Tomato Growing 101

Spacing of tomato plants

I have had a lot of questions about tomatoes recently, and have been doing some research on the plants. The main questions I wanted to answer were:

1) Will my tomato plants produce throughout the growing season?
2) How often should I be picking tomatoes?
3) Should I be pulling off stems with yellowing leaves?
4) How often should the plants be watered?
5) How tall will my tomato plants get?

For a couple of weeks I was picking tomatoes every day or every other day, but just recently the plants seemed to stop producing. I wasn't really sure what to expect with the plants (reminder - I am new to gardening!) so I decided to look up some tid bits of information. I already knew that the tomatoes need to be planted in a spot that gets a lot of sunlight every day (at least 6-8 hours). Where ours are located on the deck is perfect for plants to sunbathe every day. The plants also need to be spaced out slightly to allow for air movement between the plants. This helps to reduce the risk of bacteria and/or fungus growing on the plants. Our tomatoes may be spaced a bit too close together, but since I have been making sure they are supported by a trellis or tomato cage, as well as trimming leaves, I don't think it has been a problem.

Grouping of tomatoes

I wrote about this earlier in the blog, but just a reminder that these tomato plants were bought at the Farmer's Market so I knew they were a good variety for the area. When planting sprouts, they should be planted up to the first "true leaves." This nudges the seedling into producing more roots. I did not do this with my seedlings when I first got them. I did bury them pretty deeply in the soil, but not necessarily up to the first few leaves. Watering is a huge deal with these guys - they shouldn't get too much water, but too little is also bad. We have the drip irrigation system that works really well.

One thing that I learned early on was to pinch off the shoots that would not be producing fruit. This tells the plant to put more energy into the fruits than growing extra shoots. Now, you're probably thinking "how do I know that this shoot isn't going to produce tomatoes?" Typically, these are leaves that are growing from joints of two stems. You'll want to pinch these leaves off to encourage growth elsewhere on the plant.When leaves start to yellow and wither and they are located on the bottom of the plant, it is best to pinch these shoots/leaves off because they are going to be the oldest. This reduces the risk of disease and the plant can continue to flourish. If this is occurring often, after pruning you can add some fertilizer to help "rescue" the tomato plants.

Indeterminate growth

There are two general types of tomatoes: Determinate and Indeterminate. Those that are determinate reach a set height (predetermined by their genes) and produce fruit all at once. These types are generally used if you like making sauce because you get a large quantity of tomatoes all together. Indeterminate tomatoes keep growing. They continue to grow throughout the season and will produce on a regular basis if the conditions are right. So then, the next question is "how do I know that conditions are right?" Tomatoes grow best if the temperature is between 70 and 85 F during the day. Now, this may be the reason why our tomatoes stopped producing all of a sudden - it was too hot! So, this kind of stinks considering it's summer time and in NC the temperature get above 85 F all the time! Right now, we have been having what I would call a "cool spell" because the days hover around in the mid to upper 80s. I would imagine that this is why our tomatoes are fruiting again. So, once the tomatoes are fruiting and ripen, it is best to pick them early on so that the plants aren't putting too much energy in keeping the fruit on the plant. I usually pick my tomatoes when they are red, but not a full deep red color. After picking I leave them on the kitchen counter for a few more days to allow the fruit to fully ripen. This helps the plants by lessening their burden so they can focus on other flowers and fruits.

Support of tomato plants

And of course, the last question of how tall will these guys get? The ones that I am growing (Early Girl and Big Beef) are indeterminate plants, which means they can get up to six feet! I sorely underestimated how tall my tomato plants would get so I have had to change out my 4 foot trellises for 6 foot ones and I also bought a couple of tomato racks that are taller than 6 feet and can be formed around the tomatoes without having to worry about caging them in.

First tomato in squarefoot garden

I know that I started off with five questions, so I wanted to go back to make sure that I answered each one.

1) Will my tomato plants produce throughout the growing season?
Yes; however, if the temperature is too hot during the day or too cool at night the plant will drop its blossoms until the conditions are right again for growth. The varieties that I chose, Early Girl and Big Beef, are known for growing throughout the season and are very hardy. 
2) How often should I be picking tomatoes?
Dependent on variety. The ones that I am growing can be picked as soon as the tomato is ripe. In order to encourage more growth, it is advisable to pick the tomatoes early and often so that the plant isn't burdened with trying to keep those fruits alive.
3) Should I be pulling off stems with yellowing leaves?
Yes; if it is late in the season and the yellowing leaves are located towards the bottom of the plant. This helps reduce the risk of diseas.
No; if conditions are ideal for growth. Yellowing or withering leaves could mean you are not watering enough or you have a fungus. If this is the case, use a fungicide (although I don't like to add chemicals to my plants, you may need to if you are desperate for tomatoes).
4) How often should the plants be watered?
Several times a week; this is also dependent on the weather. If you get daily storms like we have been then you won't need to water at all late in the summer. If it is hot and dry, you want to make sure your tomatoes are well watered, a slow deep water is much better than a quick rinse. The closer that water is to the roots the better. When it was really hot and dry here, I had the drip irrigation water for 20 minutes every other day. 
5) How tall will my tomato plants get?
Dependent on variety. Determinate tomatoes grow to a certain size and stop - this is shown on the package. Indeterminate plants can grow upwards of 6 feet. Keep all types of tomato plants caged or leaning on a trellis for support.


I hope this blog post helped answer some questions that you may have regarding growing tomatoes. I know that by researching about tomatoes, I have a better idea of what to expect with my next plants and how to increase their production.

Online Resources:
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/secrets-tomato-growing-success
http://gardening.about.com/od/growingtips/tp/Tomato_Tips.htm
http://bonnieplants.com/growing/growing-tomatoes/

Homemade Salsa!

From my favorite recipe website (Allrecipes.com - right Greg?!) comes this amazing salsa. The name is hilarious - please check it out, see below. I do have to say that I made several changes to what is posted on that website mainly because I had some other ingredients from the Farmer's Market and I also had a good idea of they type of salsa I wanted. Most of the ingredients are from my garden (tomatoes and jalapeño pepper) or from the Farmer's Market (onion, additional tomatoes, yellow bell pepper). The tomatoes are all Early Girls even though the recipe calls for Roma.

Ingredients used for the salsa

I chopped two small yellow onions using the Vidalia onion chopper with the smallest dice setting. These onions were quite strong as I had tears in my eyes from chopping. I have a few onions planted in the Aerogarden for a fall harvest. It will be great to grow our own! Since that wasn't quite enough onion I chopped an additional half of a red onion (called for in the recipe) that was left over in the refrigerator. Added to that were two  jalapeño peppers (seeded). I combined the onions and peppers with a couple tablespoons of lime juice and let that set while I chopped the tomatoes.

Chopping onions

Marinating in lime juice

Mixing the salsa

I ended up using 6 Early Girl tomatoes to get the right ratio of tomato to pepper to onion. The recipe seemed to call for less tomato, but that may be because I added an entire bell pepper to the recipe. I also like the tomatoes from the garden so adding a few more seemed to increase the taste. I squeezed about a tablespoon of cilantro from this cool spice bottle we found at the store. Unfortunately, my cilantro plant is currently in hibernation. Aka dead? Not sure, I hope it comes back next year!






 

First taste

A taste testing was in order and we actually had some salsa from the store we could compare. Although, nothing can compare to fresh ingredients! Delicious! I highly recommend this recipe if you enjoy salsa. It takes a little time to chop everything, but less with the chopper. I think this took about 15 minutes total from prep to finish!

















And, to fulfill a request, here is our sponge holder - the frog! Ace Hardware has the neatest items!










Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ex-Girlfriends-Moms-Salsa-Fresca-Pico-de-Gallo/Detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=ex%20girlfriends%20salsa&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Recipe&soid=sr_results_p1i1

Starter Seeds

Remember way back when I started herbs in an Aerogarden? Yeah, it's been a long time and I almost forgot about it! I had ordered a starter seed kit - the name is rather deceptive considering no seeds come with the kit, just pods. No problem though! I have plenty of seeds from planting earlier in the season and I bought more just this past weekend in hopes of preparing for a fall harvest.

Seed Starter for the AeroGarden

Seeds for AeroGarden

 The photographs above show what the seed starter comes in - it is just a Styrofoam piece that fits into the AeroGarden with simple dirt pods that you put the seeds into. The seeds above in the Tupperware include seeds that I planted in the squarefoot gardens as well as the additional ones Nate and I picked out over the weekend.

By the way, I can now mention that we are covering our pool into a greenhouse! Needless to say, I am super excited for the possibility of having fresh produce all year round! Yes, I am asking high in the hopes that we will be  successful. So, with that in mind I decided to start the seed starter kit with different kinds of seeds. There are 66 dirt pods so I decided to plant three replicates (hehe science term!) of each kind of plant. Some I planted more of such as spinach, lettuce, and squash. 

The seed starter fits in the AeroGarden after you remove the top plastic piece, which is typically the pod holder. You also have to remove the plastic crossbars so that the dirt pods will soak in water. I filled the bottom portion of the AeroGarden with tap water and placed the seed starter on top. It took several hours for the pods to saturate with water and you really want them to be saturated because it helps with the addition of seeds and of course their growth. The photograph to the left shows each of the pods and there is a tiny hole in the middle where seeds are placed - you can use tweezers or your finger; I had to use a combination of both in many cases.

I think it's a really awesome set up that allows you to grow multiple kinds of plants all at once. The kit says that within 4 weeks or so many of the seedlings can be transplanted into containers (luckily, I have been saving these!) as long as they are around 4-6 inches in height.

Diagram of seed locations

Nutrients

Nate helped me out by writing down the location of each of the seeds on the diagram provided by the kit. We have planted everything from asparagus to okra, peppers and tomatoes, leafy greens and broccoli. I know you are probably thinking that some of these are summer crops! And, you would be correct. But, remember that we are building a greenhouse in our backyard! So, many of the summer crops that we love can be grown all year round. This makes me very excited for all of the possibilities.

I plan to write a new blog post soon about the design and construction of the greenhouse to give you all an idea of what we are hoping to achieve. We will see in about a few days to a week how my new little seeds are doing in the AeroGarden!

Eggplant Croquettes

Eggplant Croquettes:

Last night I made the most delicious meal from eggplant ever! Usually, I make eggplant parmesan because I had yet to find a good recipe using eggplant in a different way. I googled eggplant recipes and found a great one on allrecipes.com (see the end of the post for the official recipe). You can see in the photograph the ingredients required to prepare the eggplant croquettes. The eggplant in the middle is a Japanese Eggplant, which was picked from our garden. Because it wouldn't be quite enough for the recipe, we bought a different kind of eggplant at the grocery store. That one is a classic eggplant with the pear shape, deep royal purple color. 

Ingredients for eggplant croquettes

The recipe does not call for this, but I always salt out eggplant slices before cooking to remove any bitterness from the fruit (NB: we should have peeled the eggplants first before salting because I had to peel after slicing and that took some additional time).

Salting slices 

Cooking and mashing

A special thanks to Nate for helping me with the dicing of onions and eggplant and for cooking the eggplant! After the eggplant was salted, I rinsed the slices well in water to remove the excess salt. Nate cubed the eggplant (after I removed the peel) and microwaved for a couple minutes to cook. He then mashed the eggplant - they will still have shape, not mashed like you would imagine mashed potatoes.

Everything gets mixed together: 1 cup cheese, 2 slightly beaten eggs, cooked eggplant, 1/4 chopped onion, 1 cup Italian style breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons parsley (I eyeballed this), 3 cloves of garlic (we LOVE garlic), salt and pepper.

Mixing croquette "batter"

After mixing the "batter" I formed six patties and placed them on a slightly greased pan (PAM). I then coated each eggplant croquette with a little bit of olive oil and baked for 20 minutes total in the oven (350 degrees). I decided not to pan fry them after reading a couple of reviews from the original recipe. After 10 minutes, I flipped the croquettes and baked for the remaining 10 minutes.

Forming eggplant croquettes

All six croquettes before baking

The photographs above show me making the eggplant croquettes and placing the six into a greased pan.

Baked croquettes!

First delicious bite

We ate these for dinner last night with a side of pasta and tomato sauce; oh my goodness! I have never had eggplant that tasted SO good before! And, I really like eggplant. It almost reminded me of having a hamburger, but a delicious eggplant/vegetarian one. I bet the croquettes would be good with additional onion (1/4 of an onion is not very much). Bon appetit!


Online Recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/eggplant-croquettes/

Two Five-Minute Appetizers

Caprese:

We celebrated our one year house-aversay yesterday evening - hard to believe that it's been a year in our house! Anyway, we had some friends over to celebrate and made caprese with all fresh ingredients from the garden. This is the first five-minute appetizer because it literally took five minutes to make. Caprese has three basic ingredients - tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese. We added a little bit of olive oil too. First, I sliced three tomatoes from the garden into 1/8 to 1/4 inch slices. Thicker would be better, but I didn't have enough tomatoes to make super thick slices.

Ripe tomatoes from the garden

Sliced tomatoes

Nate was my helper for this appetizer because I have never made caprese before. He lived in Venice while abroad for a semester so he has had experience making this dish! After slicing the tomatoes, we placed them in a single layer on a plate in order to have individual tomato slices as the base.

Basil plant

Basil leaves

We have three basil plants that have survived the brutal summer temperatures we have had recently. They are pretty resilient plants, which is nice because we love to eat basil in pasta dishes. I picked about ten large-sized leaves off of the plants, making sure not to pick too many off of one plant to ensure the plant's survival.

All of the necessary ingredients

Pouring olive oil on slices

With everything ready to go, Nate took the lead on preparing the dish. First, he lightly coated the tomato slices with a bit of olive oil. Next, we placed chunks of mozzarella cheese on top of each slice (the more, the better!). The last step was to place a basil leaf, or half of a basil leaf depending on the size. Voila! A five-minute appetizer. We received rave reviews with this dish; in large part due to the fresh basil leaves and fresh tomatoes.

Mozzarella cheese

Caprese!

Cucumber Salad:

Ingredients for salad

I love cucumbers, and I think it is quite unfortunate that Nate does not. This is the second harvest from the cucumber vine. The first cucumber I literally ate sliced, it was so delicious! This time I decided to make a cucumber salad. I found the recipe online and made a few tweaks as I created this second five-minute appetizer.

The recipe calls for cucumber, tomato, red onion, parsley, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. I already mentioned that this cucumber came from the garden and so did the tomatoes (it's amazing how many dishes you can make with tomatoes!). I also have a parsley plant that lives in the front garden along with other herbs. I picked a large handful for the salad. Everything else came from the store - you need half of the red onion, salt, pepper, olive oil (this actually was a gift from friends who traveled to Italy!), and red wine vinegar.

Best onion chopper!

Diced red onion

I first diced half of the red onion using an onion chopper that my Dad got for me for Christmas. It is the best chopper ever! You simply slice the onion into 1/4 in or 1/2 in slices and it will dice the onion into cubes! It is really the easiest way to chop food. We usually use the chopper for onion, but it is also great for squash, tomato (as long as it isn't too soft; otherwise you end up with mush), and peppers. I wanted bigger chunks of tomatoes and cucumbers than what the recipe calls for so I ended up slicing the cucumber and the halving the slices for the salad. The tomatoes I cut into large chunks for the salad.

Herb scissors

Cucumber salad!

Mixing the salad

Another great little tool for this salad are herb scissors. I use these puppies all the time to chop up my herbs! It's super easy to use and there is a cover with tongs to clean the insides of the blades in order to get the remaining herb pieces off. I cut a large handful of parsley into the salad (chopped onion, cucumber, and tomato). I mixed this well then added a couple splashes of red wine vinegar and olive oil. After mixing well the cucumber salad is finished! I covered and let the salad marinate in the refrigerator for a couple hours before dinner, but you can eat the salad right away; making it a great five-minute appetizer dish! 



Original recipe for Cucumber Salad: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/cucumber-and-tomato-salad-recipe.html

Garden Omelet

This morning I prepared an omelet using ingredients from the garden and local Farmer's Market. Only the eggs (cage-free natural eggs from the grocery store) and spinach (organic) are the two ingredients that were not locally grown. The photograph below shows all of the ingredients that I used: eggs, green pepper and jalapeno pepper (from our garden), two tomatoes (from our garden), and feta cheese (from the local Farmer's Market that uses goat milk to make their cheese).

Ingredients for the "Garden Omelet"

Similar to the fried green tomatoes post, I am going to go through the preparation and cooking of the omelet step by step in case any of you readers would like to make a delicious omelet. I have to say that using fresh ingredients is best!

Sauteing peppers in butter

Wilting the spinach leaves

The first thing I did was to saute the bell pepper and jalapeno pepper in half a tablespoon of butter. I melted the butter on medium heat first and then added diced peppers to the melted butter. The peppers were sauteed for about 5 minutes or until tender. This also helps to reduce the spice/heat from the jalapeno so that we could enjoy just a little bit of a kick and still have the flavor of the jalapeno pepper in the omelet. Once the pepper were soft, I added a couple handfuls of spinach to wilt the leaves a little bit before adding to the omelet.

Eggs scrambled with a fork

Cooking eggs in pan

Once these ingredients were ready, I placed them to the side in a small bowl so that I could continue to use the heated pan. I beat 4 eggs with a fork and added a little bit of my Dad's Mix (JGM Mix 4+), thanks Dad!

I added another half tablespoon of butter to the heated pan and allowed that to melt before adding the seasoned eggs to cook. Once melted, the eggs were added and cooked for about 5 minutes or until the middle no longer had runny egg. The eggs were not fully cooked all the way because I still needed to add the garden ingredients. The photograph below shows the addition of all ingredients (cooked peppers and spinach, diced tomatoes, and a couple tablespoons of feta cheese). I like to add the tomatoes last so that they do not cook too much.

Added all ingredients to create the omelet

Making the "omelet"

I then let the omelet cook for just a minute or so, not too much longer because the eggs are already pretty much finished cooking. I flipped half of the egg over to create omelet, and yes, it is half of the pan! Nate and I split the omelet for breakfast and you can see from the photographs how good the omelet looks! Having fresh ingredients does make all the difference in the world. I like to call this meal, the Garden Omelet :-)

Yummy deliciousness

Half of the omelet for me; the other half for Nate!

It's the Hard Knock Life (for a Squash)

First harvest

I picked our first harvest about a week and a half ago that included tomatoes (which we have a TON of), a jalapeno pepper, and a cucumber. The jalapeno had an incredible amount of spice - so much so that when Nate cut it up for a pasta dish just breathing in led to coughing fits. The tomatoes are incredible. You just cannot compare the taste of one to one bought at the grocery store. We've been including tomatoes in a few pasta dishes. I am amazed at the crispness and taste of the cucumbers from the garden. This first one I ate just sliced. There are a couple more growing so I'm planning on making a cucumber salad with some tomato, cucumber, and basil from the garden. That's for another post though.

Sliced tomato

The  photographs below display the raised garden with the 8 tomato plants. I ended up having to use taller trellises (5 ft) for the middle level because the plants were so tall that they outgrew the original trellises. But, that's OK because I could use these for plants in our squarefoot gardens.

The photographs below show the raised tiered garden with the tomato plants and a close-up of the tomatoes ripening on one plant.

This post is dedicated to my unfortunate squash plants. Not everything grows as planned! The plants themselves look amazing: big broad leaves, green color, and flowering like crazy! You can see the plants in the photographs below. But...no fruit. I have yet to see one squash being produced from these plants. It's insane considering gardeners, books, and online sites all claim squash to be one of the easiest plants to grow. I mean, I'll give them that as they were easy to grow. And from seeds no less. Sadly, they have yet to bear fruit. Hence the title of this post.

There are 3 plants of each (squash and zucchini) that I started from seeds back in April - there are a couple of websites I have listed below that are very good at describing the best ways to grow squash. They were probably one of the first to sprout and grow into seedlings. The photos show how large the plants have gotten with the broad leaves and sprawling across the front third of the square foot garden. And, each plant has tons of flowers! I thought we would be up to our ears in squash. Sadly, no fruit yet. I'm very jealous of my gardening friends who have so many already!

Male flowers

So, I did a little digging (no pun intended) and the most likely culprit is the lack of pollinators. This seems silly to me because we have tons of bumble bees and honey bees; not to mention every other plant in this garden that has had flowers for a while is fruiting!

Most squash plants have a male and a female flower and bees must be present to cross pollinate the flowers. The female flowers have a tiny squash behind the petals whereas the male flowers do not. You can also attempt to hand pollinate if the bees aren't doing their job, which apparently ours are not. I have been taking a q-tip every morning to try to pollinate the female flowers, but so far nothing has taken. It could be that all of the blossoms are male, but I am not sure if that is the case. I guess we will wait and see!

There is also the possibility that something is preventing the flowers from fully forming, so I am going to use the tips from the second website (listed below) to check out the plants.

Wilted flower

There are many squash recipes that I would love to try out, particularly casserole dishes. Until I can figure out what is going on with the squash plants I'll have to buy from the farmer's market. I don't mind buying from there as we will be supporting local farmers. My favorite casserole dish includes Ritz crackers, milk, cheese, and lots of lightly steamed squash.



Squash Websites:
http://www.almanac.com/plant/squash-zucchini
http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/squash/all-about-squash-article10036.html