People are addicted to tomatoes

I joined the Seed Savers Exchange a few months ago, and was excited to get the annual Yearbook in the mail a couple days ago. It is big -- 482 pages of rather fine print descriptions of plant varieties people have available.

I was rather curious to see what sorts of things it has, and have enjoyed it a lot. It is all fruits and vegetables,with a wide range of family heirlooms, and even more exciting to me, a surprising number people's personal breeding projects. I instantly gravitated to options like Kale 'Gulag Stars' which is described as: "Incredibly diversity unlike anything else, a mix of napus kales that have been crossed with B. rapa, bud pollinated by Tim Peters of Oregon to bypass species incompatibility mechanisms, crazy diversity of colors and shapes." (if you are not a SSE member, it is also available here) Be still my beating heart. How can I resist ANYTHING described as having "crazy diversity of colors and shapes" especially if it is the result of a cool and difficult to make interspecific cross? I'm such a plant breeding nerd...

I was a little surprised, though, when I got to the tomato section. I love a good tomato, but seriously? There is some insanely tomato love going on here. This is me holding the section of the book devoted to just listings of tomato varieties:

Fully 200 of the 482 pages with nothing but tomatoes. It is almost enough to make me stop breeding tomatoes and start focusing on everything else... tomatoes are good, but spread the love, people!

Book Review: The Edible Front Yard by Ivette Soler

Before I opened this book I knew two things: It would be beautiful, and it would be fun. Anyone who has read Ivette's blog, The Germinatrix, would expect the same. Ivette's prose, like her gardens, is unabashed, exuberant, and a rollicking good time. And in terms of visual beauty, even my high expectations were blown away... This book is GORGEOUS. If you have any doubts that vegetables can be beautiful, the lush sensual photographs in this book will change your mind. I want half of them framed.

One of the gorgeous edible gardens in the book... WANT!

I was curious, though, on the practical front. This is a book about growing beautiful fruits and vegetables as an integrated part of a front yard display garden. Ivette knows her stuff, but she lives in Southern California, while I live in Michigan. Would anything actually apply to me in my garden?

Practical How-To

The first thing I did was flip to the practical sections – Chapters 6 through 10 go over the mechanics of planning, hardscaping, maintaining, and harvesting an edible ornamental garden. I had no need to be worried. The principles covered are solid, fundamental, and universal. Beginning gardeners will still need a good local book (or wise mentor) to school you in the vagaries of your particular climate, but this book covers most of the basics, and helps you know what questions you need to ask about where you garden now.

Beyond the usual talk of irrigation, compost, and harvest, I was thrilled to find detailed information for DIY hardscaping. Lovely paths, patios, and raised beds are a key part of any ornamental garden, edible or not, but so many garden design books simply assume you'll be hiring someone else to install them. Ivette recognizes that not everyone has that kind of budget, and gives great, clear, economical instructions on doing it yourself. I'm inspired now, and this summer I am finally putting in that patio I've been wanting!

In the garden maintenance chapter, I had minor quibbles with the confusion of the terms “chemical” and “synthetic” (organic fertilizers are still chemicals) and the assumption that everything organic is safe. My only major concern is that she doesn't address lead contamination. The soil near older homes and roads are frequently contaminated with lead from old lead paint and the exhaust from leaded gasoline. Before you plant anything you are going to eat in a hell strip or next to your house, GET A SOIL TEST. Lead poisoning is a serious risk, especially for children.

Designing the garden

The true brilliance of this book, however, is the chapters on design. Design is a very hard thing to teach. So many designers work by instinct, on a subconscious level, and can't really explain HOW they create the things they do. In my experience, books on design tend to be too specific (Plant in threes or fives ALL the time!) or too vague (Do what makes you happy!) or get bogged down in silly, artificial discussions of nonsensical things like the “color wheel” that don't really apply to how anyone I know actually designs a garden (or anything else for that matter)

Pretty, but I don't think it actually MEANS anything...

I should have known Ivette would get it right. She guides you through considering your personal style, the look of your house, your neighborhood, and your city to create a garden that evokes the feel you want. One specific suggestion that I am TOTALLY going to start using, is called a mood board – basically using a cork board to brain-storm colors, textures, plants, and hardscaping. Maybe designer-types all have heard of this, but it is new to me, and I love it.

A great example of Ivette's way of teaching design is her take on the much-discussed rules of how many of each plant to use. She explains how different numbers work visually, then ends with perhaps the most perfect “rule” I've ever heard: “Play – but play with big numbers”

That is the tone of this entire book – Ivette gives you the basic guidelines and concepts you need to be successful, and then points you to developing the personal, creative style that you will enjoy and reflects your individuality.

In short, this is a terrific, gorgeous, book about growing ornamental vegetables – but at its heart, it is a spectacular, inspiring book on garden design -- of any kind. Even if you have no interest in growing food, you should read this book. It will inspire you to be a better designer, and the absolutely gorgeous shots of artichokes, chard, and purple-leaf basil will probably convince you to grow them even if you don't like how they taste.

Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book for free to review.

The 2011 Veg Plan

I have already (I'm so organized this year!) put in almost all my vegetable seed orders, gone through my boxes of old seeds, and figured out what I am going to be growing. Here's what my current "To Grow" list looks like in the form of a mind map: (click to enlarge if you want to actually read it) (and don't make geek comments about me planning the garden this way... you know you are all just jealous with your lame spread sheets.)

SOOOO much fun! I'm going to have a truly outrageous amounts of green beans and peppers. Not to mention tomatoes. Yes, I only have 5 tomatoes listed, but 4 of those are breeding populations in progress, and I'd like to have at least 20 plants of each... Other fun things include trying to grow quinoa, my search for the prefect broccoli, and my various on-going corn breeding projects!
Next I have to figure out where I'm going to plant them all, and I start shopping for flowers and other pretty plants. Yay for planning season!

Yet another reason to GROW your dinner.

This article in Wired caught my eye a while ago, and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. It talks about some studies which indicate that the more we work for our food, the better it tastes, the more we enjoy it. Most interestingly, this isn't just a higher level psychological feeling of satisfaction -- the same apparently holds true for mice, indicating this may be a pretty fundamental part of how brains work.

That's interesting, but it gets more interesting. Work with brain scanning indicates that obese people get less pleasure from food than people with a healthy weight -- implying that they may be overweight because they have to eat more to get the same level of satisfaction.

In this article, they put that together to say that taking time to cook dinner will make it taste better, and therefore help you eat less and be healthier.

I'm inclined to take it a step further: A home cooked, home GROWN meal is quite the peak of deliciousness, leaving one so flushed with pleasure the thought of an oreo orgy can hardly come to mind and McDonalds sounds simply repulsive.
 As if I needed another reason to keep vegetable gardening...

Borer resistant zucchini

Back in January, I talked about trying a new type of zucchini in my garden this year. Normally I grow the variety 'Costata Romanesco' because it is simply delicious -- but, like all zucchini I have grown, it generally collapses sometime in the middle of the summer due to attacks by the evil squash vine borers.
So this year, along with my 'Costata Romanesco' I'm growing 'Zucchetta rampicante tromboncino'. It is a different species (Cucurbita moschata rather than the typical summer squash Cucurbita pepo) and is supposed to be resistant to borers.


I can't speak to the borer resistance, at least not yet, because so far none of my squash have been attacked. I'm sure it is coming, though... borers being the evil little vermin they are. But I can speak to their other attributes. They are very late, and low yielding compared to any other zucchini I have grown -- they started several weeks after my other zucchini, and I've only picked 4 of them so far. I wouldn't recommend them for a small garden, unless you grow them up a trellis, because the vines are very long and vigorous -- a good dozen feet long so far, and showing no signs of stopping.

Here are what the fruit themselves look like. My standard Romanesco is on top, and the Tromboncino is on the bottom.

 Here they are sliced, ready to go into a pan with some hot olive oil and fresh tomatoes.


The flavor is quite good, though different from a standard zucchini. My romanescos have a warm, nutty flavor that I adore. The Tromboncinos have a sweeter flavor that reminds me a little of a winter squash. Raw, the Tromboncinos are firmer, drier, and crisper than the romanescos, but when cooked, they were slightly more inclined to get mushy -- which is not a good thing, as mushy zucchini is foul and loathsome.


All in all, I like the tromboncinos, but I'm not in love with them. They are beautiful and interesting, and the promise that they'll keep on producing all summer even if borers arrive is certainly wonderful. I plan on growing them again next year, along side my standard zucchinis -- as a standby for when the borers decided to try and ruin my summer.

Experiment of the year: Biodegradable black plastic mulch

I've long known that in climates like mine (chilly Michigan) commercial production of heat loving plants like tomatoes and peppers relies on covering the soil with sheets of black plastic. The black absorbs sunlight to warm to soil, also controlling weeds and keeping the soil moist. But I never realized just how much of an impact it has until last summer, while visiting a friend's research plot, I saw two pepper plants growing side by side, one with plastic mulch, one without. I didn't have my camera with me, so you'll have to use your imagination: The one without plastic looked like the ones in my garden -- small, straggly with a few peppers. With the plastic, the plant was nearly twice as big, lush, full, and covered with fruit. It looked like an ad for some questionable fertilizer.

That impressed me, but I still wasn't willing to try it in my garden, because of the waste. The plastic can only be used for one or two years, then you rip it up and throw it away. Vegetable production in Michigan produces tons of this trash every year, and the idea of adding to it didn't appeal to me. (I have to throw in here a random strange fact: Organic vegetable growers are allowed to use plastic mulch, but under the condition that the replace it every single year rather than leaving it for two years are conventional growers sometimes do. Does that make ANY sense? How is it more "organic" to produce twice as much plastic trash as you need to?)

But I finally decided to give black plastic a try when I saw biodegradable soil warming mulch for sale in the Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog. They say you can just put soil on it at the end of the year, and it will be gone by spring. The flip side, I guess, would be that it might break down too quickly. We'll find out.

So far I can only say one thing for certain: It sure is aint pretty. Here are my new raised bed before:

And here they are after putting the plastic down and sticking some of my seedlings:

Yuck. After last year's dismal tomato and pepper season, I'm willing to do just about anything to ensure I have a good crop this year, but that is REALLY ugly. Those peppers better take off quick and cover it up.

Sign of the times: Vegetable seeds EVERYWHERE!

I was startled to see tomatoes for sale in Select Seeds, then White Flower Farm's catalog came, and it has vegetables on the cover AND devotes the first 5 pages to veg -- now High Country Gardens arrives and even THEY are offering "Chef selected vegetable seeds"! Good grief! Am I going to find vegetable seeds in the Plant Delights and Arrowhead Alpines catalogs too? Not that I've anything against vegetables -- I love growing vegetables -- but I get those from Johnny, Pinetree, Seed Savers etc... Select Seeds is for great fragrant plants, White Flower Farm is for gorgeous plant porn photography (though I've never ordered from them -- too expensive, and nothing that unique), and High Country Gardens is for making me wish I lived in a desert (but only ever so briefly) -- not cabages and tomatoes! I wonder, will the veg rage last?

(Addendum: Looked at this post shortly after pubishing it and -- my goodness! I corrected a LOT of typoes. I mean, my posts are always pretty liberally typo infested, but I think this set a new record.)

Trying this year: Determinate Tomatoes

I hate staking. I'll happily weed for hours on end, happy as can be. I'll spend a full day working hard with a shovel and smile all the while. But I hate staking.
Because of this, my tomatoes always end up sprawling in a tangled mess on the ground. I know they'll be healthier if I stake. I know it will be easier to harvest them if I stake. Because I know this, some years I actually go so far as to put stakes out in the garden, which resulted in my tomatoes being a wild mess with some stakes sticking out of the middle.

So this year, I'm going to try growing some determinate tomatoes.

The technical definitions of determinate and indeterminate just refer to where flowers are produced. Determinate plants produce them at the top of a stem, forcing new growth to come from new branches at the side of the plant, while indeterminate plants produce flowers along the sides of the stem, allowing a single branch to keep growing on and on and on.

 This means that determinate tomatoes grow short and bushy -- rarely needing to be staked -- while indeterminate tomatoes grow long and floppy -- and theoretically ought to be staked, though of course I never actually do.

I've steered away from indeterminate tomatoes up until now, though, because catalogs always define them a different way: They say the determinate tomatoes produce fruit which ripens all at once, while indeterminate varieties produce continuously all summer long.

But: Recently I've been reading something different: Tom Clothier on the tomato page of his quirky, very enjoyable website, says some there are determinate tomatoes, which produce a load of fruit and then stop, and there are vigorous or strong determinates, which keep sending up new shoots, ending in flowers and fruit, all season -- so they produce continously like a indeterminate, but minus the staking, and are usually much earlier than indeterminates.

Which sounds perfect to me... We'll see! If I can get tomatoes which produce well and taste yummy but don't turn themselves into a tangled mass, I'm all for it. I'm still growing my favorite indeterminate varieties, but I'm also going to be trying out these 4 determinate ones:
Al Kuffa
Mountain Princess
Gold Nugget
Subarctic Plenty

We'll see how they perform!
Anyone with experience with determinate tomatoes? If so, please leave a comment with your thoughts, and any varieties you'd suggest or warn against.

Anyone want to grow some crazy mixed-up tomato hybrid F2s?

Two years ago I crossbred the tomato Matt's Wild Cherry (which is simply the most delicious cherry tomato I have EVER had the pleasure of eating) with Black Krim (which is a tasty, large, dark colored variety ) Last year I grew the F₁ plants, and collected a LOT of F₂ seed (See my post yesterday for an explanation of the F₁ F₂ stuff) which I am going to be growing this year: They will be a crazy mix of sizes (roughly ¾ will be cherries, ¼ full sized, though there should be a lot of size variation within those two groups), colors, and flavors – though all of them should be very delicious. I'm looking forward to growing out lots and lots, tasting them, and picking out my favorites – and I'm wondering it anyone else wants to do so as well. I've got oodles of seed, so if you want to grow some, just e-mail me (engeizuki at gmail dot com) and I can send them to you. All I ask is that you grow a bunch of plants, do a taste test, and send me back some seeds from any individuals you particularly like.

Photo credits:
Matt's wild cherry
Black Krim