It's Easy Being Green

Headed into late-October, our tomato plants here at the half-acre homestead are still happily trucking along.  I’m proud to report that the more than two dozen that we started with are all still here.  Granted some of them not as excitedly as others but they are still here nonetheless.  That is despite what the local cooperative extension considered a terrible year for backyard tomatoes.

Here in southwestern Indiana a cool, very wet spring was followed by an extremely long and oppressive heatwave.  Temperatures and humidity collided to keep us in the triple digit temp index for much of the Summer and it certainly wasn’t pretty for us humans or the fauna we so desperately try to control.  There were also reports of widespread early blight mainly due to the soggy wet spring weather.  Luckily blight didn’t make it into our brand new square foot garden or the extra tomato patch planted out back.

Tomatoes of all shapes and sizes were affected by splitting this year. From top left Cherokee Purple, Amish Salad, Brandywine (pink with green shoulders), Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener, Thessaloniki (yellow)

We did have an insane amount of tomatoes that split for no apparent reason this year.  Tomatoes tend to crack when over-watered or after a heavy rainfall because the fruit goes through a rapid growth spurt afterward, causing the tomato’s skin to stretch and split.  Wide fluctuations in fruit temperature can also be a cause, especially if your tomato plant has lost a large amount of leaves.  The fruit will expand as it heats up during the day when the sun shines on it.  After sunset, the fruit rapidly cools and contracts.  That cycle over and over again stresses the tomatoes skin and can also cause splits or cracks.

Our Brandywine tomatoes (first year grown) would split even while green and we lost at least half of our potential harvest throughout the summer to the splitting.  Once they split, cucumber beetles would burrow into the tomato and create a home and eat until they rotted the entire fruit.  The cucumber beetles were one of the worst pests we encountered this year and they attacked just about everything they could get their little legs on.  Cherokee Purple tomatoes were also hit hard by splitting.  Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener and Amish Salad tomatoes proved to be very split resistant.

The biggest producers in our square foot garden this year proved to be the Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener, Amish Salad and Brandywine.  This plants had the most success with setting fruit and growing an abundant crop.  While we lost a lot of the Brandywine tomatoes to splitting, both the Chocolate Cherry and Ultimate Opener persevered through the long, hot and dry summer with little guff.  Our one Chocolate Cherry tomato plant produced at least a quart basket of tomatoes each week, more than enough to top our salads throughout the week.  We found the Chocolate Cherry to be more acidic than we like but would definitely grow them again based on how prolific it was.

Ultimate Opener put on a huge flush of growth after getting established in the square foot garden and at its height, reached about 8 feet tall.  This tomato flowered profusely and set fruit easily during the first half of the summer growing season.  The fruit is rather small, not good for slicing, but was really tasty.  Like the Chocolate Cherry, Ultimate Opener produced a quart basket or two of fruit each week.  In the triple digit heat wave the plant had obvious problems getting tomatoes to ripen so most were picked while showing a slight hint of red.  They colored up on the kitchen counter just fine though.  As we headed deeper into the heatwave there was a noticeable drop in blossom production and there was even some leaf loss.  The Ultimate Opener is looking bare but still alive and ripening a few golf-ball sized tomatoes each week.

Amish Salad produces a large, oblong cherry tomato perfect for salads of course.  This tomato plant grew rapidly and produced a half to full quart of ripe red tomatoes each week.  The heat didn’t seem to impact fruit set or ripening at all.  Unfortunately I planted this tomato too close to two others, Cherokee Purple and Tloculula Ribbed.  They grew into each other and just crowded each other out with growth later in the season.  This created a remarkable decrease in fruit.

The Brandywine tomatoes that made it to harvest were huge, weighing in at close to a pound each.

Brandywine tomatoes with their big, potato-like leaves, grew rapidly and didn’t let the oppressive heat stunt them.  Fruit set was great and during the first half of the summer these plants produced tomatoes that I would gather weighed about a pound.  They were huge…at least the ones that didn’t split and get attacked by cucumber beetles.  Their pink, purple and green colors inside made a feast for the eyes.  The Brandywine flavor was also superb especially with a dash of Pink Himalayan Salt across the fresh slices.

For every success there were also some duds this year.  I wasn’t impressed with Oregon Spring, touted to be one of the first producers of ripe tomatoes.  This plant struggled most of the year and blossom set was slow at best.  It has produced less than five tomatoes the entire season, none of which did well trying to ripen in the heat.  Yesterday though, in the cool of fall, I noticed the most beautiful deep-red and ripe tomato awaiting our morning garden walk.  I guess Oregon Spring redeemed itself and left me with a good memory.  Last impressions count, right?

Thessaloniki was another heirloom variety I was excited to try but ended up disappointed by the results.   The tomatoes are said to get to baseball size but in triple digit heat, most of mine only reached the size of a golf ball.  Fruit set was also pretty poor.

Tlocolula Ribbed heirloom tomato was a dud for most of the season but now is turning into a winner.  The plant was slow to grow but later bushed out and blossomed frequently but was slow to set.  I think being planted too close to another tomato plant also caused some problems for this one.  It didn’t set fruit well in the heat and has just recently produced a flush of fruit.  Their texture is wild to look at in the garden with all sorts of different, deeply wrinkled shapes.  I’m inclined to try it again next year to see what happens.

I think this Cherokee Purple tomato was smiling that it never did split and was off to our table

Another dud that I plan to give another shot is Cherokee Purple.  This tomato was quickly crowded out by others growing next to it and that seemed to be a major detriment.  It produced a few fruit early in the season but proved to be very susceptible to splitting.  The extreme heat seemed to bring fruit production to an all out halt.  Now that it is cool, Cherokee Purple has produced another tomato or two as we sprint deep into fall.

Just this afternoon we picked another basket full of green tomatoes, trying to beat a heavy rainfall expected for our region tonight.  Some of the tomatoes were showing signs of splitting (probably due to the cool overnight temps) and we wanted to stop them before they went bad in the rain.  Even though there is less than a week before we hit the month of November, our still producing tomato plants would make you think it’s still summer.

What is your favorite tomato variety to grow and why?  Share your experience below and maybe we’ll discover a new tomato variety together!

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This past week we had a brief taste of Autumn here in southwest Indiana.  We fell out of our 90 degree temperatures and sticky humidity to land in a string of a few days that left us topping off right around 80 degree during the day and dipped us well into the 50’s at night.  It summoned the first opening of the doors and windows of the season, bringing a halt to the endless whine of the air conditioner for the first time in about three months.

Admittedly the delightfully cool temperatures were a bit of a shock to the system.  My Homestead Hottie bundled up in her fuzzy housecoat and flip-flop slippers morning and night, only breaking free during the afternoon warmth.  I, attentively watching marinated chicken grilling over red hot coals out on the deck, found myself standing as close to the grill as I could get without climbing right in and singeing myself to a crisp.  Darling Daughter has taken to pulling pairs of sweat pants from her dresser and waving them about until we get the message and put them on.

While we were grateful for the change in temperatures and the flirt with Autumn, we’ve found ourselves back in the upper 80’s this week.  The air conditioner has come back on and the windows and doors have found themselves sealed tight, waiting for the next opportunity to let the outdoors in.  The Indian Summer is a good reminder of what is to come and a spur to kick us into gear and hopefully get a good fall crop of vegetables sown before our first frost of the season.

For the past week we’ve been pulling plants ravaged by the long Summer season and sending them to the composter, the beginning of  a re-birth that will find them once again turned back into the soil but in a completely different form than the started.  The open space feels weird.  Sure the garden beds are beginning to look much more clean and tidy but I begin to feel  like I lost a good friend.  I’m missing a plant that produced so much and yet it feels like I just didn’t have enough time together.  The counter tops here at the Half-Acre Homestead tell me otherwise though, filled to the brim with fresh produce and at least two-dozen red, yellow and green hued canning jars preserving the Summer’s bounty.

Some have told us we’re about four weeks away from our first frost.  The long, warm Summer would tell me otherwise and thanks to a quick glance at the Farmer’s Almanac Frost Predictions this week, the good people there predict we’re about 60 days away from our first brush with Old Man Winter.  That means there is plenty of time to reap more goodness from the garden beds before we have to put it away.  Homestead Hottie and I have been busily sowing lettuce, spinach, peas, snow peas, carrots, potatoes, green onions, swiss chard, turnips, beets and radishes.  All are cool-season crops that, in theory, should grant our dinner plates with some more wholesome goodness before we begin dipping into storage.  I’m also experimenting, planting some Butternut squash to see if by chance we can eek out a supply of sweet winter treats.

It is also time for me to dig out a large stack of old, wood-framed windows I picked up thanks to Freecycle.  They will form at least one new cold frame in the square foot garden, hopefully keeping one of the beds warm enough to extend the season for some produce into Winter.  My to-do list once again begins to grow making me feel a bit like the local squirrels beginning their seasonal acrobatics, hop-scotching around to build their nest and food cache before a long Winter’s rest.

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Welcome to our SFG

My square foot garden (I’m going to resort to calling it an SFG from here on out to save space) has reached an important milestone in it’s development this week. It’s 6 weeks old *tear, sniffle, sniffle* and my how it’s grown!

At this point every square is filled in with the exception of several dud strawberry plants that did not grow. I ended up purchasing these boxes of plant crowns grown by Van Zyverden at Sam’s Club this spring. I ended up with 80 strawberry crowns and not a one of them sprouted. While being disappointed, I’m not surprised. This green thumb hasn’t had a very good track record with Van Zyverden products and have had to write to them on several occasions to get replacement plants. A simple internet search shows the web awash with similar experiences. I have a letter off to them even as we speak and have resorted to giving up after 6 weeks of no life and have started planting over the top of the dud strawberries.

Peering over the gate at the SFG. Notice the rain water barrel against the house. It usually is full with only one storm.

Looking to the west in our SFG. The tepee in the center used for the snap peas and snow peas is made from the giant sunflower stalks I saved from last years garden. They're strong and light!

In the meantime, everything else is off to the races. We’ve been unseasonably cooler than normal around here in southwestern Indiana the past few weeks with a plethora of rain. Snow peas and snap peas are still doing wonderfully, climbing their sunflower stalk tepee and producing a handful of new pods every few days. It’s enough to whip together shrimp and snow pea stir-fry which is currently on the menu.

Snow peas and snap peas climb the sunflower stalk tepee, reaching toward the sky. The tepee would work great for any type of light, climbing plant like a flower, peas or beans. I saved and dried the stalks from my giant sunflowers last year and tied them together to form a tepee.

A half dozen mustard greens have produced non-stop this Spring and are still going as we race toward Memorial Day

Mustard greens will also find their way into this stir-fry having put on a new flush of growth every couple of days. It’s enough to fill up a colander and they’re delicious any way we’ve prepared them.

The broccoli plants are beginning to form their heads this week and the brussel sprouts look like they’re about ready to grow their hardy stalks too. Our summer veggies are beginning to take hold as our temps edged into the 80’s the past couple of days. The tomatoes are getting a good flush of first flowers while also putting on good top growth. The peppers, while still small, are flowering too. Sweet corn is about 3-4 inches already. Squash plants and melons are beginning to stretch out and ramble around. Potatoes look like bushes already. We got to pick our first two strawberries of the summer on our homegrown plants and they were delicious.

Little E and I picked up these great strawberry plants from the Southwest Indiana Master Gardeners plant sale. There are three different varieties growing. We're going to see who does the best!

Weeding the SFG is an amazing experience. The soil mix makes it so easy to pull out the weeds and grass. In fact, T and I can blitz the weeding chore every few days and it only takes about 15 minutes to get the whole garden done. I’ve never met an easier garden to weed other than the one that doesn’t exist! I can’t wait for the bounty to come and am so pleased with how well the SFG is growing. So how does your garden grow?

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This last week I ran across a desk that popped up on Freecycle.  I’ve been working off of a tiny desk that was barely big enough for my monitor and the keyboard since moving to Indiana last year.  The only challenge was the desk was about a 30 minute drive from the house so it was going to require some advance planning to find a morning I could sneak out early and pick it up.

Wild sunflowers bloom alongside one of the many gravel roads leading in and around Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area in northern Warrick County.

I chose Wednesday, a day when we don’t have much going on other than me going to work, and made plans with the Freecycler to come cart their old desk away.  I woke up early, loaded the car with recyclables to drop off on my way out of town, grabbed a free coffee at McDonald’s and then headed out.  I was supposed to call the Freecyclers just to warn them I was headed out so they would be ready for my arrival.

A typical grassy meadow borderd by forest and found throughout the Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife area

Needless to say, I wasn’t really surprised when nobody answered the phone and I didn’t get an immediate call back after leaving a message.  I wasn’t too concerned though since I needed to stop and drop off my recyclables before heading out to the desk.  After 10 minutes of sorting recyclables and getting them into their correct bins at the recycling center, I decided to drive around in the general area waiting for my return phone call.  It just didn’t make sense to drive all the way back home only to turn around and head back out that direction again.

Wildflowers of all different shapes and colors bloom in the grassy praires and even right alongside the guard rails on all of the gravel roads

Sometimes the magic of just driving around on the roads less-traveled is enough to keep me occupied.  I love seeing the land and discovering little hidden corners and hideaways.  As I was driving along on two-lane farm roads, I discovered a gravel road that veered off the pavement and up a hill.  I decided to meander up the road and check it out.    It ended up running into the nearby Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area, a network of prairies, woods and lakes that attract all sorts of local game.

Reflecting on their serene view, wildflowers bob and sway in the breeze at Bluegrass Fish and Wildlife Area

I parked the car and decided to turn my frustration at a flaky Freecycler into some good mind clearing fun.  I wandered down the gravel roads, checking all sorts of native wildflowers blooming just about everywhere you looked.  Since I”m a horticultural nut, I also spent some time collecting seed pods off of the different wildflowers so maybe next year I can grow some of my own and cultivate them.  The quiet and solitude of that 30 minutes was just what I need to rejuvenate my mind for the rest of the day.  The only man-made noise was from a plane passing overhead.  The rest was the breeze blowing through the reeds, fish jumping for bugs, insects and frogs chirping and whirring away and a heron swooping in over one of the lakes to setup his observation post, looking for his next meal.

Even dried flower pods are colorful. These ones are covered with bright orange and black beetles that look like cousins to the squash beetles that attacked my zuchinnis and cucumbers

I started out angry at yet another Freecycle Flake who says one thing and then does another but was able to turn the wheel down the road less-traveled and cleared my mind with nature.

A beautiful Monarch butterfly stops for a sip of nectar on one of probably thousands of purple thistles blooming in the area

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The so-called “Dog Days of Summer” are paying off in the veggie garden this week. My wife and I have spent quite a bit of time outside pulling weeds, smashing squash beetles, plucking Tomato Hornworms and giving our little 10×4 foot plot of wholesome paradise some good ‘ol TLC. Mother nature has been a big help too, squeezing some much needed rain out of a passing cloud or two at least once a week. That’s apparently a rarity out here in southwestern Indiana during August but who’s complaining? We’ll gladly take the free water!

Our collander is brimming with Friday's tomato harvest, sporting a fresh batch of roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and slicing tomatoes.

On Friday I had to make a mad dash through my tomato patch to harvest what was ripe before the plants sucked up all the rain water. I’ve been having a big problem with tomatoes expanding way too quickly with all the rain and then splitting just as they ripen. Since I’ve been picking preemptively, they’ve been faring much better though. Our roma tomatoes are producing a bumper crop of pear-shaped goodness that will be perfect with pasta. The cherry tomatoes haven’t let up either, gifting us with a fresh flush of fruit every couple of days.

On Saturday our baby was fast asleep for an afternoon nap so we decided to hit the garden again and do some cleanup. Squash beetles totally annihilated both of our zucchini plants. They bore into the stems of the plants and kill their ability to suck up water. They eventually get the wilt disease and die. I would normally be sad about it but those two plants each produced about ten pounds or more a piece of fresh summer squash.

A weekend bounty of fresh vegetables for the picking. Clockwise from top left: Handfuls of cherry and roma tomatoes, lemon cucumber, bell peppers and an Orange Oxheart heirloom tomato.

While we were out there dealing with the squash beetles we harvested another basket full of produce. Saturday’s take included more roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, bell peppers and an Orange Oxheart heirloom tomato. All have really taken off and produced wonderfully in southwestern Indiana. We can’t wait to enjoy the fresh tastes of each of them.

My failures were definitely sweet corn, yellow squash, pickling cucumbers and pumpkins. I’ve been struggling with powdery mildew spreading from one cucumber vine to the next and then it spread onto my pumpkins. Both are still putting on fresh leaves and trying to set fruit but the mildew just marches on. My sweet corn growth was very stunted and produced some very tiny ears of corn, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. I didn’t follow proper planting recommendations by planting at least four rows so that was probably the cause there. Yellow squash were attacked by squash beetles early on and never really had a chance.

We still have another three months to go before the first average fall frost so I think our harvest days are far from over. I’m also going to try my hands at growing some fall vegetables this year and am getting ready to tackle that project this week.

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We’ve had a lot of rain here in the Midwest this summer.  Because of that, there have been some continuously standing pools of stagnant water which of course, breed those pesky mosquitoes we so fondly hate when we’re outdoors.  Getting rid of the pests is very simple though and doesn’t require the harmful spraying of chemicals.

First, take a survey of your property.  Look for any type of container that could hold water (either from your sprinklers or from rainfall) and make sure you dump it out and store it upside down.  Water bowls for pets are a common breeding ground for mosquito larvae but if you dump it out ever day and re-fill it, you shouldn’t have a problem.  Make sure items like open-topped water barrels have a fine mesh screen on top that mosquitoes can’t penetrate.  Get rid of old tires laying around your property and fix any drainage issues you might have that are causing standing pools of water on your property.

Secondly, install a bat house either on your home, barn or some other outbuilding on your property.  A single bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes in one night!  That’s a pretty amazing and effective control without the use of any type of chemical!

There is a duck pond behind our house but every night we hear bats chirping late into the night.  Consequently, we don’t have a mosquito problem when we go out and enjoy the cool night air on our back deck.

For more information on how to build an approved Bat House, head over to the Batcon website.

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This Memorial Day of course marks the beginning of Summer and what better way to celebrate the season than to fire up your grill, right?  Well for me anyway, it’s my preferred method of cooking when it heats up.

Grilling has it’s benefits, especially when it comes to trying to keep your home cool during the Summer months.  By cooking outside, you’ll reduce the heat output of your kitchen which of course will make your air conditioner run harder trying to keep you comfortable.  It will keep your cooling bill lower and easier on your pocketbook.

While grilling over propane is the cleanest burning way to cook up some food on the “barbie”, I’m a charcoal purist.  I like the tast charcoal provides that I just can’t get on a gas grill.  I used to exclusively use charcoal briquettes until I ran across a produce that I think is a little more natural: lump charcoal.

You may have noticed lump charcoal is popping up in more and more stores.  My local Schnuck’s recently introduced their house brand of lump charcoal called “Full Circle” and bill it as a natural product.  Most lump charcoal is pure, unadulterated wood scraps that are fired at high temperatures to develop the char.  That’s it!  Nothing else is added.  Lump charcoal burns cleaner than briquettes and hotter.  Sometimes it can be more expensive than briquettes and not burn as uniformly or long.

Charcoal briquettes however are a different story.  They’re made from charred wood as well but are pulverized and compressed with saw dust, borax, starch, sodium nitrate and limestone.  For more on what each of those fillers do, click here.  If you begin grilling before the briquettes are ashy, it’s possible they can release a chemical type flavor into your food.  The added chemicals, while claimed to be unharmful, are enough to drive me to use just natural lump charcoal.

So what if you currently have a charcoal grill and you’d like to reduce your emissions by grilling with a cleaner fuel?  You might just run out and buy a brand new gas grill but that of course is wasteful thinking.  I just ran across an interesting new product on the net that could be the way to convert your old charcoal grill, to a lean, green grilling machine.

The Flame Disk is billed as a "clean burning" fuel to use in your charcoal grill.

The manufacturer says the product is made from 100% ethanol, a renewable biofuel made from corn.  They also claim that the emissions include a small percentage of carbon dioxide (less than charcoal) but is mostly made up of water.  Plus they say it’s as easy as peel, light and grill.  This seems like a great idea to me and would be willing to try it out sometime, especially on a camping trip when fumbling with a bag of charcoal and lighter fluid might be a total pain.

What’s your view on grilling?  How do you make your experience more eco-friendly?  Share your comments with our other readers!

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