Tomato Trials and Garden Tribulations

Fall is almost officially here, and the garden has produced a mixed bag of goods.  Many crops compressed their maturity period once we finally got some heat, and others will never come to fruition.  Surprises in this cool, wet summer, cucurbits and solanums have all ripened right on time.  Blueberries were large and plentiful, as were other types of berries, but the standbys – apples, pears and prunes are almost non-existent and if there was fruit set, as in the case of prunes, they will not ripen.  The nights are too cold, and the days too short already.

Growing your own food is always fraught with difficulties.  Seed to table even for the experienced is, or can be a roller coaster ride.  I try to avoid too much anxiety by planning for abundance.  Attention to variety and continual tweaking in the gardens make for at least something to eat.

This year a friend and I put our heads together and decided to trial one variety of tomato with seeds from different sources.  We had already decided we liked Costoluto Genovese for most of our salsa and sauce making.  We both live at the same elevation – as the crow flies, she is right through the woods, by road that is a different story – and, we both are growing warm-weather crops in greenhouses. And, we can and preserve until our eyeballs pop out of our heads!  Then we start poring over seed catalogs for next year.

To do a proper trial we needed to keep things as similar as possible and minimize the differences.

Differences:
♥ Greenhouse orientation – mine is north/south, hers is east/west.

♥ My greenhouse has more, err, ventilation due to roll-up sides, higher peak, and it’s not finished.  Hers is tighter, smaller doors, lower roof, and is therefore warmer.

♥  I use composted cow and chicken manure, she uses horse.

♥  Seeds from 5 different sources.

Similarities:

♥  Same variety of tomato.

♥  I started all the plants and then distributed them accordingly.

♥  Same planting dates.

♥ Kept meticulous or ridiculous (depending on how you look at it) records of plant habits, fruit set, and problems, triumphs and yields.

♥  Hog-tied family members for taste tests of fresh tomatoes and cooked products.  When anyone sees us with a pigging string and a plates of tomatoes they now walk quickly in the other direction…

♥ Admired each others gardens repeatedly and smiled a lot.

♥ Made plans for seed saving from the ones we like and subject ourselves to a repeat next year.

As for the rest of the garden, it is now in full swing.

Peppers galore, for fresh eating and preserving.  New this year Flavorburst F1 from Johnny’s.  Delicious!  Of course, my standbys, Numex Joe E. Parker and Red Ruffled Pimiento are doing great too.

The deer made their appearance last week, so the deer netting was in order for the carrots.  The most popular vegetable with us, voles, deer and dogs is carrots.  The netting helps, but voles and dogs (who are supposed to be chasing deer) still get under the netting and help themselves.  Sigh, more abundance planning.  At least the voles and dogs eat them as opposed to the deer just tugging at the tops and leaving rubbery carrots for us to find.

I didn’t really hold out any hopes for the corn ripening, but it looks like it may get there.  The cover crop is coming in nicely, that is the thing with dryland gardening, when you want to direct seed in the dry time, you watch the weather report like a hawk and plan your planting accordingly.

Mice and voles have been a terror this year.  They first started in on the strawberries in the greenhouse, then I put down some black plastic mulch at the greenhouse sides and the snakes moved in.  The snakes kept the mice at bay, but scared the pee out of me every time I reached in to the dark recesses of some plant to harvest or saw the black, snake-like soaker hoses out of the corner of my eye.  Alas, the snakes have tired of mouse meat and the mice have regrouped and started in on my coriander.  Good thing I still had tomato twine still hanging in the spots where some tomatoes succumbed to symyphylans.  I just pulled the plants, and trussed them up in the air.  Now they can continue to dry down and the mice will have to get a little more creative to get my coriander seeds.

Italian prunes – my favorite.  Normally they are bursting right now and begging to be dried.  I don’t think they will ripen this late.  The days too short, the nights too cold.

Mangel wurzel for winter chicken feed, planted late, but still doing pretty good for such a short season.

Compost in place and ready for spreading to mellow a little more over winter.

And the final under-seeded cover crop in before the rains hit last weekend.  The garden is good!