Tomatoes learn personal space

Okay, I admit it. In all the end of semester, end of school (since the kids and I are in different schools), spring garden plus the return of garden club for Pooka, and spring birthday world, I have been less than on top of things here. I promise stuff is still getting done, but here is me starting to play catch up and hopefully getting caught up.

A few weeks ago now, Pooka and I went to do our morning check on the tomatoes and realized that well.. they may of gotten a bit big. As in, big enough to start touching the light bulb on the grow light. Somethign needed done.

I think the grow light is working

And while it was a bit cool still outside, Pooka and I took our tomato tray outside to try and deal with this mess. Yes it looked worse once it was out of the light.

Oh dear... its a forest

The tomato plants had gotten rather big, so we started trying to gently pull the plants apart from the mass of vegetation. I will admit I should of done something sooner, but oh well. This is just one of the average size tomato plants. Yes those are regular coffee filters for scale (okay, honestly, they were there, but it gives you a good sense of how big these things got).

Tomato plant

I will admit it took Pooka and I the better part of a day to just sit there and pot the tomatoes. While we were doing that, Daddy and Brother were working on the side bed pulling off rocks and pulling out the old brick. I am not sure if Daddy or I got the worse end of the bargin. However, at least from my work, we will have food one day. The tomatoes no longer look like this, and some may or may not (okay may) of been a bit frost burned in my attempts to harden them off when it was still a tad chilly outside. However, this is why we plant extras. If nothing else, just means less tomatoes I need to find a home for.

Tomato army

Let there be light...

After just 3 days, I checked the tomato tray to find this. Plants abounding and they were already getting rather spindly while they reached towards the light. That first row you can see is the Pooka tomatoes which were apparently VERY viable. Seeing how quickly they had started reaching made me worry that they were not getting enough light. Especially with how cold and dim it had been recently. I mentioned this to Daddy, which got him thinking.

After only 3 days we have tomatoes.. lots of tomatoes

The more I talked to him. The more we both started wondering about a grow light. I told him my research (which was always in the "someday" category), said that all we needed was a florescent light kit and a chain. I was really on the fence about it, but and we decided to do it. Now, this light will spend 8 months of the year helping light our dim basement, but during seed starting, it would be removed and brought upstairs.

I had a rough idea of what I wanted, but really, I told Daddy "it just needs to do this" and he ran with it. A quick run to the local home improvement store, and $38 and about an hour and a half later. We had light. Daddy set it up for me with the seed starting table and put the light on a timer.

The finished product (Please pardon the mess, We are honest here)

Daddy took some scrap lumber in garage and built a free standing stand since we did buy the 4 ft light. We decided since this was proof of concept, if it indeed works, next year we can knock together a better table then the old blue card table we have been using. The light itself is hung from a chain which will allow us to move it up and down as needed. And when we are done, everything can be torn down and stored until next year. We placed a timer on the light so we don't have to worry about remembering to turn it on or off. We only had to buy the light, the bulbs, the timer and the hooks. Everything else was already on hand. Now to decide if this really helps as much as we hope it will.

Let there be light. 

Now we wait

Last week, we finally got the tomatoes started. Fortunatly this time Pooka was right on top of things and we were able to knock them out after school one night. The big question mark this year is how well will the Pooka tomatoes do. These were the seeds we saved last year.

Pooka's Tomato seeds 

I will admit, that once we opened our little paper envelope, the tomato seeds from the Pooka tomatoes looked slightly different. Slightly more "fuzzy" but it was completely dry and didn't feel like mold. I do wonder if this is the difference between commercial seeds and home grown.

Pooka seeds. 

 Due to the differing nature of the seeds and the fact I forgot to viability test them, I will say I told Pooka to be a bit more heavy handed. Usually, I only allow 2-3 seeds per cell, but with these, I just kinda let her go nuts. Hopefully that doesn't come back to bite me. I know she just grabbed a clump and placed them in each cell. We are not really expecting much from these seeds, so anything is a bonus.

Placing seeds

The other new seeds we are trying are some seeds from Pooka's Great Aunt B. She mailed Pooka these seeds in her birthday present. I placed in the website on the package to see where these seeds came from, and was more than a bit confused to be taken to a record company. However, the seeds were on the website and they do appear to be very interesting tomatoes claiming to "attract moose like creatures to the 1 ton tomatoes." Daddy hopes it is just good marketing, but we will see. Either way, these do seem to be rather fun tomatoes that I know Pooka is looking forward to growing.

These should be interesting seeds.

We also planted some yarrow and Valerian in this tray, as well as our tomatillos and eggplant and the new ground cherries. Pooka is all excited to try her new plants fruits. All in all, the seeds are all planted. Now we begin waiting as the heat mats under the trays hopefully jump start the process.

Now we wait

Saving Pooka Seeds

When we got what we call a Pooka tomato, I decided to try to save the seeds. They were very prolific if a tad small, but we had a ton for one little plant. Pooka just wanted to have a tomato named after her, and I figured we may as well try with these than with anything else.

Pooka tomatoes

A search of the interwebs lead us here, to pretty solid directions on how to do this. In two separate batches (a couple weeks apart), we scooped out the inner part of tomato and let it sit in some water on the counter for a few bit. Now, this is probably the nastiest part, and Pooka wanted no part of it after they grew furry (and they are suppose to)

Getting ready to ferment

 Once the seeds had the correct level of nasty, we strained them from the water. Now, this was rather gross, but we did rinse them off while they were in the strainer. It was much better and Pooka was once again interested.

This is post rinsing off.

 Once we thought they were mostly dry, we placed them on a cloth washcloth (I had heard that paper towels tend to stick) and found a very unused corner to let them sit for a couple of weeks to completely dry out.

And now we have seeds

Once they were dry, I packaged them in a small envelope and placed them with the seeds. Pooka wants to see if she can begin growing her own tomato again. I am just hoping they grow at all. We will have to wait and see.

Paging Dr. Pooka

I mentioned recently in our monthly pictures that Pooka seems to have developed her own tomato. I don't remember planting a Roma on that said of the deck, and I know I didn't plant anything beyond a standard Roma, so where our purple/black Roma came from, I have no idea. I guess I have a little geneticist as well as botanist in Pooka.

This is a Pooka tomato

 I don't know if you can tell from the picture above how dark the Pooka tomatoes seem to be. These tomatoes are completely ripe and are very tasty, but they are certaintly different looking. I will also say the vine they came off of is very prolific, so we are getting quite a few of them.

Traditional Romas and Pooka

The Pooka roma is a much smaller tomato, but I am wondering if that is due to being on the shadier side of the deck. I will say I do see more Pooka tomatoes on the vine then the regular romas. I will admit I made a point to grab some great examples of the tomatoes to work with.

Traditional Roma Vs Pooka Roma

 You can definitely see the difference in color between a Pooka tomato and a regular roma as well as the size difference. They are both very meaty little tomatoes, which is great for canning. The Pooka plant also seems rather sturdy since it has decided to grow THROUGH our patio table.

Let's see if we can do it again

I will say that I wondered how viable the seeds are. In fact, I am wondering if we can get a tomato that really likes our yard and does well everywhere. Pooka likes the fun colors of them, so Daddy, Pooka and I talked and then I did some research. We decided to try saving the seeds from it and see if we can reproduce our "oops." I will admit we have never saved tomato seeds because frankly the idea of doing it is a bit daunting. You have to put the seeds in water until they ferment and get nasty, then you rinse them and then you dry them and frankly, I didn't know if we could do it, but I can't go buy more Pooka seeds, so we are going to try it. I have 2 different sets of seeds (From 2 different harvests) to see if these work. Now to get to the nasty part then wash them. Only time will tell I guess. Wish Pooka luck on her "Pooka tomato." Who knows, maybe in the future Pooka will be giving away "Pooka Tomato" seeds to family and friends.

Colors

This is just a sampling of the colors we find in Pooka's rainbow cherry and blueberry tomatoes. I think it is safe to say we eat plenty of different colors here, even if they all come from the same plants.

Colors and more colors

Supposedly the blueberry tomatoes are suppose to be purple/black where the sun hits them and red on the other. But I think we are getting some crossing between the rainbows (which tend to be yellow) and the pink brandywine tomatoes. Either way, it makes for very pretty salads and even prettier pickled cherry tomatoes. And they are all very prolific. These were just the ones we picked for pickling.

Harvest time

This is the time of year I love. The time of year where I finally see where all that effort and money and time went and I get results of our labor. Now generally, we should of been rolling in produce since July, but with the weird weather this year, its taken a bit of time to get things really progressing. In the last 2 weeks, I have been able to walk away saying 'Yep, The garden is producing."

Anyone hungry?

This is the sight that greeted us two weekends ago. That is 15 lbs of tomatoes, over a lb of basil for basil jelly, cucumbers, squash and peppers, oh my. We canned almost all of it in a canning session that took 6 hours, and set off the carbon monoxide detector as well as the smoke alarm. Nothing bad happened, we just were canning with the air on since it was a very hot weekend. Turns out, we put too much humidity in the air and freaked out the detectors. Lesson of the day, can with the windows open. Pooka loves her basil jelly and asked if we could try purple basil jelly as well, so we did. More on that another day. I wish I had remembered to take a picture of the finished products, but I will be updating the harvest page and the canning page hopefully when I am done here.

Then last weekend, I wish I had taken pictures. We had 22 lbs of tomatoes and 2 lbs of tomatillos come in since the previous canning, not to mention peppers and things. We were in such a rush to deal with it all because we had a busy weekend and we knew it wouldn't keep another week. Pooka had a trip to a farm that day for girl scouts, so once we got back, it was straight to canning. She had no problem getting in there and handing us jars and lids out of the warm water so so she could do her part. She loves helping us, I only wish our kitchen was slightly bigger so we had room for her.

In the end, Pooka has already taken basil jelly sandwiches to school for 4 days since we made her the jelly. She loves being able to say she made the jelly and grew the basil, and I am happy to have made it with her.

Three days of harvest gave to Pooka

In the last few days, we have finally seen the garden start to produce. On the first day, it started with a jalapeno, a yellow cherry tomato and a sweet pepper, Pooka swears she has never had the sweet peppers before. I told her it is the same variety we have every year. These peppers like our yard as compared to bell peppers which no matter how many tricks we have, it never seems to do well. I may or may not of eaten the cherry tomato seconds after this picture was taken.

first day

The next day, we came in with peppers. Lost of peppers. We have one poblano and a ton of jalapeno. Daddy says they are not too hot, but they are great for us. I will say jalapeno poppers are in our future, but it was nice to be able to be able to say "I think we need a bigger boat" or bowl in this case. Pooka has grown up with Daddy and I repeating the line from JAWS when it comes to the garden.

second day

The third day of harvest gave to me, 4 cherry tomatoes and a ripe fireball tomato. We were so excited to finally start getting tomatoes. Luckily, I had tacos on the menu, so we were so excited that for dinner that night we were able to use the a garlic bulb (more on that later),  an onion, tomatoes and hot and sweet peppers all in the tacos. It was a very good dinner and the kids love tacos, so they were quite happy to have it.

Third day

Hopefully soon, I can really feel like the garden is giving us it's bounty. It just feels like all of this is so much later then usual. I don't know if it is the cooler weather, or that I may of been a bit late starting some things *cough cucumber cough*, but I will be so happy when I can skip the produce department at the grocery store for at least a few days.

We have flowers

Things are finally starting to get moving around here. We have flowers on the tomatoes which hopefully means we will have tomatoes in the not so distant future. The rainbow cherry tomatoes are flowering nicely.

Rainbow cherry tomatoes

These are the brandy wine tomatoes. I love how different their flowers are and the face that it has so much more texture to them. Pooka loves the fact it looks "different" and we are both interested to see how they compare to the romas.

Brandywine tomato flower is very textured

The roma tomatoes are in flower as well. They seem to really love their current spot. That entire section of bed just went poof and grew all the sudden. We are trying this year to use actual tomato so we will see how that works as well. So far it means alot of me going "Get in there."

Roma tomatoes are doing well

Certainly not last or least is the fireball tomatoes. I can always count on them to be the early birds and great producers. Although this will be our last year of them since we ran out of their grow ums seeds and I don't see the need to repurchase a kit for more of them. These little guys even have a tomato already starting.

Fireball Tomato flowers and tomato

A Pooka's gift to Grandma's

I can never decide if Pooka honestly thinks everyone wants plants for gifts, or it is part of her little master plan to take over the world. One thing she asked was if she could plant some flowers for her grandmothers.

3 pots for 3 Grandmas

We planted 3 pots of gladiolas bulbs in some pots. She picked out the pots and the bulbs. I just paid for them. I guess in a way it saves me having to buy preplanted flowers.

The bulb packet after planting.

Then we brought the supplies home and planted the bulbs and waited. The bulbs came in a package of 15, and didn't think the Grandmas wanted that many flowers, (especially for the pots she had picked) I did let her put the extras in her pollinator bed. Now Pooka has the same flowers as her Grandmas.

Flowers and tomatoes

Since we did this over a month ago, we fortunately had some fairly good growth by the time Mother's day arrived. I will say one went to a Grandma weeks ago, and didn't look as nice as these. Fortunatly, Grandma's are understanding people. Add a couple of tomato plants that were started extra for the Grandma's (since 2 love tomatoes and ask for the plant) and Mother's day is handled with little stress and I can take a bit of time off that morning instead of worrying about wrapping things. Pooka gets to be all excited to share plants with her grandmas and then she will probably help them take care of it over the summer.

A good days work

A week ago Friday, Pooka and Brother had the day off school. I was feeling a bit behind with the garden, so we put ourselves to work outside. Well, Pooka and I did, I do believe Brother spent most of the day playing. Pooka helped me transplant most of the tomatoes. 

Transplants getting bigger

We also took care of this poor guy. He didn't make it through this hard hard winter. I had hope he may come back, but I am getting to a point where I am tired of waiting. I am tired of looking at sad plants and ready for new ones to take their places. I want to start harvesting already.

A victim of winter

Instead this new little guy got planted in his place. Hopefully we will have plenty of lavender to use this year.  All this was done in the same day. Now if I can only have a few more days like this and we may finally get caught up. 

New life. 

Stupid cold snaps

I will be honest with you all, we have been transplanting and transplanting away here. All our little seedlings are going into pots to get big and strong and ready for the yard. However, I haven't had a chance to tell you all about it. Granted, showing plants going into pots is real exciting. 

Stupid cold

However, this is what happens when you get a cold snap. Everything ends up in your garage hiding from the cold. The table it is sitting on is just an old hollow core door we use as a workbench. The most annoying part is the 15 minutes it takes to move them all inside, then the 15 minutes it takes to move them all back outside daily and it only gets worse as we continue to put more plants into pots. Soon, maybe the weather will give in and things can live outdoors. 

Mail call

Pooka has been excitedly checking the mail of late. Twice now, she has checked the mail to find little pick me ups from all the cold weather coming in. I will say Pooka has taken this extend winter the hardest and is quite tired of me asking if she is warm enough. She has asked numerous times how much longer winter is. To her, a little pick me ups come in the form of the "S word" seeds.

First came most of our order from Territorial Seed co. All we are missing is our blue corn, but Pooka's new container watermelons came as well as some jalapenos for Daddy and our families new discovery of leeks. We found out last year we liked them so we decided to grow them ourselves. Pooka is so excited to grow watermelons and I am curious if they will do okay in a pot or not. Daddy has forbidden melons and pumpkins from going in the ground, and I agreed since we just don't have that kind of space.

Seeds galore

 Another order that came in were from Burpee. We only got 2 new kinds of seeds, Daddy's beloved cubanelle peppers which he loves eating in everything. Cubanelles are a sweet pepper, mostly known for frying to put on like steak sandwiches and things. We are also trying a new variety of tomato called Pink Brandywine which is suppose to be a bigger paste tomato good for canning. Pooka was so excited she took the pictures.

Burpee seeds with Pooka's picture

I will say Pooka  was much happier with the Territorial seeds since they came in such a pretty package. What can I say, when your 6, you want colors and pictures to know what they are. Now I need to get ready to start all these seeds and find a place to put them. But that is a problem for another day. For now, we are just going to pretend that spring is coming faster.

BIG TOMATO ALERT

Doing our evening walk down of the garden Monday night, Pooka found her largest tomato (that we have recorded), yet. It was just sitting there, on the vine in full view. I thought for sure we would have to dig for a good sized one. This is it sitting in a regular cereal bowl for size.

Big tomato in a cereal bowl

While I will admit our tomatoes this year have been on the small side. I think part of it is they are too close, and part of it is we have not been as great about watering this year. However, we have had a decent harvest, and I think next year will be better if we thin out the tomatoes. This is our big 12+ oz tomato next to one of our regular tomatoes. If I could show you the look on Pooka's face when she realized the big tomato was bigger then both her hands together, it was priceless. Here is to hoping for more good sized tomatoes.

Regular tomato vs. Big tomato

Rainbow Salsa

Recently we had to clean out the fridge. The garden had produced some much that we really needed to do something. We had tomatoes, but we had so many peppers and onions we decided to make salsa. But none of the recipes we found really encompassed everything we had, so we decided to make Pooka's Rainbow Salsa. It got its name from the rainbow of colors that went into it and Pooka loves making things colorful.

Tomatoes, onion, purple, sweet and Jalapenos all in the pot.

Into it went:
19 cups of tomatoes (including Roma, Beefsteak, Betterboy, Fireball and colored Cherry tomatoes)
6 cups onion (red and white)
9 1/2 Jalapenos
3 cups Bell peppers (Red peppers, Sweet peppers and cubanelles)
3 purple 5 color peppers
1 bulb of garlic
3 cups of Cilantro

Rainbow salsa all ready to go

We ended up making 11 pints of Rainbow Salsa. They look so good, we are only hoping it is not too hot with all the purple peppers in it. We will see, but it definitely looks pretty good. It looks a bit less colorful in the jars, but it should taste good.

Close up of the salsa

Helping out

Yesterday, Daddy brought home another tomato plant for Pooka. While I know it is another plant, this one has a story. Pooka's gave her Great Grandmother a tomato plant for Mother's day. Great Grandma has not been feeling very well this spring and summer and realize the other day that the tomato plant was suffering a bit from neglect. Normally, we wouldn't care, but Great Grandma didn't want Pooka to be upset if the plant died and Great Grandma realized she was not able to get to the plant to even pick her tomatoes.

Great Grandma's tomato plant

Great Grandma asked me if Pooka could raise her tomato plant. Since we had planted it in a pot to begin with (and hopefully make it easier for Great Grandma to get to) I agreed. It wasn't looking too bad we it got home, but you could tell it needed a bit of TLC. We pruned off some of the dead branches and it is looking much better. Pooka asked if we could make sure to give Great Grandma a tomato every time we see her so she won't miss her plant. Judging by what didn't survive transport, I think that is going to be very possible. These fell off on their own when we got it out of the car.

Casualties of the move

At the end of a long day

Today was a long day. Very productive in and out of the garden, but long none the less. So it was very satisfying to be able to walk outside and pick our dinner. In fact, Pooka began to run around asking what else we could eat.

Dinner tonight

Now granted, most of it just went into a salad. But when the salad is completely home grown with romaine and bib lettuce, baby spinach, sugar snap peas, basil, parsley, red onion and cherry and regular tomatoes, I would call it a very good salad. Even if Pooka has decided to have "Yummy mold that Daddy likes on it." At least I can say I didn't grow the bleu cheese (aka mold).

Lunchtime

In a bit of a rush, but I wanted to show you all what I am taking to work for lunch tonight. Everything was grown in Pooka's garden and she said I could take the second cherry tomato "since you haven't tried them yet. They are delicious."

Homegrown carrots, peas, beans and cherry tomato

I know using plastic bags isn't the best answer, but the kitchen is still in process of being rebuilt and we don't currently have a sink for dishes. I added a store bought cucumber to make sure I get enough. I am waiting impatiently for ours to come in. Hopefully I bought my last sets for awhile.

Cucumber is getting there.

Getting There

The harvests are getting bigger. On Friday, Pooka and I harvested these yellow squash from her yellow squashes from her mystery squash plant. They are fairly small still, but I heard if you harvest them smaller they are less seedy and taste better. That's the hope. We haven't had a chance to try them yet since we lost the kitchen this weekend. We are planning on trying them today.

Harvests

Pooka was so very excited to see that first yellow cherry tomato. I barely got pictures before she was jumping in and eating it. She said it tasted wonderful and is hoping for a purple cherry tomato next. I told her we will see. Brother also had a handful of blueberries in there. Those lasted about as long as the cherry tomato.

First tomato

Sometime between my walkthrough of the garden and Daddy's walk through today, this little guy jumped off the plant. We have our first little tomato. Now to see how long before we start getting more. We will have to wait and see.

A tomato... it has begun