flavor ... very delicate. As in ... am I eating a tomato at all?

Just to reassure myself that I wasn't imagining things, I had a wild tomato, fresh off the volunteer vines, small thing that it was. The flavor about blasted me off the porch.

Mom was right.

Tomatoes, Wild, Tame, and Old

Today was a tomato harvest day.

The ones in the big clear glass dish are cultivated tomatoes. The ones in the smaller containers are all wild, that is, their parent plants sprouted from seeds germinating from last year's wild plants, "volunteers," if you prefer the term.

The cultivated tomatoes are the first decent ones we've had this summer; the oblong ones are Roma, the round one is Marglobe. An apple babysits them, hoping to get them to ripen to full redness.

I have never seen a shittier year for tomatoes than this one. The late coldness into the first week of June was followed by a hot snap that literally cooked the tops of tomatoes on the vine, and damaged the vines themselves, burning them yellow. My Shady Lady and Better Girl plants were stunted by the horrid heat, and their sun-baked fruit rotted on their stems.

We planted two Roma plants late, and I had a couple Marglobe plants come up from old seeds I had in the garage. These all set fruit, but it's a race against time for them to ripen. In the clear glass dish, on the right, is a Marglobe tomato, the only one to turn color so far.

Wild tomatoes have supplied our table, and I have to admit, they are truly tasty. 2011 has been Hunter-Gatherer Tomato Year.