Growing Tomatoes

The push is on. We're into the last week of May. These next two weeks we have to get all the long season, heat loving plants into their annual summer positions. Here on the west coast we have determined that if the squash and nightshade (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco ) don't get into the ground by the end of the first week of June they simply won't have a long enough growing season for their fruits to mature. Last year we had the squash in on time and still much of the squash didn't mature properly on the vines before the rainy season was upon us in September. We had a slow start to summer last year and then some cool, rainy weather in August. Squash and tomatoes, peppers need those heat units to give them the sugar content they need to come to full maturity. Fortunately for tomatoes there are more and more varieties available for our cool, damp, often low-light summers.

 Some of our most successful tomatoes are Super Fantastic and Celebrity. Both these can be counted on to provide abundant fruit over a long period of time. Cherry tomatoes do well here too. Red Cherry, Gold Nugget, Yellow Pear, Snow White, Black Cherry are some of the best. They produce until frost in most cases. Many of the older heritage breeds do really well in our climate especially any of the dark brown/black varieties. We try a few new ones every year. This year we are trying Defiant, bred for our climate and resistant to early and late blight. We will see !

We grow our tomatoes in covered, but open-sided greenhouses. The blight is a given and we have learned to live with it. We still produce massive quantities of amazing tasty tomatoes. We try to save seed from some of our favourites  and it is noticeable the strength and stamina of our own seed produced plants. Eventually you get a plant that is aclimatized to it's surrounding soil and weather conditions.

We plant each tomato into a well-dug hole with a level shovel full of aged compost and a small amount of rock phosphate which is the middle number in the NPK formula. We use rock phosphate in place of bone meal. This promotes good fruiting, strong roots and greater resistance to disease. We also feed them with a foliar spray of weak, fish fertilizer solution a few times during the course of the growing season. The tomato can be planted to a depth up to and including it's first leaves. This ensures a good, solid stem and the stem underground will form roots to anchor it in. Once the plants are firmly planted in we string them up to support the plants as they grow and bear fruit. The plants get incredibly heavy once they form fruit and will topple and break without support. One thing we are fussy about is that we don't allow anyone who smokes tobacco to handle and work with the tomato ( nightshade) plants. The hands of smokers can harbour and transfer disease to the tomatoes from the tobacco.

Once the plants are in and actively growing your job is to keep the plants pruned to one stem and assist them by winding them gently along the length of the string. Pinching out secondary growth is crucial to getting good, abundant fruit that will ripen in time. I can recall on more than one occasion going into the tomato house after a week or so and being overwhelmed at the amount of growth in such a short time ! Tackling these plants if they get away from you can be daunting and potentially does a lot of damage to the plants. When you have 500 or more plants to deal with it pays to be on top of the job.

A lot of people ask about growing tomatoes in containers. There are more and more varieties available that are suitable for containers. I suggest you keep to the determinate varieties. This brings me to an explanation of determinate and indeterminate varieties. These words indicate the growth habit of the plant. Determinate means that the plant will grow to a predetermined height and the leader (stem) does not have to be pruned or pinched off. These are usually stocky, bushy plants by their nature. Often a tomato cage alone will support them. They are a better option for container growing due to this growth habit. Indeterminate varieties are the vining type of tomato. The main stem, leader, will grow and grow. We train them up along strings in the hoop houses. Again you want to train them to one stem and keep the branching off to a minimum. In our climate it is a good idea to pinch off the leader at a certain height so that fruit can set and mature. You can determine this once you are happy with the amount of flowering on the plant. We usually pinch them off at about 6 to 8 feet.

So, back to the containers. From what I have heard from people is that they think by growing the plants in containers they are less work. Not true. They are in fact more work. By confining the plant in a container you are taking away it's ability to seek out water and food. It is now dependent on you for those essentials. A tomato plant will totally fill a container with roots in a short time. They have big root systems with hungry appetites. We did this many years ago with about 200 plants in 5 gallon buckets. The watering became an endless task as the roots filled the buckets and any soil was basically eaten up. No soil, nothing for the water and nutrients to hold onto. It all just goes through the container. So my advice is to make sure you grow varieties that are suitable to containers and that the containers are large enough to support the needs of the plant. The plant will require you to water and feed it regularly.

There are places in Canada where tomatoes are planted in the fields with no support and lie on the ground. Ontario and certain areas of B.C. even, this is done. Field tomatoes require dry, dry, sunny conditions. It is really hit and mostly miss to attempt this here on the coast. The dampness and moisture will compromise the plants and the slugs will have a feast ! Slugs love hollowing out tomatoes. Peppers too by the way.

As to planting the tomatoes read and look at my blog on dahlias. The instructions apply to tomatoes, peppers and eggplant as well.  Good size hole, some good finished compost, a bit of rock phosphate or bone meal, a means of support and your good to go. Pruning and pinching them out is an ongoing task. I will take some photos as I do this throughout the season and will post an addendum to this blog when the time comes.

There is no taste comparison to a home grown tomato ! It is worth every bit of effort to grow these luscious, nutritious, tasty treats that you can do so much with. Hopefully I have covered most of the basics about getting them off to a good start.

Please, don't hesitate to comment and ask me any questions you may have about them. Sometimes it is difficult to know how much to say and write about a certain thing. Good luck and happy gardening.

Growing Dahlias For Market

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Today we planted out the dahlias. I love, adore, have to have, flowers. Flowers are truly the showpieces of Mother Nature. Dahlias are one of my most favorites and they are relatively easy to grow and will give you years if not decades of pleasure if you take proper care of them. Dahlias are also one of the easiest to grow for the cut flower market. Dahlia bouquets sell themselves for their colour and variety. We have always made flowers part of the diversity of product we bring to the farmer's markets. They make your stand, stand out !

Dahlias are native to the mountain areas of Mexico and Guatemala. They are the national flower of Mexico. They were originally a 20 foot or more tall plant and were used extensively by the Aztecs for food as well as practical purposes. The tubers are like a potato, starchy, and have a similar taste. The stems are hollow and were used as irrigation type pipes to transport water from a distance to the crops in the field. When growing they are also full of water and could be used as a source of water to drink.

Today dahlias come in an amazing array of blooms and spectacular colours. I have read that there are 50,000 or more types. WOW ! Once they start blooming they keep on flowering for about 3 months here on the west coast.  You get a LOT of SHOW for a small cost and the tubers if properly cared for will last decades.

We usually start them in gallon pots in late March, early April. Earwigs and slugs love to eat the first new growth that appears above ground so we have learned to start them in pots and avoid disappointment. We get them into their permanent summer spot by late May. By this time they are 2 feet or more in height.

We dig a good size hole, at least as deep as the size of the pot, add a shovel of compost and mix it with soil. Next I put a tomato cage into the hole. I tap the plant out of the pot and GENTLY remove it and lower it through the ring of the cage into the ground. Finally the soil from the dug hole is filled back in and the plants are watered.

Other than weeding around the plants during the season and watering them the main work is done. Once they start blooming it is important to keep the flowers cut off so they don't go to seed. You will want to keep them picked and enjoy them in your home and in bouquets to give.

I make sure to have a bucket of water with me when I am cutting them. The sooner any flower gets into water, the better. At the house I put them into a vase of relatively hot water. They take up the water much quicker if you use hot water. NOT boiling water, just hot tap water. To keep your vase water from getting "skunky" you can put a tiny bit of bleach in the water. It also keeps your vase cleaner. The flowers will last a good week or so this way.

At this point I will not discuss digging up and storing the tubers. This will be another blog in the fall once the tubers are dug up. I have had blooms till November some years here on the coast. Normally its till mid October or Thanksgiving here in Canada.

If you like having flowers and growing them then give dahlias a try. They give me enormous amounts of pleasure and beauty and really show off at our market stand.

Growing for Market

Things are finally beginning to heat up around here in more ways than one. The weather is co-operating although the nights are still pretty cool. Down to 2C and 3C the last two nights and up to 23C during the day. Pretty wide extremes. We are well into May and getting what seems like usual April weather. Everything is a month behind.

Was being interviewed for an upcoming magazine article yesterday and some of the questions got me thinking. She asked how we determine and decide what to grow any given season. Well after pondering I realized how interesting the answer to that question could be.

The answer is a combination of things. Trial and error being one of them and weather plays a role for sure. After years of crop rotations and trying many different things we have a pretty clear idea of what does well and what sells well and what gives you the most bang for the effort.

We have three main growing areas. Field A, field B and field C. Field A has become our perennial type area over the years. It has the best drainage. High water tables in the winters here on the coast are trouble for perennials. You do not want to have roots sitting in water all winter. A main reason people lose some of their perennials is that the roots have rotted from below the ground from sitting in water all winter. You need to put things like rhubarb, rosemary, strawberries, raspberries, overwintering vegetables of any kind in the area with your best drainage. Plants can handle quite a bit of cold and frost but not soaking, wet soils. These conditions suffocate and rot away the plants winter storage system, their precious root systems.

So Field A has become the location of our rhubarb bed and vegetables we want to get an early start on. Along with the rhubarb we have snow peas, sweet peas, brassicas(broccoli, cabbage etc) and early lettuces transplanted into this field within the last 2 months. We had a bit of warm weather during this time and the plants looked like they were doing well and THEN it got cold and wet again. Things didn't look so good for a time and we thought that we had jumped the gun and were paying for it BUT true to their resilient nature, the plants held on, went into limbo mode and waited. The last week or two they have transformed and are happily growing . The rhubarb is looking amazing and we are harvesting 100 lbs or more each week. Rhubarb thrives if it gets some consistent cold weather. Last year we didn't have that and our rhubarb harvest was pitiful last year compared to this year.

My point is that the beauty of being a market garden farm allows us the flexibility to be diverse and creative. We seed an enormous variety and amount of vegetables etc. One can never truly know how the weather will go during any given season. By covering all the bases and planting a diverse and varied amount of crops we are sure to have certain crops do very well. Something suffers but lots does great. In other words, ALL OUR EGGS ARE NOT IN ONE BASKET.

The other area that deserves attention is to what the market will bear and buy. One thing we have learned over the years is that the personal preferences for specialty vegetables are just that. People try to convince you that you MUST grow lemon cucumbers. "Everyone will buy them." So you do and the only one buying them is that person.  For sure you should try new things and each year we do but in small, small quantities. Consumers for the most part are very traditional and not easily convinced to try any new or different kind of vegetable even when it is similar to the original. A case in point is purple beans. We have grown purple beans for over 10 years now. Every season we have countless numbers of customers who exclaim " I have never seen purple beans," WOW ! Are they any good ? Will I like them? " Whats truly amusing about this is that I recognize some of these people and they tell me every year.  They see them every year but every year they claim they have never seen them. What we do now is GIVE customers who are truly curious a healthy sample to take home and try. Interesting how most won't try anything new if they have to pay for it but they will if you give it to them. Fine by me. I SO want people to eat more vegetables !

The variety and colour and shapes of vegetables is endless. We eat within such a narrow scope of what is possible and available out there. As market farmers we have the luxury of introducing the public to those varieties. We have the ability to guide and influence food trends.  Many of these vegetables are not new but old, heritage varieties that are sensitive and fragile to handling and keeping qualities and only a local farm can manage to harvest and get the product to market in a time sensitive manner and with hand managed care.

I can speak from personal experience that I would rather be here working the farm any day of the week. For all the work and effort it takes it still allows me a lot of flexibility in my life. Farming pretty well demands that you be flexible and adaptable to changing conditions whatever they are. You also need to be able to dig your heels in when the going gets tough and "git er done" when that is required of you. There are definite windows of opportunity for planting out certain crops and when that time presents itself that's what you are going to be doing until its done.

Today is a Friday. Time to get out there and harvest and get ready for market. I love market days. Market day is the day of appreciation and reaping the rewards for what you are bringing to the nations' tables. You are contributing to what is still fundamental to every life, FOOD, good, nutritious, ethically and sustainably grown food. Can food have a conscience ? You bet it does ! otherwise why would we care how anything is done.

Later  :-D

Taking Care of Produce

Gai Lan

Nappa Cabbages

at the wash station

Comox Valley Farmer's Market

baskets of greens ready for washing

Fridays are one of our busiest days of the week. Produce has to be harvested, picked, sorted, washed,packed and gotten ready for Saturday morning farmer's market. As the season progresses this will take more and more of our time as there is more and more to pick. In peak season we often have to start on Thursday just to keep up with the abundance of produce that is ready.

Yesterdays harvest consists of a salad greens mix, spinach, arugula, Napa cabbages, gai lan, collard greens, leeks, purple mustard greens, mibuna and rhubarb. Everything is washed through a cycle of stainless steel sinks with cold, clear, artesian, well water. Then it is bunched, bundled, bagged, weighed and sorted into containers and put into the cooler for transport on Saturday morning.

At this time of year we are also taking plants to market. This year we have 21 tomato varieties as well as 6 kinds of nasturtiums. Assorted other veggie packs of plants to start your own gardens. Lettuces, broccoli, parsley,chives, leeks, etc. By the end of the day the truck is tightly packed with as much as we can possibly transport. Produce is put in Saturday mornings just before we head out to market.

I like Fridays. I get to put my efficiency and organization skills to work. Often with farm assistants coming and going there has to be time made to instruct them as to how to pick and handle various plants and the vegetables. You would be amazed at how much there is to know. So much of the produce is delicate and requires sensitivity and care in handling. Even how you put it into the basket can make a difference to how the product looks in the end. Things get bruised and beaten looking quite easily. The other major requirement is to keep the produce out of the sun and get it to the wash stand area as soon as possible. Cooling the produce down is really important to its keeping qualities. Sun and heat and sitting in the baskets can dry out, wilt and render the produce to the compost heap in no time if one is not careful. So being quick and efficient are requirements on harvest days.

It is very satisfying at the end of the day to visually tally up the harvest for the upcoming market. It all looks so vibrant and fresh and clean, ready to go. Its the reward for all the work that goes into the production of making the farm work. When we get to market and put the produce out for sale it is so wonderful to hear all the "oohs" and "ahs" from customers as they remark over the quality of the harvest. Those are the strokes on the back that we get for the work we've done. Our customers are wonderful and really appreciate all the efforts we make to offer them such wonderful produce.

Your welcome :-D and thank you for supporting local, organic, agriculture.

p.s. just got home and we had an awesome day at the market, now we're about to sit down and have Fanny Bay oysters for supper. Grown and harvested in the waters of Baynes Sound just outside our door. What a feast ! What a life ! :-D 

Techno Frustrations

This morning I have spent the last hour trying to learn more about how to manipulate the blog and make it more attractive and figure out how to move images around and put them where you want them. Its amazing all the information you have to "slog" through to find what you want in a language you can understand. With all the advances in technology it seems you still really have to dig deep sometimes just to do something simple.

I can surely understand why so many people give up on trying new things. The frustration level is daunting at times. One thing I have learned is that you have to have patience with these things and just keep on trying. Not being scared of the technology really helps. I have learned that nothing really disappears and if you just keep pushing buttons you'll eventually retrieve what you think you've lost. I have also figured out that I need to write things down so I remember what I did.

Last night at flamenco lessons I was truly frustrated. I felt awkward and unable to make my feet do what my instructor was doing. She is so kind and patient. She keeps reminding me that she has been at it for 24 years and I am only on my 10th lesson. We are so hard on ourselves aren't we ?

I am determined not to give up. I enjoy the music and the rhythm of the dance and all it encompasses.  It is like learning a new language or technology. It requires patience and perseverance . If you think you can learn it in a day your are doing a great insult to those who have been at it for years. Learning something is one thing, perfecting it is another.

Watching the baby chicks emerge over these last few days is a great reminder of patience and endurance and determination. You can see how exhausted they are and how much energy it must be taking for these tiny little creatures to come forth and be present in the world. If they can do it then surely I can do it too.

Staying present and focused when taking on a task, a job, or almost anything for that matter is really a challenge at times but the rewards are boundless and satisfying to say the least.

Hang in there everyone ! We're not here for a long time, we're here for a great time !