Thinking About Tomatoes

It won't be long before every gardener in the Valley is inundated with tomatoes. August is traditionally our best tomato month, but many people are already harvesting early fruit. We have been getting good production from our Chadwick Cherry, Amy's Sugar Gem and Marglobe plants for about a week.

The Chadwick Cherry and Amy's Sugar Gem plants have been grown in straw bales, after conditioning the bales as described in my book, Idiot's Guide: Straw Bale Gardening. The book is available here. Supported by a sturdy trellis, one plant per bale, these have grown into some of the finest tomato plants we have ever produced. See the photo. This is only two Chadwick Cherry plants, and the trellis is 6'6". The reason they are doing so well is probably the absence of soil-borne fungal diseases on the leaves. Growing in straw bales offers nearly complete protection from this problem. I was pleased to learn that Holly Jones, who is in charge of the kitchen garden at UT Gardens, has had similarly good results with tomatoes in straw bales. I strongly urge anyone interested in heirloom tomatoes to give this technique a try.

We have had a bumper crop of cucumbers and squash. The early cucumber plants came down last week, and the early squash plants are showing signs of exhaustion. We have already made second plantings of these crops for harvest in September and October.

If you grow okra, pick it every day to keep the plants producing. Okra keeps about five days in the refrigerator, and is easy to freeze. Just wipe the pods with a kitchen towel, drop them into freezer containers, label and freeze. If you want to slice the okra, you can do that before freezing, but you can also cut them up after thawing. The choice is entirely yours.

The high temperatures and heavy rainfall we have experienced this month have stressed some plants. Tomatoes, in particular, have shown signs of heat stress. If the leaves on your plants curl upward but look otherwise normal, the plants are heat stressed. Apply mulch early in the morning hours to help keep the soil cool and evenly moist. Also, pay attention to rainfall patterns. A good downpour should suffice for about two days before your plants need irrigation. When in doubt, stick your finger into the soil. If it does not feel moist in the first inch or so, it is time to water. Avoid wetting the foliage, as this encourages fungal diseases. Water the plants deeply and thoroughly. Uneven soil moisture levels lead to cracking and blossom end rot. Be especially careful with watering during hot weather. It is probably best to water late in the day, as the air is cooling off, rather than early in the morning. A drenching followed by hot sun can cause fruits to absorb water so fast they split.

Our present weather pattern favors peppers. Green fruits should be setting on most varieties by now. This would be from plants transplanted around the first of June. Bell peppers and other large-fruited varieties will benefit from thinning. Multiple fruit clusters should be thinned to a single fruit. Use the removed ones in the kitchen. Thinning will lead to larger and more flavorful fruits, and helps prevent branches from breaking under the weight of a heavy fruit set. You can also thin hot peppers if you want prize-winning size fruits, but the hot varieties are so vigorous it is not really necessary. If you do thin, take care. Hot pepper juice can burn your eyes and skin, and the stems have heat just like the fruits do.

Small hot peppers, either green or fully ripe, can be easily preserved in vinegar or sherry. Select a bottle and thoroughly clean it. Place some peppers in the bottom of the bottle, then fill it with sherry or the vinegar of your choice. Apply the cap and set the bottle aside in a cool, dark place for at least two weeks before you use it. The amount of heat will depend upon how many peppers you use. About half a cup of peppers for each cup of liquid will produce a product comparable to commercial hot pepper vinegar. Small fruited peppers work best for this, or you can cut larger peppers into chunks. Always wear plastic gloves when handling hot peppers, and take care not to get the juice in your eyes.

Late Spring Harvest

June is a great time in the food garden. We have potatoes, peas, and tarragon in abundance, so all we need is a protein, and dinner is done. Parsley and mint are both thriving right now, too, as the oregano prepares to bloom and its flavor becomes harsh and unpleasant. We have also permitted ourselves to pluck a few sprigs of basil, although the plants remain small. Fresh basil is just too good to resist. Although we have been pulling a few for the kitchen, our sweet red onions are not yet ready to harvest. Some of them are already as large as softballs. We have plenty of green onions from our late March planting of Evergreen White Bunching seeds from Mayo Seed Company, Knoxville.

Straw Bale Update
All the bales are planted, and everything looks really good. We had a couple of bales that collapsed, but the plants in them are still looking healthy. It is too early to tell about harvest amounts or quality, but so far the plants in the bales are behaving much like plants elsewhere in the garden. We will have more to say on straw bale gardening as summer progresses.

Elsewhere in the Garden
From the appearance of our Lazy Wife Greasy beans, we will soon be canning them to enjoy later in the year. The vigorous vines are hanging full of beautiful beans. Greasy beans are Southern heirlooms that lack hairs on the pods, giving them an oiled appearance. The "lazy wife" part of the name is because the beans are stringless. They can be cooked whole or simply broken in pieces without stringing, a boon to any lazy wife (or husband) who finds stringing beans a chore.

The Tromboncino summer squash vines threaten the entire neighborhood, they are so vigorous! This is the only summer squash cultivar that is ignored by squash vine borers, a pest that in some areas makes squash production nearly impossible without extraordinary measures to prevent the insects's gaining access to the plants. We have ours confined to a trellis, but this is not really a plant for a small space garden.

We grew Irish Cobbler potatoes this year, and despite them being attacked repeatedly by flea beetles, we are going to have a decent harvest. This old fashioned cultivar, said to have been developed in New England in the Nineteenth Century by Irish immigrants, bears both red and white tubers on the same plant. The potatoes have rather deep eyes, making them a little trouble to peel. However, this is their only drawback. The flavor is superb, and they are good keepers. They also have the perfect texture for potato salad, a required side dish at every summer barbecue and picnic. At the end of this post I have included a recipe for Southern Style Potato Salad. Mine is based on a recipe from the restaurant at the Soul Food Museum in Atlanta. I have changed a few things to reflect the way potato salad was made in my family. It is important for the eggs and vegetables to be chopped into dice about 1/4 inch or a little smaller. This must be done by hand. Using a food processor will produce a mushy texture.

Southern Style Potato Salad

1 pound Irish Cobbler potatoes

3 eggs

2 tablespoons yellow mustard

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup finely diced onion

1/2 cup finely diced celery

1/2 cup finely diced sweet pickles (not sweet pickle relish)

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon finely minced fresh parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Cook potatoes until they offer only slight resistance when pierced with the point of a knife. Drain in a colander, and when cool enough to handle peel and cut them into small dice. Reserve the potatoes in a large bowl.

Place the eggs in a saucepan and add cold water to cover them by one inch. Bring slowly to a boil, remove from the heat, cover the pan, and let stand 20 minutes. Drain, fill the pan with cold water, and let stand until the eggs are cool. This may require two changes of cold water. Peel the eggs, and cut them into small dice like the potatoes. Add to the bowl with the reserved potatoes. Stir gently to combine.

To the bowl add the mustard, vinegar, sugar, mayonnaise, onion, celery and sweet pickle. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add more mustard and/or mayonnaise, if desired, for a creamier salad. Chill overnight to blend the flavors. Garnish with paprika and parsley just before serving.

Straw Bale Gardening II

The bales are cooking, and some have almost completed the conditioning process. We should be ready to plant those in the next few days.

Mushrooms have appeared in some of the bales. They appear to be "shaggy mane" mushrooms, Coprinus comatus. They are harmless, and if they show up in one of your bales, you can ignore them. They are edible, but I do not recommend eating any mushroom without confirmation of its identity by an experienced mycologist. DO NOT EAT the mushrooms that appear in your straw bales.

In order to get a jump on the season, we have started several of our plants in containers, so they will already be up and growing when we transplant them to the bales. We took this step to facilitate producing images for the upcoming book. However, it is not necessary merely to produce a crop. We have about 140 days remaining in the growing season. Plenty of time for summer favorites like tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and squash.

Now is also a great time to check garden centers for clearance pricing on both vegetable plants and spring blooming perennials. Bloomed out perennials are often marked down to a fraction of their former price. If transplanted now and kept well watered for the coming months of hot weather, they will be just as beautiful as their more expensive bench-mates come next spring.

Tomato plants can become leggy by this time of year, but you can rejuvenate them for a late crop. Remove the plant from its container and loosen the root ball with your fingers. It won't matter if you tear off a few roots. Strip all the leaves from the stem, leaving only two or three clusters at the top. Remove any flowers or flower buds that are present. Put two tablespoons of organic vegetable food in the planting hole. Bury the stem to within an inch of the lowermost leaf cluster. Water in and mulch well. The stem will root all along its length, and soon these plants will be vigorous and stocky, ready to support a bumper crop of delicious tomatoes.

Southern food is trendier than ever this season. I just read an Associated Press report on the resurgence of sorghum, both the molasses-like syrup and the grain, as an ingredient in fine dining restaurant fare. Sorghum-glazed foie gras anyone? How about sorghum and grits ice cream? Seriously.

Sorghum grain is being used as a substitute for couscous, and demand is growing by leaps and bounds in these days of gluten-free everything. Who would have predicted this grass, brought to our shores by Africans in bondage, would find a modern following? I remember seeing it growing here and there in my neighborhood when I was a child. Theoretically, sorghum is a suitable grain crop for a small space garden. The grain-bearing varieties are short and stocky.

I will have to explore at the market in search of a local source of sorghum syrup. It's pretty good on biscuits. I cannot say regarding foie gras.