In Minnesota, the tomatoes don’t really start to ripen until late July. This year, we had a lot of rain in July and I think that made the fruits take even longer to ripen. But once there are fresh tomatoes… nothing else in the world matters.

Our tomatoes are overrun with early tomato blight once again this year. It is at the point now where there are very few green leaves left on the vines; they are nearly all brown. Fortunately the fruit hasn’t been affected, but I’ve done as much as I can to try and manage it this year. I have some ideas for next summer – and I’m hoping to spend some time learning more about blight this winter.

That’s a giant bowl of assorted cherry tomatoes: Amish Mayberry, Prize of the Trials, and Yellow Pear. I’ve been working on our tomato varieties page, compiling a list of varieties we’ve grown over the years, seed sources, and a few notes. I’d like to put a bit more time into this, and also put together the Peppers section in a similar way. Maybe some day…

Our eggplants are loaded with beautiful white and purple fruits. The white eggplant is a variety from Monticello – apparently one that Jefferson grew, and has been passed down through the generations. They are good sized, long fruits – nearly 12″ long, and each plant has at least 8 fruits on it. What a great find!

Temperatures have been consistently reaching the 90s this month, with a few streaks in the 100s. Pair that with 2″+ of rain each week, and you have the perfect weather for eggplants and peppers.

For some reason, though, our tomatoes are not ripening. We’ve picked a few small cherry tomatoes, and today I picked a couple of nearly-ripe orange tomatoes (Amana Orange). They both have pretty big cracks in them though, and look like they could start to go bad soon. Torrential rain is not great for heirloom tomatoes; it causes them to grow too quickly, and then they crack and are prone to insects and rotting.

In other news, I picked a Hungarian Carrot Pepper and, not thinking, took a bite out of it. The description on the seed packet just said “Great for frying.” No mention of heat. FYI – hungarian carrot peppers are HOT. Right up there with cayenne peppers, but it’s a different kind of heat. I’m sure they are terrific for frying… and I’m curious to see if they are more tolerable when cooked!

A week of rain followed by 100º heat makes me forget what state I live in! But it does wonderful things for tomatoes in Minnesota. The tomatoes tripled in size in a week after the weather we had early June.

Next year I need to invest in some taller tomato cages (or build some).

This is probably the greenest my garden has ever been; there is a lot of space left to fill in with sunflowers for our wedding this September. I haven’t posted pictures for a while, so I have a few pictures lined up for this week: flowering onions, zucchini, strawberries… stay tuned!

Checking things out. He stays in the paths (mostly).

“Broccoli…. cauliflower… kohlrabi! My FAVORITE!!”

Enjoying his garden

We’re finally seeing spring days in the 60s and 70s, with beautiful sunshine. But the temperature at night is still dropping into the 30s, which means that our nightshade plants are still traveling between the deck and the kitchen every day.

Tomorrow I hope to put in a good chunk of tomatoes. I’ve had problems with transplants dying off the last few years – not sure if it’s due to planting before a big rain, cutworm, or something else – but recently about 1/3 of my tomatoes’ stems have broken off right above the soil line after planting. So I have a few extras, and will wait to plant a handful for a week to see if I need to replace them with others. I have some large pots that the extras can go into, and a bit of extra space in the garden.

If the forecast looks good on Thursday, hopefully the eggplant and peppers can go out then!

I finally started hardening off tomatoes and peppers this week. Last year I decided to start fewer plants inside, and purchase more at the local greenhouse… but I ended up buying seeds anyway. It is just so hard to resist starting plants inside! I already put in all of the cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and kohlrabi – and seeded radishes and carrots. The rest of the garden should be seeded within the week, so all that’s left will be tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.

They look pretty good; if the weather patterns hold most of these should be able to go into the ground next weekend. I do have a row cover and some fabric in case temperatures drop into the 30s later this May.

The smell of young tomato leaves in mid-April is hard to beat. It’s funny how that smell can be so nauseating in September, yet delicious in spring.

If the weather patterns had mimicked 2010, these cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts seedlings would be long planted in the garden. But with temperatures barely above freezing, and snow predicted through the end of this week, the garden is doomed to have a late start this year. All I can do now is sit in the spare bedroom, gaze at my young vegetable plants, and dream of sunny days ahead.

It’s that time of year again!

10 weeks until Minnesota’s average last frost. We like to put stuff out earlier than that if the weather permits. I have a lot of plans for the garden this year – including growing the flowers for our wedding this September! I’ll have to post more about that later. I also ordered 100 grape vines, and Chris ordered some nut trees so I’m sure this summer we will be busy planting.

There is a nice little nursery just down the road, so to save some time I am planning on just purchasing a lot of transplants from them. There are a few varieties that we just can’t pick up locally though: heirloom tomatoes, fancy peppers, funky-colored cauliflower… so I took out the shelves and grow lights and set everything up in our spare bedroom again.

There seems to be a lot of debate on using coconut fiber vs. peat moss as a seed starting medium. I read a few posts on gardening forums, and people have strong opinions about both – on which is the most environmentally friendly, and which performs better. I haven’t made a decision yet, but I did decide to put both to the test this year with our seedlings.

I picked up some Hoffman Seed Starter from Bachman’s. It is made of peat moss, vermiculite, and limestone. I also picked up some Burpee Eco-Friendly Concentrated Seed Starting Mix from Target, which is made of coconut fiber.

Half of the pots are filled with peat moss (the green pots in the picture above), and the other half with coconut fiber (yellow pots above). I prefer the consistency of the coconut fiber, and it seems to be better at both retaining moisture and draining than peat moss. We’ll just have to wait to see which one the plants prefer!

The Prize of the Trials Cherry Tomato is probably my favorite tomato to grow… and to eat. Even our terribly blighted tomato plants have been producing these like crazy this summer. They are perfect little sweet orange tomatoes, and we’ve never had a problem with blossom end rot or cracks. They are quite a bit larger than a standard cherry tomato. Wonderful halved or quartered in a salad, or – my favorite – two of them sliced on a sandwich.

We had so many of them this year, and so I cut a bunch in half and threw them in the dehydrator overnight. We are just now finishing our sundried tomatoes from last summer, so it’s time to stock up again.

You can pick up Prize of the Trials tomato seeds at Seeds of Change.

Early tomato blight is an infection (caused by the fungus Alternaria solani) that starts out as dark brown spots, yellowing leaves, and eventually spreads quite rapidly through the crop killing the leaves and fruits if it has a chance. The fungus spores form in hot, humid weather and then wait for a nice, cool, wet evening to start destroying the plants. We’ve definitely had more than ideal weather for blight this summer. It shows up just as the plants are starting to set fruit – and once the infection starts, it is nearly impossible to stop from spreading. If you’re growing organically and aren’t planning on dousing them with fungicide, that is.

The fungus overwinters in the soil and any garden waste that wasn’t cleaned up the previous year. We didn’t do a very good job cleaning out the garden last fall, which probably helped lead to this outbreak. I’ve also read that it can travel through the air – and I drove by a house down the road that has a bunch of tomatoes in those upside-down hanging pots – and theirs all have blight as well.

There are some blight-resistant tomato varieties, but supposedly they are lacking in flavor. Unfortunately, the heirloom tomatoes seem to be most prone to blight – and of course, every tomato plant in our garden is an heirloom variety. In this case (fortunately) it has only affected the leaves so far – the fruit seems to be untouched.

So, what to do, what to do? There are some “organic” copper and sulfur sprays that supposedly help control blight – but they still have a novel of cautionary statements on the label, and that’s not exactly my cup of tea when it comes to growing things that I’m going to put in my mouth. Since I’m not about to douse the garden in fungicide, and I’d like to at least try and get a few tomatoes this year… I pulled out my scissors and spent the better part of a day painfully removing every single infected leaf. This is very, very sad:

And now, I have tomatoes that are probably going to be sun-scalded unless they start making some new, blight-free suckers and filling in leaves. I need to pick up a few bales of straw or find someone with enough grass clippings to use as mulch, too. I guess now we just wait and see… hopefully the fruit on there now will ripen, and if the blight doesn’t come back we still have two months for them to grow.

Tips for next year: Blight can also be transmitted through seed, and so this means that I may just have to give up my 6th generation Amana Orange Tomatoes next year. Or, maybe I’ll try planting one or two from last year’s seeds in large pots on the other side of the house, just to see if they’ll stay blight-free. Fall garden cleanup, and crop rotation are definite musts. Fresh seeds and <shudder> possibly looking into some blight-resistant F1 varieties may be in order.

Unfortunately, we didn’t move the old bean and cucumber trellises with us, and I didn’t have the scrap wood (or the ambition) this year to build something new.

Menard’s sells 10′ PVC Pipes for 97¢. Five of those, plus a bit of hemp twine, makes a really nice bean teepee. I dug each pole 1 foot into the ground to make sure the winds wouldn’t take them down this summer.

The blue hoops are my “melon loops” – also PVC pipe (the flexible kind that comes in a roll). I actually have tomatoes planted under these ones; the melons are in the next two rows over. Six years of wire tomato cages have driven me nuts; I’m hoping that tying the vines to these will be a new solution.

The cucumbers will (hopefully) vine on the two arbors, and also on the decorative little fence I built around the garden this year.