Since it was Sunday we tried to take it easy, but I planted some potatos in straw next to the garden. Nigel ate a few when I wasn’t looking, but there are still plenty.

We decided we’d plant all the potatos in straw on account of how clay-y the soil is. This is a picture from the other day so you can’t see all the old logs i put to mark the potato plot.

Apparently, what you do is just put more and more straw on top of the plant and the potatos keep making more tubers. This appeals to me as I read One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuokaa few months back and that guy uses straw for EVERYTHING.

My hope is to follow they way of natural farming and try to avoid doing stuff. Thats when you get into trouble. I also learned never to use bare hands handling really dry grass.

This was from last summer. I never did complete what I was going to do here:

i know all our readers have been clamoring for another one of my posts. in between studying analytic philosophy and relearning german again i’ve been reading Epitaph For A Peach which i picked up at the salvo for a song. its about a third generation japanese peach farmer whose old-fashioned peach farm can’t break even.

just as the bulldozers are about to do what bulldozers do (bull? doze?) he decides to give it another go. he farms less for profit than family, the land, and deliciousness, but as my father would say “we aren’t running a charity here.” since getting big or out have been eliminated as options the plan is to get small and get better. he has been slowly incorporating organic techniques for years and he hopes he can find a niche for his Sun Crest peaches with a short shelf-life, but (apparently) great taste. i’m not sure if i have ever had a great tasting peach, but now i think i’d like to.

another farm journal/book i’ve been leafing through was written by a conventional beet and small grains farmer from the red reiver valley during, i think, 1987 (bad drought year). quite a contrast between the two. the organic peach farmer talks philosophy with entomologists and the beet fella eats free steaks from pesticide salesmen. one thinks like an artist and majored in sociology and rural studies and ones a scientist (thats not to say there isn’t a lot of common ground either). i’m about halfway through both. i hope it all turns out ok.

Here’s a fairly good picture of the garden. It’s hard to get a sense of the size from a picture, especially at this point. It’s been mowed, and the Tractor Guy dragged a tiller through it once to break up the sod (though you can’t really tell).

We’ve missed the planting date for peas, and hope that it stays cool enough for some lettuces. It’s difficult working at the mercy of someone else’s schedule and equipment. But as long as it is tilled and workable by May 15th (our average last frost date), we’ll be fine. Chris graduates in two weeks, and I’m really busy with my business so we don’t have too much time to put into it at this point anyway!

We have been busy transplanting and moving plants from the Morning Sky Greenery greenhouse back home (for transplanting), and then moving plants back out there. Until today, our plants were in their heated greenhouse. We moved about 100 plants into the unheated greenhouse this afternoon. The weather has been so nice, and unless we get a hard freeze they should be okay in there. Of course, we’ll be monitoring the weather forecast! It clears up a lot of space in our little dining room that has been transformed into a seed room.

Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 11, 2007

We wanted a marbled (bi-colored) tomato for the garden this year, and were not overly impressed with the Marvel Striped tomato variety we grew last year. Amish Land Seeds describes these plants as very heavy-producing with all fruits weighing over a pound.

I don’t know much about this variety, but we’ll keep this page updated as time progresses!

We have 22 Pineapple tomato seedlings.

View all tomato varieties

Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 11 & 23

Great White and Pineapple Bi-Color were my first heirloom choices this season. The description of this tomato at Amish Land Seeds boasts heavy yields, large fruit, and “hands down, the best tasting white tomato [the grower has] ever eaten.” Very tempting!

I ended up ordering more seeds of this variety later, which is why we have two planting dates. We have 20 Great White seedlings.

View all tomato varieties

Seed Source: Seeds of Change

Date Planted: March 5 & 23, 2007
Indeterminate

We grew these nearly-perfect orange cherry tomatoes last year, and loved them so much we just couldn’t resist for this year! The photo is from last year’s garden (to be updated later this summer), and it’s actually a smaller tomato for this variety. The plants were very productive and yielded beautiful spheres with no cracks.

We don’t have as many cherry tomato plants as slicing plants, but we do have 18 of these tomatoes. Our other cherry varieties are Sweetie and Gardener’s Delight.

View all tomato varieties

Seed Source: Seeds of Change

Date Planted: March 5, 2007
Indeterminate

Oaxacan Pink tomatoes are from the Oaxacan region of Mexico. We grew these tomatoes last year, but sadly didn’t save any seeds. They were good, but not as exciting as the Amana Orange tomatoes were.

Last year, these tomatoes varied greatly in size – from tiny cherry-sized (or even smaller!) to good palm-sized… on the same plants, even! I wish we had thought to save seeds from both extremes on this plant. We’ll see how they turn out this year, and maybe next year’s seeds will be our own.

We only have 9 Oaxacan Pink tomato plants this year; I’m not sure if they are quite suited for a market, but we wanted to enjoy them ourselves!

Both tomatoes are from last year’s garden. Note the difference in size!

Seedlings this year, April 26

View all tomato varieties

Seed Source: Our own seeds from 2006. Originally from Seeds of Change

Date Planted: March 5 and 23, 2007
Indeterminate

The Amana tomato is a fairly large sized orange tomato named for Amana, Iowa. It has a mild flavor, but makes an excellent slicing tomato, as it is very fleshy with little juice. We saved seeds from a couple different tomatoes, and stored them a plastic bag over the winter. I was excited to see the seedlings pop up this spring!

We have about 37 Amana seedlings.

View all tomato varieties

A.K.A.: Shah Tomato

Seed Source: Amish Land Heirloom Seeds

Date Started: March 23, 2007

“Mikado” is a comic opretta by Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert that opened in 1885 in London. It is likely that the tomato was named after this opera, as the history of the tomato can be traced back to about 1886. The Mikado White Tomato is commonly known as a brandywine tomato for its flavor.

The seedling picture was taken on April 26, just about a month after emerging from the dirt. We have 18 Mikado White seedlings for the garden this summer.

Watch this post and the Tomato Varieties category, as we will be adding more varieties soon and updating each page frequently throughout the season.

View all tomato varieties

Photo: Okra Seedlings

The last few days have been a bit nerve-wrecking. Oh, the anticipation of starting a project that we just can’t start yet!

Our new garden plot was mowed, but we got 1-1/2″ of rain the same evening, so no tilling yet. Now we’re considering having it moldboard-plowed before tilling. The moldboard plow basically flips the soil over, so the grass dies. But, it has to be disked following the moldboarding, because the moldboard plow makes such a huge mess of the soil that it can’t be tilled. The advantage of moldboard plowing is that it can be done when the soil is wet – like today – while tilling needs to be done when the soil is mostly dry. The main disadvantage (in our case) is that we don’t know anyone with a moldboard plow, can’t rent one anywhere, and really cannot afford to buy one right now.

I did make a few phone calls and talk to a couple of farmers in our area. We’re waiting on a phone call back from somebody. If nobody calls before the Tractor Guy goes over and tills, then we’ll have tilled land I guess! Chris spoke with the other neighbor that was mentioned in an earlier post last night, and he is convinced that the tiller does a really fine job, and that there is no need for the moldboard plow. Maybe he’s right! But… maybe he is also assuming that we will be using herbicides throughout the summer. That can be a touchy subject in our area, so we didn’t ask.