Posts Tagged ‘tomato gardening’
Tip: Stake Up and Tie Those Stray Tomato Branches with Velcro
“Where but in a garden do summer hours pass so quickly?” — author unknown
Stray and Lengthy Tomato Branches
Dot’s Thot:
One of the tasks in the garden is to keep your tomato branches off the ground. I have tried a number of ways and tie-ups and while I’ll tell you my favorite tie-up method, you should use what works for you and suits your situation.
I have tried fabric strips, vegetable ties, roles of plastic coated wire, plastic strips, and finally velcro strips. Vegetable ties deteriorate pretty quickly. Most plastic strips are impossible to untie and retie.
At this time, my favorite tie-ups are strips of velcro that come on a large roll. My reason is that I like the ability to move the strips upward as the plants grow during the season.
While I tie up the branches pretty low in the beginning, the tomato branches quickly grow taller and need staking and tying at a higher point. Often the lower stalk is now thicker and
Velcro Tie to Tomato Cage or to Stake
Circular Tomato Cage Supplemented with Bamboo Stakes Is Convenient Place to Hang the Roll of Velcro and the Scissors You Need.
stronger and no longer needs the tie, so I unzip that velcro and move it higher up the stalk.
With the other things, reuse tends to be problematic. With Velcro, I have a flexible tie-up. When I first cut the strip, I make it a little long so as to be able to handle the growing girth of the branches in later weeks. Depending on the plant and situation, I cut the strips appropriately. Most strips tend to be cut about 3-4 inches long.
The roll I buy at the garden shop or in the garden department of the home improvement store comes in a 45-foot length. I also buy the tallest conical tomato cages I can find and then insert bamboo stakes inside the topmost circle and sink those in the ground around the cage, between the metal legs of the cage. This arrangement makes it convenient to hang the roll of velcro from one of the bamboo stakes, resting on the cage’s top circle. I poke my little scissors through the hole of the roll and this keeps both of them handy for using. I am sure there are lots of other ways to do this right and am just sharing what has worked for me.
I have included a reference to a video about pruning tomatoes, which is my one resolution for growing tomatoes better next year. The video also includes a demonstration of string trellising around a row of stakes — maybe I will try that another year.
Aloha, Dot
Related Posts:
- Grow Tomatoes Journal News: 2009 Late Blight hits East Coast
- Grow Tomatoes Journal: Review of Ingredients for 20 Cups of Salsa
- Grow Tomatoes Review: 18 Oz. Omar’s Lebanese Beefsteak Tomato
- Grow Tomatoes Review: Sugar Lump Cherry Heirloom
- Tomato Gardening Journal — Review of May 2009
- Grow Tomatoes Review: Orange Santa Grape
- First Tomato of 2009 — Pink Thai Egg
Indoor Tomato Grower
Go Green -- Compost
Grow Tomatoes Review: Journal Entry – Pink Thai Egg Tomato Volunteer
Thai Pink Egg Tomato Hunt
Dot’s Thot: How many Easter eggs can you put in an empty basket?
Only one – after that it’s not empty any more! — author unknown
Early June 2009: Volunteer Pink Thai Egg heirloom tomato plant self-seeded from 2008.
Don’t these look like little white, pink, and green easter eggs hanging on a tomato plant? Thot to show you a photo of that volunteer Pink Thai Egg plant that produced the very first tomato this season. It is suitable for pot or container gardening and is an heirloom tomato that self-seeded true to form from last year’s crop.
The plant is prolific and fills with small egg-shaped ovoids in light green, white, light pink, and finally, rosy pink colors. Picking the ripe fruit is very much like an Easter egg hunt. You have to reach in and between to get to the ripe ones. These are mild in flavor, a pretty color. Even though they are not acidic enough for my taste and lack a lot of flavor, although
Clusters of Pink Thai Egg Heirloom Tomatoes in Early June Promise the Fun of the "Thai Pink Easter Egg Hunt" Later
the plant and fruit offer the benefit of being a real looker and at peak last year was so loaded with fuit ast to be an outstanding tomato producer — for much of the season. the plant did resemble an Easter egg tree.
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Grow Tomatoes Journal: Review of Ingredients for 20 Cups of Salsa
“Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”
– Alice May Brock (of Alice’s Restaurant fame)
Eight Pounds of Garden Fresh Tomatoes Made Twenty Cups of Salsa
Dot’s Thot: I guess then, tomatoes, onions, Jalepeno peppers, and cilantro make it Mexican. Garlic certainly does make this good. Anyway, today I decided I couldn’t let the tomatoes stand — having given away several dozen tomatoes already and eating them at least for lunch and dinner and sometimes for breakfast — yum!!
Having made Caprese salad, guacamole, salsa, and eaten them with plain old salt and pepper, I decided to make the first batch of salsa to bottle and save for later. Last year was my trial run — only made a bit, and found that we all liked it. Hence today was salsa batch #1. Last year I made and canned salsa, marinara sauce, and some Indian tomato sabzi. I also skinned and froze a bunch of tomatoes too.
I am not going to tell you how to can tomatoes, because I am still only an occasional canner — there are better sources for that. I will review for you what was used and what happened. If you do can tomatoes, you will probably find, as I have, if you use your own tomatoes and mix them up, the batches may come out differently each time, but no commercially uniform tomatoes will taste quite as good as your own mix of delightful special, vine-ripened tomatoes.
Here is the list of tomatoes that went into the salsa today:
- (1) Lemon Boy — 4 oz.
- (1) Black Brandywine — 6 oz
- (2) Marizol Purple — 6 oz. + 8.5 oz.
- (1) Earl of Edgecombe — 5 oz.
- (1) Aunt Gertie’s Gold — 7 oz.
- (3) Vintage Wine — 4.5 oz.+3 oz. + 2 oz.
- (12) Salsa — 6+4+4+4+4+3+4+2+3.5+6+4+4+4 = 52.5 oz.
- (1) Golden Pineapple — 11 oz.
- (2) Celebrity — 4 oz.+3 oz.
- (1) Piriform = 9 oz.
- Miscellaneous small tomatoes = 8 oz.
If I added right, that is 133.5 oz. or 8.34 pounds of tomatoes or roughly 8 pounds of some very lovely tomatoes. I did not make this with measurements on the other stuff, but what you see in the photo, all chopped up and mixed with salt and pepper became the salsa. The four Jalepeno peppers (green) were pretty hot and the long red peppers (grew in the yard) are kind of hot. I don’t favor bell peppers in salsa, nor cucumbers (in a canning book).
I like to mix the onions when I can, so used one large yellow and 1 large red onion. I used a whole head of garlic (I like garlic, kim chee, and Korean food — what can I say). I also like green onions in my salsa, so used a whole bunch. I used one large bunch of cilantro and this time used 2 large, extremely juicy limes, although lemons work well also. The rest was salt and pepper to taste.
Finally I followed the canning directions for water bath canning. The result was seven pint jars and four 12 oz. jars of salsa batch #1. If you multiply that out 7X16=112 and 4X12=48 or 160 ounces or 10 pounds or 20 cups of salsa. The jars are cooling (and hopefully all sealing nicely) on the washer top. Tomorrow, I will check the jars, label them and put them away as I go to the next tomato projects.
Aloha, Dot
P.S. If you want to try to identify the varieties, I can tell you this much: Piriform is on the scale. The 4 yelowish tomatoes in the photo are Golden Pineapple on the top, Lemon Boy to the right, Earl of Edgecombe bottom, and Aunt Gertie’s Gold on the left. On the top left between Golden Pineapple and Aunt Gertie’s Gold is the finely striped Vintage Wine (which this season is one of my favorite tomatoes in taste). Right below Aunt Gertie’s Gold is a Black Brandywine, To its right is an arc of various sizes of the Salsa tomato (a mother lode of tomatoes this year — firm, prolific, great in salsa). Sort of nestled in the center is Marizol Purple with a small Celebrity tomato to its left. As for the rest, your guess is as good as mine now.
Related Posts:
- Grow Tomatoes Review: Sugar Lump Cherry Heirloom
- Tomato Gardening Journal — Review of May 2009
- Grow Tomatoes Review: Orange Santa Grape
- First Tomato of 2009 — Pink Thai Egg
- See Christy K.’s Beautiful Brandywine Tomato — two hands needed
Grow Tomatoes Review: Sugar Lump Cherry Heirloom
First Ripe Sugar Lump Cherry Tomato of the Season - June 9, 2009
Dot’s Thot: “Just when you’re beginning to think pretty well of people, you run across somebody who puts sugar on sliced tomatoes.” –Will Cuppy
9 June 2009: 1st ripe Sugar Lump Cherry Tomato shows up —
Tomato Gardening Journal — Review of May 2009
Grow Tomatoes Review: Orange Santa
First Tomato of 2009 — Pink Thai Egg
See Christy K.’s Beautiful Brandywine Tomato — two hands needed
Garden Cultivator Tools (kids garden tools too)
Grow Tomatoes Review: 18 Oz. Omar’s Lebanese Beefsteak Tomato
Dot’s Thot: “When I was in kindergarten, I had one line in a little play. I said, I am Patrick Potato and this is my cousin, Mrs. Tomato, and I heard laughter. I wanted to be an actress from that moment on. ”
— Doris Roberts
2 July 2009 18 Oz. Omar's Lebanese Beefsteak Tomato
2 July 2009
Ever since I grew my first tomato as a child, I have held this vegetable in high esteem and consider it one of my inspirations for gardening.
Today we picked a large tomato (large for me, any way). It was rosy Omar’s Lebanese beefsteak tomato, which is described to be a medium pink tomato growing on an indeterminate tomato plant.
It said on the label that the tomatoes grow to be as large as 1 to 4 pounds each. The tag also said 90 days to fruit and it is now certainly past that point since the plant was bought.
Home Scale Bottoms Out at 1 Pound 2 Ounces
Here you can see the tomato resting on my hand. It was gorgeous, no cracks and a nice rosy red with a few green and yellow streaks just at the very top of the tomato.
Of course, I had to weigh it to see if I really got one worthy of the advertising. I took it in and worried because my scale only goes up to 18 oz. It bottomed out, so I can say that this tomato weighed at least a full 18 oz. or 1 lb. 2 oz.
I wonder what a 4 pounder would be like — how would I keep it from toppling the tomato cage? I also wondered if I might get a larger tomato off the plant later in the season. We shall see.
We decided to eat it right away for dinner and went to slice it as large rounds. The one tomato completely filled a dinner plate.
The slices were meaty, with few seeds. We ate the tomatoes with only a sprinkling of salt and black pepper freshly ground. True to its description, the tomato has a relatively mild flavor.
My husband favored the tomato, which is not surprising — he prefers the less acidic tomatoes, while I tend to like a little more
Tomato Slices from One Omar's Lebanese Beefsteak Tomato Fills a Dinner Plate
acid. The tomato did have a rich sweet flavor and I will plant it again in the garden. The plant has been strong and has more large globes hanging on it.
We’ll look at more tomatoes as we go along. In summary, my hubby calls this an excellent tomato. I consider it very good.
Aloha,
Dot
Tomato Gardening is So Satisfying
Related Posts:
Tomato Gardening Journal — Review of May 2009
Grow Tomatoes Review: Orange Santa
First Tomato of 2009 — Pink Thai Egg
See Christy K.’s Beautiful Brandywine Tomato — two hands needed
