Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

Previous Tomato Posts:

Heirloom Tomatoes (Again!)
Planting (Potting) Heirloom Tomatoes
Quick Tomato Update


It has been far to long since I updated you all on the heirloom tomatoes.  They have really taken off!  Here's a quick review:

When I left you last my little plants looked like this

June 14th 2010

Then we went to the beach and when we returned they had survived well without us and they looked like this

June 30th 2010

Now...they don't all fit in one picture!

They're 5-6 ft tall each and full of ripening fruit

Purple Russian on the vine and in my hand to give some scale.

Depp's Pink Firefly

Weeping Charlie

If you'll notice in top near center of the bottom Weeping Charlie photo there is a mystery tomato.  When I got the seedlings the Weeping Charlie had two main stems growing out of it's little cell and at the time I assumed they were both Weeping Charlie, as the fruits have started to set, however, this is clearly not the case.  Not sure what they'll turn out to be, but it does add to the great variety.

Striped Roman

Pantano Romanesco

The vines really took of and caught me off guard, I ended up having to add in new, taller stakes and really dig in through the leaves and vines to tie them up well.  I used Vlecro brand plant ties and am very happy with them.  They are gentle on the vines, but hold them securely.  The other thing that I did to try and control them a bit was to prune off most of the suckers. Yes, they are really called suckers, the new little growths that shoot out between a main stem and an existing branch.  If you catch them early you can just pinch them off with your fingers and if you leave them they will become their own new main stem.  I left two to three main stems near the bottom and enough through the middle of the plant to allow for a decent crop, but to keep the plant able to concentrate more energy on those fruits. In other words, I wanted enough to have several fruits, but not so many that as they plant divided it's energy, the fruits would become smaller.

A few of the fruits did also succumb to blossom end rot. dark soft spots at the blossom end of the fruit.  This can happen when there is not enough calcium in the soil or when the plant is not able to get enough calcium from the soil because of lack of or inconsistent water.  I think in my case it was possibly a combination of both these issues.  I added a tomato fertilizer and have been more diligent with consistent watering and these steps seem to have headed off further issues.

I have so far harvested only Weeping Charlie tomatoes (and have since discovered that they are not Weeping Charlies - see here) as they are the only ones that have ripened fully and I have found they make a great salad tomato and my husband agrees.

delicious!

Bindae duk (...who did what?)

Korean Mung Bean Pancakes (Bindae duk)

In perusing Epicurious for some appetizer ideas for a Memorial day barbeque I was going to I came accross a recipe for Korean Pancakes.  I really enjoy an excuse to go to the international grocery store, particularly a Korean excuse, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with this particular recipe so I searched around a bit before heading off to Grand Mart.  I came across this post, International House of Pancakes from A Beautiful Mosaic, a great blog that I have quickly become a fan of largely because she shared some secrets on how to eliminate cookie spread, you know when they spread out and become as she puts it "crepe-like" and more crisp instead of staying thick and chewy like a good cookie should, I really get frustrated when that happens (the cookies still get eaten, but I am frustrated all the same). Anyhow...her post on bindae duk really is thorough and helpful and I only varied slightly so I'll just insert my photos here (though she also has really great photos...) and some brief explanations.

I actually got ahead of myself and bought mung beans at Whole Foods before I had a chance to go to Grand Mart so I ended up with green mung beans instead of yellow because that's all they had.  The difference is that the green ones have not yet been shelled. The A Beautiful Mosaic post actually calls for the green ones, but I will say, don't do it.  I soaked them overnight and supposedly that should have expanded them enough that the shells would come off and float to the top.  They did expand quite a bit, but most of the shells stayed on and needed to be individually removed or rubbed together to come off and even then they did not "float to the top so much as sort of separate a bit when I swirled the water around.  Point being, if you go the way of the green bean, expect a lot of tedious work ahead.  When next I make bindae duk I now have a bag of shelled (yellow) mung beans from the international grocery that I will use.  I finally gave up and left several shells on and really it didn't make a difference that I or my husband (who ate most of them, he loves spicy food, particularly spicy Korean food) could tell.

Kimchi!

Fernbrake, wait, what? Bracken (fernbrake or bracken fiddleheads))

 

All together now, with some garlic and scallions which I figured most people knew well enough to omit individual photos (though I will note that I used only the white and light green parts of the scallions). Isn't it pretty?

Add the processed mung beans

and Sesame Oil, just love the smell of pure sesame...can you smell it?

And the result is not a particularly appetizing bowl of thick mush, but if you know what's to come it is promising all the same. (note: you can add pork or other meat if you like and also a couple eggs if you want the batter to be lighter, but if you omit all of these, as I did, you still have a hearty pancake full of protein from the mung beans [1g per 1oz] and it's even vegan)

A couple minutes on each side in the pan and we're ready for sauce

That's it, that's the sauce in a picture.  A little of this a little of that, do what you like and add a little spice, or in my case a lot of spice because again, my husband likes spicy Korean food.

In case you can't pick it all out from the picture it's the sauce from the Epicurious Korean Pancake recipe:

For dipping sauce

3 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons rice vinegar (not seasoned)

1 tablespoon sesame seeds, toasted

1/4 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes

1/4 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

Just stir it all together and dip...yum

this sauce would be good for any number of things really

Quick Tomato Update

Newly planted  5/27/10

One week later  6/3/10

Week 2 1/2 Today 6/14/10

Original Posts:

Heirloom Tomatoes (Again!)

Planting (Potting) Heirloom Tomatoes

Planting (Potting) Heirloom Tomatoes

Start here for the whole adventure in Heirloom Tomatoes from Etsy - Heirloom Tomatoes (again)!

While I was researching seed starting (if you haven't heard, it didn't work for me this time) I came across some sites that said it would be helpful to plant your tomatoes with broken eggshells to prevent blossom end rot, now I don't know what that is, but it sure sounded like something I didn't want my plants to get so I went ahead and checked with Shana at Horticopia (through an Etsy convo - like email for etsy) to see what she thought about that:

Me:  it has been recommended to me that I plant them with broken eggshells to help prevent blossom end rot, is there any merit in this? Any particularly helpful general suggestions you have to help these little guys succeed? Thanks again.
Shana: Regarding Egg Shells: If you have them & want to use them go ahead. What the plants need is calcium (to prevent blossom end rot). If you add a good organic Tomato fertilizer when you plant, it should contain enough calcium to serve the plants.
Regarding Planting: When you plant, Dig your hole deep, but not too wide. Leaving the tip & ONE (1) set of leaves bellow [the tip], CAREFULLY cut the remaining leaves off. Bury the plant up to the lower set of leaves. The tomato is unique in its ability to generate root all along the buried stem. More Roots = Hardier Plant !!
I hope this answers your questions :) Shanna

Again, I was glad I gave this buying tomoatoes off etsy thing a try (specifically buying them from Shana/Horticopia).  She had come through on her promise to continually support in the planting and growing process and I felt more confident armed with her advice.  I had read about the trimming leaves on other sites, but I'm not sure I would have attempted it without Shana's reccomendation of it as well.  That's what Etsy's about, you get to feel like you know the people you are doing business with and a trust is formed.
Off the Etsy soap box and back to the tomatoes, sorry.

So here are my eggshells plus some fertilizer

plus some soil of course

Mix it all together and you get this lovely fertile pot ready to nourish and sustain yummy tomatoes!

I trimmed all but one set of leaves off each plant (well, I may have left more than one set on some of the plants where they had already started to branch off) and carefully nestled them into their new homes.

(you may need to click on the picture for a better view of these little guys)

5/28/10

A week later and they're growing!

6/3/10

Yes I know, I thought my seedlings were growing too and they all died off and it was terribly sad, but these really do look healthy and one even has a lovely little yellow bud.  So while I will not know the ultimate fate of this tomato attempt for several months, I am at this moment encouraged and hopeful :)

Heirloom Tomatoes (Again!)

I AM going to have fresh Heirloom tomatoes that I picked from the pots on my very own deck, one way or another...

So after my failed attempt at growing heirloom tomatoes from seed I was greatly encouraged when I discovered this wonderful Etsy shop, Horticopia.  They have a great variety of "Exotic and Heirloom Botanica."  I decided to go for the "ORGANIC Tomato Starts- INSTANT HEIRLOOM TOMATO GARDEN Create your own custom 6-pak" found in the Organic Edibles section of the shop.  The choices are incredibly numerous (at the time I bought they had 25 slicer varieties, 8 romas, 12 cherry varieties, though I think they have now sold out of several of the cherries).  I went for:
2 Pantano Romanesco
1 Purple Russian
1 Depps Pink Firefly
1 Striper Roman
1 Weeping Charley
These sounded like ones my family would enjoy and they were available right away (I believe that all of the varieties are now available to ship right away, I think they were just waiting for some of the varieties to mature a bit more and then allowing time to harden them off before shipping them out to people).

I wasn't entirely sure about the condition they would arrive in being shipped literally from coast to coast (Brisbane, CA to Reston, VA), but I was reassured by all the positive reviews they had from buyers, the promise of continued support for growing tips and advice and the prices were reasonable so I went for it.  I am glad I did :)

The unassuming package left on my doorstep and a first look inside

Under the newspaper, shredded paper packed around the fragile plants and all wrapped in a plastic bag. The soil was still moist and the plants looked like they'd had a smooth ride the whole way.

Now let's plant these babies...

Tomatoes Cont.

4/19/10

Ready to carefully remove the sprouted seeds from the paper towel and plant.  I decided to get a Jiffy tray to simplify my life so I moved as many seeds as didn't get damaged in the removal process over to the tray and planted a few new seeds in three of the chambers as well.

4/21/10

Two days later all the sprouted seedlings were looking great, as good as or better than the seeds planted twelve days prior in the tin bucket (that were not presprouted).

4/25/10

Sadly, I am just now getting around to posting this though I created it back in April and now all, but three plants have completely shriveled up and died.  So sad that this endeavor did not turn out as I had hoped.  I think the lesson learned here is that this is not the season of my life to try to start plants from seed.  I will likely go out and buy some starter tomato PLANTS because I would still like to have some fresh off the vine for my family.  Maybe when the kids are older and life is slightly less chaotic I will have the time required to properly care for seedlings.  I think it was lack of adequate light and consistant watering that did these poor little ones in.  Wish I had a better report and I even considered deleting the posts all together, but thought I should be honest about my failures too. :)

I'm on Etsy!

It all started with a hat. I wanted to buy a cute little newsboy hat for my daughter and so I started searching Etsy and instead found a crochet pattern for just the hat I was looking for. So I pulled out the yarn stash and crochet hooks and started working on it. The finished product was just what I'd been hoping for and I really enjoyed getting to make it myself, I love being crafty ;) As soon as I put it on her I started getting compliments on it and wide eyed stares when I told people I had made it when they asked where I got it. Once they heard that they almost always said "You should sell those!" One neighbor in particular really encouraged me to sell them and guarunteed me at least three sales to her as soon as I got myself set up. So I started looking into going beyond purchasing on Etsy to becoming an Etsy seller. There were more details to contend with than I was sure I wanted to deal with, but I made it through and while the shop is not full and still (and probably always) in progress, it is set up and I can now sell to people across the country (technically I can sell to people across the world, but I don't yet want to undertake international shipping so we're staying domestic for now). Check me out at


Little Bits n' Things



P.S. wondering what on earth "Etsy" is? from their website:

What is Etsy?

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:

Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

Etsy