Garden looking good in spite of near miss!

OK, it's June the 8^th and asteroid 2014 HQ124 termed by some astronomers, 'The Beast', has apparently missed smacking in the earth! (At least on this go around). Somewhat disturbing to contemplate, On average, an object about the size of 2014 HQ124 will pass this close to Earth every few years! Should we be worried? Why no! Obama says he's on top of it! I'm totally serial on that...

There's also no sign of those dreaded Japanese beetles that normally emerge from the ground every year about this time! I'm sure I won't miss them if they were, in fact, killed by the last hard winter. In point of fact and in spite of the rather wet weather, there hasn't been much in the way of pest damage so far. I'm looking forward now to decent harvests of onions, tomatoes and peppers!

A leap of gardening faith!

These Little Caesar seedlings don't look like much!

In many ways gardening is very similar to practicing some religions. Lots of faith comes into play! When I start some of my vegetables indoors in late winter, I have to have faith that those efforts will pan out somewhere down the road. Some seeds like romaine lettuce come up pretty quickly and so give me hope of a future harvest. Other seeds like peppers and tomatoes can take a week or more to germinate, thus testing ones metal. And, as I like to use seed from plants I harvested the year before, this effort becomes even a bigger leap of faith!

Sweet bell peppers grown from seed are a particular challenge. Not only do they take a long time to germinate, but the growing cycle is long and stretched out. It can be two months before my pepper starts are ready to be transplanted into a raised bed and even then, it could easily be late August before the first harvest! And tomatoes, even though they may germinate relatively quickly, are very finicky when it comes to producing fruit. At least for me they are. As of late, I've taken to growing my main season tomatoes in pots while sowing cherry tomato plants in the main beds! For whatever reason, the cherry tomatoes have always done well, while the potted tomatoes have to be coddled and cajoled into production.

Growing Tomatoes in Pots

Ever since I moved to my current home in southwest Missouri, I’ve had to grow my tomatoes in pots. It’s not that I don’t have enough land, it’s because every year right when my garden sown plants were loaded with fruit, deer would make nightly excursions in small commando raiding parties. Their targets were always the same. I would arise one morning and all my pepper and tomato plants would be eaten to the ground! I mean they would eat the entire plants. Stems, fruit and all.. I could not believe it until one year when I actually caught them. So, rather than fight nature, I elected to start growing some of my tomatoes in containers. Over the years I discovered some things that work an some that don’t.

Make the container or pot large enough

One thing about tomatoes as a class; they drink a lot of water especially when bearing fruit. Another issue that comes up when growing these guys in a pot is the fact that they can become root bound and so any water you give them can tend to flow right through without being retained by the soil. So, it’s paramount that you select a good sized pot to begin with. I generally opt for pots that are at least twelve or more inches wide and deep. When filled with mix, it give each plant about a cubic foot of soil to grow in. Also, when choosing a pot, go for plastic and make sure it’s a lighter color. The dark colored pots can really heat up in full sun and boil the plant’s roots. Not a good thing.

A proper soil for containers

If you just go and heap in some garden soil into a pot you’ll be asking for trouble. Weight is one concern as a cubic foot of regular soil will weigh in at about 90 pounds depending on the moisture content. At the other end of the spectrum, I don’t go for the so-called soil-less mixes that are basically inert (vermiculite?) matter mixed with fertilizer. If you are wondering why, just read this blog on soil structure. My choice for a soil mix is a blend of ingredients that together make up a cubic foot of potting mix include; two one gallon buckets of soil (provides active bacteria, yeasts and fungi) from the garden, three buckets of  Miracle Gro potting mix, a bucket of builders sand, and a bucket of vermiculite. I mix these ingredients together evenly in a wheel barrel and then, before placing then into a pot, I make sure to add some stones or even Styrofoam chunks to insure good drainage. The end result is a pot that you can move, but which has al the ingredients to grow up a great tomato crop. For anyone wondering who much soil or mix a one gallon bucket holds, it’s 1 gal(US Dry) = 0.155557 ft³. So you need about seven buckets to equal a cubic foot. Don’t try and get too scientific on these proportions. The key to a good growing mix is to have a medium that has plenty of air pockets in it so the roots can breath properly.

Choose verities that are suitable

No matter how well you selected and assembled the correct growing pot and soil mix, you can still find yourself in problems if you don’t pay attention to the kinds of tomatoes that do well in confined spaces. Of the two major types of tomatoes; determinate and indeterminate, you will want to choose the determinate variety. These are tomato plants that get just so big, produce a crop and then are done for the season. They are often referred to as bush tomatoes. To save time (6 weeks) and work you can buy your determinate plants at garden centers like the Home Depot. Just be sure to indicate you want a determinate or patio variety of tomato. One of my favorite types of tomatoes for pots, hanging baskets or trays are cherry tomatoes. They will grow just about anywhere and provide small mouthwatering poppers all through the growing season.

When Mr. Basil Got Hitched to Mrs. Tomato

At some point in the hazy past, a marriage occurred between two unlikely denizens of the soil. My friend the basil plant somehow managed to win the affection of the beautiful tomato, a fruit that was at once time thought to be deadly.

Basil came on the scene relatively early in this history of man. It was first noted in India over two thousand years ago where the seeds soon spread to places like Egypt where it was used as one of the embalming herbs in mummies. In ancient Greece it was thought as a cure for the bite of a dragon called a basilisk and so perhaps that’s where it got is modern name.

The tomato, on the other hand is thought to be native to North America. The first records of its appearance were in Aztec records dating about 700 A.D. It got introduced to Europeans in the 1500’s and became an accepted addition to southern European tables from that time on. However, in the northern part of Europe, the wealthy thought it to be poisonous for two reasons; one, it resembled the wolf peach and two, by the effect it had on flatware. Let me explain a bit more about that. It seems that well to do people in that time used flatware made of pewter, which has a high-lead content. Foods high in acid, like tomatoes, would cause the lead to leech out into the food, resulting in lead poisoning and death. Poor people, who ate off of plates made of wood, did not have that problem, and hence did not have an aversion to tomatoes. The first written mention of the tomato in Italy was in 1544; it was often fried and eaten with salt and pepper. This is essentially the reason why tomatoes were only eaten by poor people until the 1800's, especially Italians. Gee could pizza be far behind?

The answer to that question is yes, exactly! What changed in at that point in history was the mass immigration from Europe to America. With this movement came a large blending of cultures. Many Italian-Americans ate tomatoes and brought that food with them. But also, and perhaps equally as important, was the invention of pizza. There is no pizza without tomato sauce, and pizza was invented around Naples in the late 1880's. And so the love affair with the tomato began.

Only in recent times was it discovered that when you bring basil together with sliced tomatoes or in sauces you have two flavors that were just made for each other. So, there you have it. The story of a beautiful, if poisonous lady who married a dragon slayer. A tale for the ages.

Deer and Tomatoes

Somewhere long ago and far away some deity with more time on his hands than sense must have decided that tomato plants should taste good to deer. Not just the leaves and fruit, mind you, but the whole friggin plant! I did a little research and was mildly surprised to discover that deer are ruminants just like cattle. That is, they both have four stomachs and go after greens. Unlike cattle, however deer are browsers while cows are grazers. Without going into detail, what this means is that deer require a slightly higher caliber diet than do their brethren livestock. They also like to eat more frequently, but in small amounts than the grazers do. The bottom line is that good old Odocoileus virginianus (or white-tailed deer to the rest of us) will just about eat anything in the garden that isn’t tied down. Not only do they love the entire tomato plant but likewise for those prized pepper varieties that take forever to grow. So, if you have deer where you live you need to come up with a plan to protect yourself from their glutinous habits. I have found that simple barricades are just not enough. If you really want to be safe, plan on erecting a fence or other similar barrier. That’s my plan for next year!

Brandywine Time

In spite of generally cold and overcast conditions that have defined much of our spring so far, I have gone ahead and prepared a small planting of tomatoes. Here in southwest Missouri we have certainly been blessed with our fair share of rainfall lately. As of the 12^th of April 2008, we have 21.77 inches of rain so far this year. That’s against an average of about twelve inches and has been enough to flood the Bull Shoals River next to my house. It so bad that the small park next to the river is under about twenty feet of water at this time.

A good time to start some seeds, or so I thought. So how about getting some good old tomato seeds planted in a couple of starter pots! The seed I planted this date are a heirloom called Brandywine which I’m sure many folks out there are familiar with. They have won numerous awards over the years and arguably are one of the best tasting tomatoes of all time. You might say what they lack in appearance (it is an ugly looking tomato so don't let the stock picture fool you) are more than made up for in taste. Could there be a moral here somewhere?