Growing – Page 2 – Mid Columbia Gardens

Preparing for 2012

December is the month of seed preparation and orders. I’ve reviewed the information I collected in 2011 on which varieties did well and what kind of feedback I got from people who grew them out. Despite the bad weather and poor condition of some of my inventory, there were some good success stories:

Kosovo was the most productive variety in the gardens of many people that I spoke to. It had beautiful, large, flavorful tomatoes and really made a place for itself in my standard lineup. I was very impressed by this large heart shaped pink.

Opalka continues to impress. I also grew several other paste tomatoes, including Heidi and Sarnowski Polish Plum, but Opalka was the one I heard about from new customers. All three of these will be in the standard varieties again for 2012.

Sungold is always a winner for cherry tomatoes. Nothing beats this unique, fruity, sweet sensation. Everyone ought to try this one. It will convert even non-tomato lovers.

Dwarf Tomatoes from the Cross-Hemisphere Dwarf breeding project proved to be very robust. Tasmanian Chocolate, Rosella Purple, and Dwarf Beryl Beauty were strong growers that produced large sized tomatoes in containers, with a little support. I’ve pulled in seed from all of the new dwarf releases from the project for 2012 and hope to do some comparison.

Peppers, especially the sweet ones, were very popular with customers, despite the small size of the plants I had available. For 2012 I will have more varieties of sweets, but more importantly I will be starting them earlier, with more heat, to hopefully get better size on them. Although I’ve been growing large numbers of tomato plants for over ten years, I had never grown so many pepper plants, and 2011 was a terrible year to start with its record cold spring. I’ll also be back with more Bhut Jolokia Ghost Chiles, for the most adventurous heat loving fools (like me).

Onions, which I brought in on a whim, flew out the door so fast they were mostly spoken for on the day I announced them! I can get them in again, at $3-4/bunch of 50, but I need to get a quantity order in soon. Most of the varieties performed great for me, but I’d like to hear more from those who bought them. I’m also going to take another run at seeding onions, on the advice of a couple local growers I spoke to.

Was there anything that did particularly well for you, or that you’d like to see me offer this year? Let me know, here in the comments, or at feedback@midcolumbiagardens.com. I’m looking forward to a great garden in 2012!

Winter heating

Last night was the coldest we’ve had this year, and it tripped my greenhouse temperature alarm. I run about 5000 BTU/h of electric heat in the geodesic greenhouse during the winter. Together with about 2000 BTU/h added to the water tanks, that suffices for most nights and all but the coldest days in our climate. This year I had to strip away the inner plastic lining because it was deteriorating, which has left me with less insulation that normal, so I expect to be using supplemental heating more. Not the most economical way to run it, I’m afraid, but sometimes I don’t have a choice.

I haven’t set up the water heating yet this year, and that is hurting things as well. So last night I fired up the supplemental propane heater. It’s capable of 18,000 BTU/h in three segments, and each segment adds about ~10F differential to the temperature inside the greenhouse versus outside, normally. With less insulation this year I expect it to be less effective, but still hoping it can pull me through our coldest nights. I checked all of the fuel line connections and the venting and fired up each segment for a good, long burn to make sure they burned safely and completely after its long time shutdown since last winter.

Unlike the electric, which is all thermostatically controlled, the supplemental heating is all manual. And that suits me fine. I’m a pessimist when it comes to automated systems. I expect water pumps to clog and cut out, fans to die, and auto shutoff mechanisms to fail. And I don’t trust the propane completely in a location with no one present to monitor it, so I feel better when I have complete control over it. I’d rather forget to handle something and have the greenhouse freeze over, than have it burn down because I wasn’t forced to go out there every time it turned on, off, or fired up another burner.

After the test I walked around inside a bit. The Angel’s Trumpets are still blooming like crazy. Fuschias and some runaway nasturtiums add dashes of bright color here and there. I’ve overwintered the habanero family peppers (heatless, full heat, and ghost chiles) to see how they do through the winter and how they perform in their second year. Everywhere the greenhouse is crammed full of plants, arranged for maximum light exposure while still allowing air circulation and access for watering. It’s a bit of a mess, really, arranged for plants rather than people. And I love it.

The price of growing your own food

For the last several years I have offered tomato plants for $1 each, which is easy to track and covers most of my expenses and overhead. This year I considered whether to raise the price a bit to give me more slack in the budget, but I think I’m going to leave it at $1.

Understand that I have to pay tax out of this as well, so it’s really the best deal you’ll ever see on tomato plants. I started this business to fill a need for heirloom plants, under-appreciated varieties, and local knowledge of growing requirements. Price falls under the hope of making them as accessible as possible to people. I want people to feel free to try new things and experiment. I don’t want anything to get in the way of people being able to grow their own food.

I have great plans for this enterprise, dreams of an organization for providing plants and assistance, rather than making money. I’m exploring organizational options, continued expansion, improved processes, and diversified products. With your support, there’s a lot more to come.

Spring Garden Day

Today I attended the WSU Benton County Extension Spring Garden Day. There was a good turn out and I think everyone there came away with new knowledge and a greater appreciation for gardening.

I gave a presentation on tomatoes, which I think went well, though I regret not having been able to get to everyone’s questions. I covered maybe half the material I had prepared, but given the time we spent in questions I hope it was the half everyone was looking for. If you have questions about the presentation, or are just looking for more information on growing tomatoes in our area, please feel free to comment below, or write me at tomatoes@midcolumbiagardens.com. (That would also be the address for tomato plant preorders and questions.)

Thanks to everyone who attended, and the the County Extension for having me as their guest.

Plant markers/tags

It’s a small detail perhaps, but with tomatoes already heading off to be sold, every plant needs a tag, instead of the one tag per flat currently in them. With ~1170 plants to tag I need something quick and cheap. Unfortunately handwriting doesn’t cut it for legibility or the amount of information I need to convey on the tag. Ideally I need to have the name, a description (most people have no idea what to expect from an heirloom variety), and a way for people to contact me if they have problems or questions.

I use multicolored plastic plant markers which convey the many colors that the tomatoes will ripen to: red, purple, pink, orange, yellow, white, and even green. Currently I’m using white labels on this for legibility. Last year I had success with the Brother TZ laminated labels (1/2″ tape) hooked to a computer for precise control of layout and fonts. Despite the low resolution and large margin, this works fairly well. However, it is time consuming to handle all of the little labels which have to be cut apart (by the machine) before the backing is removed (two strips) and then immediately curl when the backing is off. It is also fairly expensive.

This year I’ve started using polyester laser-printable labels from Online Labels. These allow me to print beautiful text and graphics, in any color, at high resolutions, and right up to the edge of the label. They’re also quite a bit cheaper. So far they’ve held up well to greenhouse conditions and I’ll be monitoring through the year to see how they weather in the greenhouse, in outdoor containers, and in the garden. Toner should be pretty tough, but it’s smudgeable with enough effort, and there’s no clear protective coating as with the Brother labels. With tomatoes I have the advantage that they really only need to last until winter, but I’ll be watching them beyond that for use in perennial plants as well, where I need them to last ~2 years. The adhesive is excellent (make sure you have it where you want it before you press down, because it’s hard to get off) and I doubt the polyester will break down before the plastic of the plant markers themselves.

The downside with any of these labels is the time it takes to peel them off the paper, line them up on the plant marker, and apply. You do get much faster after doing a few hundred, but the sheet of labels which don’t curl definitely wins out. I’ve seen 0.5″ address labels (which is what they call this shape) by Avery which have the backing split to make it easy to peel off the labels, and I may go looking for something like that, but I haven’t seen it with the polyester so far.

Finishing the tomato plants

For the last week I’ve been moving plants out during the day and back into the greenhouse at night. With a solid forecast of high nighttime temperatures I left 20 flats of tomatoes on the benches outside tonight, likely never to return to the greenhouse unless the weather turns nasty. Another five will probably be moved out later this week. Besides the flats that I’ve already sold off, that leaves 40 or so in the greenhouse for the next wave. Each year I aim to have:

An early selection available in mid April for the people who just can’t wait to get them
The bulk of the tomatoes ready at the end of April for the last frost date
A set of stragglers for those who procrastinate, kill off their first plants, or come back for more.

It looks like I’m on track this year so far. A warm spring has made it easy to keep things in the greenhouse happy and growing, allowing me to keep the temperatures in my target zones of 45-55F nights and 80-90F days.

Time to get tagging all of the tomatoes, take an updated inventory (I expect a 10% loss from germination to full-size maturity, but I’ve always come out well ahead of that) and start producing signage and explanatory material. Also, I’m back to obsessive weather watching.

Tomato transplanting

Tomatoes germinate for me in 2-10 days, depending on the temperature and freshness of the seed. It is imperative that they get under lights immediately after they hatch or the stems will quickly become very long. I use metal halide lamps with a daylight (blue) spectrum, which lets me cover a large area without needing the plants right up against the lamp, and additionally provides heat. I’ve had better results moving the seedlings outside from metal halide illumination than from flourescent as well.

I usually wait to transplant until I can see the beginning of the second set of leaves. This generally happens at four weeks from the time of sowing, but really it varies with the variety of tomato and type of leaves as well. I can get away with this anywhere from 2-6 weeks, after which the seedlings start to deteriorate.

I flood the trays with water about one hour before transplanting which loosens the soil and makes the seedlings easy to pull out. They are planted in 1801 deep flats and buried as deep as possible without covering the leaves. I use Promix BX for this, which has given me the best results of anything I’ve tried. I can hand transplant about one tray every 5 minutes, which still adds up to 12 hours of work for the 72 flats I did this year.

Currently I don’t fertilize, spray or use any chemicals at all on the tomato starts while they’re in the greenhouse. The inserts and soil are new and reasonably sterile and I’ve never had issues with tomato fungal infections in the six years I’ve been growing large numbers of seedlings at my present location. I’ve thought about using an organic fertilizer, but really I don’t know what I would want to gain from it. My plants are strong, vigorous and sturdy at the time they’re ready for sale.

Tomato seed sowing

Seed sowing for me starts in January. At the beginning of January I sow the the Tiny Tims and other very dwarf varieties. Tiny Tim can produce hundreds of tomatoes throughout the season on a bush as small as a foot high and as wide. By giving it an extra month, it will be almost as big as the other tomatoes when I’m ready to sell them, but be much more mature, producing tomatoes already in their little pots.

The next batch of seeds starts in the second week of February. Most of my staples (those that I’m producing 72–four flats–or more of) are started at this time. The last set of tomatoes is started by the beginning of March, and these are my new, novelty, and trial varieties, which I mostly grow for myself. I aim to have tomato plants ready to sell by the middle of April, but I recommend that people wait until April 30th, our last frost date, to plant. Last year there was a hard frost at the end of April and many people lost their new veggie gardens. My own plants will not go out into the garden until May for this reason.

Seeds are started in small containers, 5″ x 5″, with up to 200 seeds each. These are covered until sprouts appear, and then placed under lights. This year I used disposable plastic containers because they’re cheap, easily sterilized in the dishwasher, have tight lids and fit nicely (4×2) into my 1020 nursery flats.