‘Mater Stringin’

Summertime is in full swing and harvest time is getting under way.  All varieties of tomatoes are maturing and the bell peppers keep on giving.  The bell peppers grow upright without any support needed.  The tomatoes are a different story.The most important support for the tomatoes is a nice, big roll of natural twine.  No.  Having a strong frame is probably most important followed by a generous amount of twine.Start out with metal stakes driven into the soil.  Screw on the vertical wooden stakes to the metal stakes.  Attach a horizontal wooden stake (beam) across the top of the vertical stakes.  There’s some eye screws at the bottom of each wooden stake that has the first row of twine threaded.  Twine is run vertically from the top horizontal wooden beam down to the horizontal string.  As the tomatoes grow, a row of twine is added.  This helps keep the vines upright and off the ground for the most part.  It makes detecting varmints and harvesting much easier.When the vines have played out, simply cut the string and haul everything to the compost pile. 

Hope

  Sweet Pea – Old Spice

The 1st bouquet of sweet peas was harvested this weekend to enjoy in the kitchen while preparing Easter dinner.  These were planted so late, December 12, 2010, that I really didn’t have much hope that anything would come of my meager effort.  The seed packet describes this variety as  a single and bicolor tall heirloom.  A bean support used last summer for beans remained to support the sweet peas.  Once they have faded, beans will be planted for a late season harvest.  The success of the sweet peas is more than I had hoped for.

 

Lavender – Lavendula Angustifolia

On September 23, 2010, seeds of lavender from Burpee were sown with hopes of a quick germination.  After more than a month I gave up hope and forgot (kinda) about another failure in the garden.  This weekend I notices a few signs of success along the corn bed.  There is hope that the garden will have more lavender to enjoy.

Bell Peppers

A visit to the Farmers’ Market this weekend was fruitful.  I returned with three new Bell Peppers – Red Beauty, Red Marconi, and Super Heavyweight.  The Tomato Lady unveiled some of the peppers she has been germinating for here weekend business.  My hands were full of produce bags and a puppy lead; so I let the Tomato Lady’s daughter select three different varieties of bells for me to try.  Oh, she tried to educate me on these varieties; but I was distracted with all the shoppers wanting to pet Ajax.  My hope is that these peppers will be abundant and be used to stuff and grill.

The pea patch was cleaned out this weekend to make way for tomato transplants.  A few carrots and onions will remain until they mature.  In the meantime, the soil will be amended, deep holes dug, and a variety of tomatoes will take up residence until the fall.  I’m using the same method as last summer for plant supports.  Stringing.  The strings will run vertically and I’ll wrap the plants upward around the twine as they grow taller.  This post has an example of what the supports look like when they are full of tomatoes.  Hopes are high that this year’s tomato varieties will flourish.

All in all, this Easter weekend is a pretty good one for hope.

 

Journal Winner:

Helen said...

I think I'm in love with that journal! And my favorite month is October.

 

Helen, shoot me an email with your preferred delivery address and the journal will be on its way.  Congratulation.

Stringing Tomatoes

Alright.  The Farmer MacGregor series continues today with his creation for tomato supports.  This season I’m growing heirlooms from seed.  Most of the varieties are vines rather than bushes.  I decided to try stringing the plants to be economic with my garden space.  Plans were drawn.  Lumber was ordered.  The beast known as MacGregor was set into motion.  Points were cut on the top of each stake resembling ancient Egyptian obelisks.  Paint (green of course) was applied to all the lumber and metal stakes.  The frames were constructed and screwed into the metal stakes.  There was a lot of measuring, marking, and leveling going on.  The gentle farmer is a stickler for detailed accuracy.  These are the essential tools for construction: A square and a durable marker.

A level.  (MacGregor has several to choose from.)

  Power drill (Snort snort.).

Heavy duty clamps (Don’t let one of these things bite you!).

Also make sure to have a variety of words to use that when spelled look something like this:

F&%K, D@M^ it, $H1zt

Farmer MacGregor is a wordsmith when it comes to using special words to show exasperation.  Noun, verb, adjective – it doesn’t matter.  He’s so skilled he doesn’t even realize what he says sometimes.  Remarkable.

Eye bolts were inserted to the bottom of each stake to string jute.

The jute line helped to mark a nice straight line to plant the tomatoes. 

Once the tomatoes were planted, jute was tied to the top stake and run down to  the jute below to use as a support for the plants.  It’s difficult to see the jute until the tomatoes grow taller.  The photo above was taken on May 11, 2009.  Below is the same tomato bed today.

The western most bed is planted similarly.

Please ignore the make shift shade for the camellias and the lounging garden kitty in the background.

Here’s an Arkansas Traveler starting the trip up the line.  I come out and check the growth progress and wind the plants skyward up the jute.  I believe I might need to trim some of the side branches to encourage growth upward. With the heat turning up, the tomatoes are developing on most all varieties.  This is the same Arkansas Traveler photographed today.  The center stem is quite a bit thicker and fruit is abundant.

The whiskers on the Arkansas Traveler are really profound.

The tomato supports can be dismantled and stored when not needed.  They will probably take up less room than the old wire cages.  So far, I really like them.  The garden is kept nice and neat.

Summer Crops – Part III

Moving further to the east…

This bed still has a few items leftover from fall.  There were peas on the far left.  Those are long gone.  Next is garlic.  I suspect that will be harvested soon as the greens are drying out.  Beside the garlic are a few remaining beets.  Beets are harvested each weekend and pickled to be used throughout the week.  Carrots are on the far right.  I may harvest those to make some Basque carrots and clear out the bed. 

Hot peppers will be grown here through the summer.  From seed, I’ve started Serano and Black Hungarians.  These peppers will be used to make salsa all summer long.  Wonderful, delicious salsa to enjoy all summer long kind of takes the edge off of disliking summer so much.  Another use for the harvest is pepper poppers.  These are like candy to Farmer MacGregor.

I don’t believe the seedlings I have will fill the bed; so I would like to grow beans.  Cannellini beans.  Lidia’s Italy on PBS   provided a nice recipe using  cannellini beans.  These would be superb to have on hand to add to soups and other dishes.  I’m having a tough time finding a supplier; so that makes me want them all the more.

Meanwhile, here’s the plans for the final bed:

This eastern most bed has been planted with green bunching onions (04/18/10).  They’ve already sprouted (04/29/10).  The sprouts can be thinned soon and used like chives.  Once the onions are about as thick as a pencil, they can be harvested and used in salads, on baked potatoes, and eaten plain.

A dozen metal stakes are now in the bed.  These stakes will have the tomato supports attached to them.  This is the 1st year I’ve strung tomatoes and Farmer MacGregor is blazing the way by constructing fine supports to showoff all the heirloom tomatoes in the garden.  They will take up less space horizontally allowing for companion crops to grow along side and benefit each other.

The tomatoes are on standby ready to be planted as soon as Farmer MacGregor completes construction.  I plan to chronicle how to string tomatoes showing the plans and construction all the way to threading the tomatoes up the twine.

That’s it.  Four raised beds ready to produce a bounty this summer and all it took was a few packets of seed, a ton of labor, and Farmer MacGregor’s know how.  Ain’t he great?