Late Summer Update from Picofarm

This year I decided to try a bunch of different kinds of tomatoes and do an informal study.  There were 17 varieties all together.  Here I present my determinations:

 

Here we have the red Rutgers, the small orange Zlatava (a Russian variety) at the bottom, the big yellow on the left with the red blush is called Mr. Stripey, and the other yellow is Yellow Oxheart. After extensive study in our test kitchens, we have determined the following:

Rutgers is best used in canning. Well, duh. It was sort of developed for that purpose. It's not a bad slicing tomato, but it's not very big.  It is also fine in salads.

Although it did not perform as I expected, Zlatava makes a very nice salad tomato. Tasty and sweet but not too sweet. It's not a cherry tomato.  I would grow this one again just for salads.  Zlatava was touted as a large yellow tomato with a pink interior.  The images that accompanied the seeds showed a tomato cut in half that resembled a pink grapefruit.  Not so much.  But it's so tasty I don't really care.

Mr. Stripey really shines in a BLT. It's not as 'tomatoey' as some I've had, but it's quite tasty with the bacon.  It is reminiscent of a beefsteak but not as watery, I thought. Given my choice between Mr. Stripey and a beefsteak for my BLT, I'd choose Mr. Stripey.  For some reason, my Mr. Stripey tomatoes don't look a lot like the picture on the plant ID tag.  I'm not complaining.  They're wonderful.

The Yellow Oxheart is just good eating. It seems like it is lower acid than a run-of-the-mill red tomato, but I haven't done a side-by-side comparison or any pH testing on which to base my conclusions.

 

Some varieties not pictured are San Marzano and La Roma. Both are paste types that performed as expected when prepared for sauce.  I would not recommend them for eating on a salad as they are pretty dry.  But they are perfect for saucing.

 

Black Krim.  Never made it out of the garden.  I ate the first one on the spot and after that they were all eaten the exact same way.  Very, very tasty.

 

Black Prince.  I did not get a single ripe tomato from the plant I got.  It set a few fruit and then just stalled.  I keep waiting and hoping...

 

Pink Brandywine.  A very pretty heirloom type that the grasshoppers and birds seem to LOVE.  I've only gotten a couple of unblemished fruits.

 

Green Pineapple.  Very odd looking and because of the green color, I missed the first few fruits and they rotted on the vine.  Sweet and tomatoey with rather delicate and easily bruised flesh.  Really good on a plate with some salt. 

Of course we had some Beefsteaks.  Good old dependable beefsteak types are the best in sandwiches and eaten fresh.  These were no exception.

'Sun-Dried' tomatoes were a meaty, paste type that did not perform well.  Only a few fruits set before the heat of the summer took the plant out.

'Champion' set a lot of small tomatoes that taste okay.  Nothing special to me anyway.  Sized about like the Zlatava but nowhere near as good.  The plants are on the smaller side and might do well in limited space.

 

This year we did three varieties of 'cherry' type tomatoes.  

 

Super Sweet 100 is an annual favorite at our house.  One or two plants gives us way more tiny tomatoes than we can hope to eat.  They are sweet and juicy and surprisingly easy to store when dehydrated.  They make a nice topping for pizza or a mix in for casseroles, pasta, meatloaf, soap, etc. 

I had never grown Yellow Pear before this year.  I had tried a plant last year but it didn't make it to the fruit bearing stage before a blight took it out.  So this year I got seeds and started a couple dozen plants with the hope that one of them would give me some tomatoes.

Holy crap.

None of them died.  I have yellow pear tomatoes everywhere.  That might not be such a bad deal if I actually liked how they taste.  They are a very pretty little pear-shaped tomato with a lovely yellow/gold color and almost zero tomato taste.  I dried a few to see how they will perform in recipes and I made some pickled tomatoes with a few.  I hope to report back on those in a few weeks.  Unless they get a stellar review from one of those uses, I won't be growing those again.  Prolific?  Yes.  Edible?  Yes.  Desirable?  Not so much.  They made so many tomatoes that I live in fear of the multitudes of volunteer plants I'll have next year.  Yikes.

The last of the tiny tomatoes is a golden cherry that I have since lost the variety name.  I wish I hadn't.  These are easily the best cherry tomatoes I've ever eaten in my life.  Somewhere in that garden plot is the identification tag that came with the plant I bought.  I will find it.  In the meantime, I'm saving some seeds in the hope that at least one of them will be true to the variety.

In other news...

The squashes have started to come in.  This is a small selection of the varieties that I grew this year.  Two kinds of pumpkins, three kinds of summer squash (a traditional zucchini, some funny little yellow zucchinis, and a white patty pan), and I forget how many kinds of winter squash.  In the picture below we have turban, butternut, acorn, lakota, spaghetti, and delitica.  There are so many other types and many I had never grown before waiting to be harvested in the squash bed.  I hope to have a taste test completed soon so I can report my findings. 

I am super pleased with my squash crop this year.  Probably the best one I've ever had!  I have to confess:  I used some garden dust on the squash vines this year.  The squash vine borer is a menace in my part of the country. I rarely ever get more than a couple of edible fruits no matter how many vines I plant.  This year I used some judiciously applied chemical dust and had almost NO vine borer issues and the squash bugs are almost non-existent.  I know, I know...it's not organic.  It's really a topic for another blog, but I'll just say here that it is very unlikely I will be able to grow completely organically in my plots no matter how carefully I shun the chemicals.

In the 'just for fun' section of the garden we find me and my broom corn.  Just for scale, I am about 5'9" and the tallest of the broom corn is easily double my height.  This was so much fun to watch as it grew like crazy to form the seed heads at the top.  Last week I harvested those seed heads and I hope to make some nice fall decorations with them.  I plan to make room for some broom corn every year.  It's fun to grow and the seed heads turn brown and purple in the fall.  I'll post up some pics of whatever I figure out to make with the seed heads.

A parting shot of the squash beds and the Bitch of a Ditch.  I had hoped that the squash would grow down into the ditch eliminating the need to mow it all the dang time.  It sort of did that.  Next time I'll plant right along the edge and see what it does.  Yep, that's little ol' me standing in the ditch for scale.  I told you it's one big ditch.

That's all for now.  I gotta get back out there and pick some peppers.  There are lots of those to talk about, too.  Until next time.

Plan of Attack: Growing Squashes and Smiting the Squash Vine Borer (Updated!)

All my talk of luffa gourds last night has me thinking about growing squashes this year.  I have a longstanding love for squash of all kinds so there is never really a question of whether or not I'm actually going to grow squash.  The question is more often which types and how much.

Last year was a bust.  The squash vine borers got every last one of my squash plants and my replacement seeds did not do well in the severe drought even with extra coddling and care.  That's why there are so few pictures to accompany this blog post.


First wave of dying squash vines and their soon to be dead replacements.

It was, in a word, disappointing.  But this year will be different.  I have a plan. <insert hand wringing and maniacal laughter here>

Over the last few weeks, I've done some online research about squashes and the pests that love them. I Googled squash vine borer and got over 94,000 results.  That should give some indication of the severity of the problem this little clear-wing, day-flying moth causes every year.

But, as I said, I have a plan.  I have more than one plan, actually.  First and foremost, I plan to grow some varieties that have a natural immunity to the borers.  I've read conflicting information about genetic resistance. I understand that Butternuts are the first choice for resistant varieties. For summer squashes planting the non-bush types should help. I found this information sheet on the topic in one of my many searches.  Also, this forum thread was very interesting.

Before I start, let me just say that I am determined to make this work.  I plan to make this as difficult as possible for the borers.  If I have to plant in containers using fresh, sterilized soil every year then so be it.  Based on the information gleaned here are my plans:

1. The first plan involves a yet-to-be constructed cover that I plan to put over my squash seeds from day one immediately following planting.  The goal is to keep the borers from having any access at all to the plants until after the egg-laying portion of the annual cycle is over and done with.  From what I've read, putting a floating row cover over top of your squash plants until the female flowers appear is one way to keep the borers at bay.  If you're just not sure they're gone yet, you can even hand-pollinate the flowers  until you're sure the coast is clear.  I have an idea on how to make the covers sturdy enough to keep out the moths and big enough to allow the vines to grow undisturbed. I may do a tutorial on the construction process.  I have more than one design in mind.  I think this should work pretty effectively unless there are borer moths waiting in the soil where the squashes are planted.  As further insurance, I plan to spray regularly with insecticidal soap.  If these efforts should prove futile:

2. Two words: diatomaceous earth.  Another article I found described how one gardener put a heap of diatomaceous earth around the base of all of his squash plants.  Diatomaceous earth works to kill grubs, worms and other soft-bodied critters by being sharp enough to cut through their skin causing them to dehydrate and die. So as the eggs hatch and the grubs emerge, they crawl through the stuff and thus seal their own fates.  It is totally natural and non-poisonous although I'm told you don't want to inhale the stuff and get it down into your lungs.  That sounds icky.  Yes, it's a technical term.

3. Bacillus thuringiensis, a.k.a. Bt, is a bacterium commonly used as a pesticide.  It produces a crystal protein that affects the digestive tract of insects and causes them to die.  Unfortunately, it is not specific to grubs or worms so it takes a bit more work to protect beneficial species than just spraying it on the plant.  Another article I read suggested that a solution containing Bt should be injected into the affected plants to target and kill the grub that is destroying the squash vine.  I see this as a second to last resort in my squash vine borer arsenal.  But I'm not above it.  I'm not, I tell you.

4. I've read some good things about Montery Spinosad Organic Garden Insect Spray.  It's supposed to be very good at killing things like grubs, beetles and weevils but not harming beneficial insects like bees. (update 28 June 2013:  I have since learned that this is not the case.  It says right on the label not to spray on or near flowering plants as the bees will be killed.  Bummer.) I have not personally used this product. But if worse comes to worst, I will try it by spraying on the base of the plant near the ground.  One article suggested that this could also be injected into the stem of the vine to target and kill the grub within.  Another article touted its curative abilities in the squash bug arena. 

5. If none of those things works this year, then I guess I'll just have to buy from someone who had better luck than I did.  Last fall I ran across a guy at the farmer's market with a 16-foot trailer LOADED with butternut squashes. He said he had over a ton of squashes on the trailer and he had that many more waiting at home. He was selling them for $1 apiece and I felt like I was robbing him since the squashes in the store were almost twice that much per pound.  But he practically begged me to take them.  So I did.

Does all of this seem a little too much for some squashes?  Perhaps it is.  But at this point, it's the principle of the thing.