Mark your calendar to join us next Saturday, September 11th, for our 8th Annual Tomato Festival.  This is one of our favorite days of the year here at FG, as we celebrate our favorite summertime vegetable….or is it a fruit?  As in past years, we will gather together as many varieties of locally-grown tomatoes and organize them by type, so that you can sample them side by side to determine our favorites.  People are always blown away by the differences in color and texture and taste – we always think a tomato is a tomato is a tomato; but when you sample them like this you really appreciate the subtle differences.  And you will find favorites!!  This is a great way to figure out what you would like to grow next year.

There will be LOTS going on:

• 9am – noon – Enter the Tomato Contest – bring in your entries and register to win.
• 11am – 4 pm ~ free sampling of tomatoes – vote for your favorites.
• 11am ~ Chef Dan Brophy will cook up tasty tomato recipes – samples and recipes to take home.
• 1pm ~ Tomato Talk ~ Learn the secrets to growing the best tomatoes in our region, and strategies to get them to ripen in a cool wet year.
• 2pm ~ Chef Dan returns for a second session of new recipes to feature – more sampling and recipes.
• 3:45pm ~ Judging of Tomato Contest and awarding of prizes.

Admittedly, this has been a poor year for tomatoes – I really feel for farmers when weather wrecks havoc with their harvests.  I guess it is important to have this reality check from time to time; to remember that there are strategies we can implement that will help us achieve ripe tomatoes.  Things like using Walls-o-Water, which warms the soil and protects the plant from cool night temperatures.  Using plastic mulch around tomato plants to heat the soil.  Cutting out excess foliage.  Selecting varieties that have a shorter maturation time.  We’ll be talking about these and more at our Tomato Talk – hope you’ll join us!

And sometimes it is just a good idea to be a realist and decide to cut your losses.  If that is you, and you are ready to part with this year’s tomato vines, then we can help you get a fall garden going – we’ll have a full display at the tomato festival of great fall veggies you might want to try this year.  We’re here to help.

I hope to see you all at the Tomato Festival!

Attention all vegetable gardeners:  We’re bringing a new element to our fantastic Tomato Festival – a contest!  We know how it is with home gardeners – we all want bragging rights for what we do.   This friendly contest is meant to encourage you all to show off your harvests, even if they have been less than stellar this year due to weather issues.  We are especially encouraging children to take part!  So start babying that huge tomato still on the vine, and bring it in next Saturday - details below.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Contest Details 

• 9 am – noon ~ Drop off your entries and register 
• 3:45 pm ~ Announcement of winners

Gardeners need not be present to win.  Tomatoes must come from your own garden, must be ripe, and not frozen or previously frozen.

 Categories

• Best in Show (taste)
• Biggest in Show (weight)
• Ugliest Tomato
• Prettiest/Most Perfect Tomato
• Best Cherry
• Best Salsa

Prizes

First place in each category will win a Farmington Gardens Gift Card. 

Second and third place winners in each category will be awarded FG certificates good for tomato starts in 2011 season.

 Each child will receive a special certificate of participation.

Tomato Contest Criteria

Flavor: The perfect tomato should have a strong tomato taste, be slightly acidic, juicy and fresh tasting with a tender skin.

Firmness/Slicing Quality: A desirable tomato should have a dense uniform thick wall with many seed cavities, completely filled with a jelly-like mass. The firmness of the tomato should be such that it will bruise if dropped, yet is not over-ripe or soft.

Exterior Color: The winning tomato has a uniform color, is free of green shoulders and has no evidence of blotchy ripening.

Shape: Tomatoes come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the variety. Their shape should be symmetrical, but most important, the tomatoes in each entry should be uniform in size.

One of the cool things that the “eat local” movement has spawned has been a return to food preservation.  Whether you grow it yourself in the summer or buy it direct from a farmer, being able to store healthy, tasty foods for winter consumption allows you to eat local when not much is going on in the garden.  If you’ve been paying attention to this latest craze, then you’ll know that food preservation today is different than in Grandma’s day.  There are awesome salsas and chutneys and pickles and sauces — you are only limited by your imagination.  Having these ready on your shelf makes meals fun and easy.

Chef Dan Brophy will be here to show the steps to canning safely- once you know how to do it, it isn’t hard or scary.  He’ll take a couple of recipes from start to finish, as well as sharing samples from other batches.  Last year, Dan made an incredible salsa verde from green tomatoes – it was sooo good!  You’ll go home with lots of recipes and ideas, as well as a happy tummy!

Click on the link below to register for this class.

Perfect timing for getting a fall garden started:  lots of new veggies have arrived!  As you pull the finished summer vegetables from your beds and space is freed up, keep that soil working for you by planting some veggie starts that will give you a fall crop.  The soil is warm and inviting, so fall crops grow quickly.  Be sure to give them plenty of water as they are getting established: remember they have delicate, small root systems; if they dry out, they’re toast.  This is a quick list of what I found here today:

• cauliflower
• broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• cabbage
• beets
• turnips
• scallions and onions
• carrots
• spinach
• arugula
• lettuces and mesclun mix
• basil
• choi poi and pac choi
• Chinese cabbage
• kale
• mustard greens
• collards
• peas

I hosted a family dinner party the other evening, and since it was one of those hot, hot days, I planned a menu of cold salads.  I was fortunate to be able to harvest much of the menu from the garden:  a green bean salad with Julia Child’s vinaigrette dressing; a big tossed salad; cold grilled chicken; and pickled beets.  Many of my dinner guests that evening have very discerning palates, so it was interesting to me that the beets were the hit of the night.  I thought I’d pass along the recipe for those of you who love pickled veggies – it was easy to make and yummy.  Thank you to the Food Network’s website for the recipe!

Pickled Beets

• roasted beets, recipe follows
• 1 large red onion, frenched (not being sure just what ‘frenched’ meant, I cut onion in half, and sliced in long thin strips)
• 1 cup tarragon wine vinegar (I used a fruity pomegranate vinegar instead)
• 1 1/2 tsp Kosher salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup water

Remove the skin from the roasted beets and slice thinly.  Arrange in 1 quart jars or deep bowl alternating layers with the onion.  In a small pot boil the rest of the ingredients and pour over the beets.  Tightly lid the jars (or cover the bowl) and place in the refrigerator for 3-7 days before serving (I made mine in the morning, and served that night, and it was still awesome).

Roasted Beets:

• 6 medium beets, cleaned with 1 inch stem remaining
• 2 large shallots, peeled
• 2 sprigs rosemary
• 2 teaspoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  In a large bowl toss all of the ingredients.  Place into a foil pouch and roast in the oven for 40 minutes.

So, how have your tomatoes fared this year?  It has not been a stellar tomato season for most in the Pacific Northwest.  In a good year, most of us start harvesting the early varieties in mid-July, but that has been pushed back by a few weeks due to our cool spring.  If you are experiencing late ripening of your tomato crop, I have a couple of suggestions for you:

1. In a ‘normal’ year, I recommend this around the first part of September, but I am doing it now in my own garden and think you should try it too:  it is time to prune out a lot of the excess foliage on your tomato vines, especially if the tomato cage is packed full of foliage.  Take at least half of the leaves and their short branches off, exposing the green fruit to the sunshine, and opening up the plant to more light and air generally. (I know this seems severe, but trust me and do it.)  This will also have the effect of slightly stressing the plant, which also hastens ripening.  A couple of weeks from now, remove a few more leaves.  By the end of September, remove practically ALL the leaves.  I have done this every year, leaving naked branches full of green fruit, and by the time of the first frost all of my tomatoes ripen.  It works.
2. As you know, indeterminate tomatoes are vines – they continue to grow in length and flower from the tips as they go.  This takes a lot of energy for the plant to continue pumping out blooms, so it is time to prune the ends.  I cut off the blooming ends right down to the first set of green tomatoes.  This will give the plant the energy to ripen the fruit already on the vine, rather than continue to try to produce more.

You should also take a realistic look at each of your tomato vines.  Some might be doing better than others at this point in the season.  I had two tomato plants in my home garden that for whatever reason had NO fruit on them.  What did I do?  Yanked them out and put in broccoli raab, which will produce a nice crop for me in about a month and a half.  Keep your soil working for you – if something is not productive, cut your losses and move on.  There are plenty of fall veggies that you can plant in those vacant spaces, and fall is a great time for many things.  Just ask us and we can give you lots of suggestions!

We have a great selection of vegetables perfect for the fall veggie garden: broccoli, broccoli raab, onions, lettuces, Swiss chard, cauliflower, carrots, beets, kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbage.  Hopefully you’ve saved some room to tuck in a few of these, so that you can extend your harvest for months to come!

It is not too late to be planting out new basil starts either; they are quick to reach harvestable sizes.  Fortunately, we have several varieties perfect for your favorite recipes.  Can you spell P.E.S.T.O.?

The intensity of the spring season is behind us now, but there are still several things we can attend to in our gardens:

• the best time to establish a new lawn is August to mid-September.  (and coincidently, we have a Fall Lawn Care class coming up September 4th!)
• fertilize cucumbers, summer squash and broccoli to maintain production as you harvest
• mulch to protect ornamentals from drying out.  If needed for new plantings, provide temporary shade.
• make sure camellias have dep watering now to insure flower bud development next spring
• keep picking beans to keep them producing
• clean up and fertilize strawberry beds
• when harvest is over, prune raspberries, boysenberries and other cane berries
• monitor irrigation closely to be sure crops and ornamentals don’t dry out
• deep watering of lawn is more effective than frequent shallow watering
• plant winter cover crops in vacant spaces in vegetable garden
• plant cool season vegetables – kale, Brussels sprouts, peas, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, radishes, carrots

And since our summers are so fleeting, make sure to get out and enjoy your garden every chance you get!

The tricky part of vegetable gardening is thinking ahead to the next season, especially when you are in the throes of harvest time.  (I know some folks start getting a little garden fatigue right about now.)  But I’m here to tell you that  just a little time now spent tucking in a few things for a fall garden will be SO rewarding when the weather turns cool and the warm-season veggies are finished.  So, as you are harvesting heads of lettuce, or when space frees up where the peas once were – think about saving that space for an autumn garden.  There are so many cool-season veggies that thrive in our long, mild autumns.  And with a few simple strategies, you can continue harvesting some great vegetables long after the tomatoes and peppers and melons are finished. 

This information is so key to those of you seriously intent on Growing Some Of Your Own, that we are repeating this class a second time in the hopes that more of you will be able to join us - there will be a Sunday session and a Wednesday session.  We invite you to join us for one of these free classes – reserve your spot by calling 503-649-4568 or emailing events@farmingtongardens.com.

Today I finally had time to devote a little attention to our veggie garden – as you may remember we have a demonstration garden here at FG to showcase how to grow an edible garden in your backyard.  My goal is to show that edibles can be not only beautiful but also productive for the home gardener.

At this point in time, we have pole beans that must be over 6 feet tall; tomato plants that have fully engulfed their cages and have tons of flowers and a few green fruit; too much fluffy kale; a tall stand of corn with beans climbing up the stalks and squash planted in the center of their circle (a Three Sisters Guild); and much more (cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, more lettuce…). 

Since it is now time to start thinking ahead to the fall garden, I needed to clear a space for new crops.  So today I harvested:

• Royal Chantenay carrots – 5 lb
• Matador French shallots – 4 lb
• Walla Walla onions – 5.5 lb
• Bull’s Blood beets (with their green tops intact) – 31 lb – that’s right, thirty-one pounds!
• 4 heads of Salad Bowl lettuce mix – 3 lb
• Swiss chard – 4.5 lb
• TOTAL HARVEST TODAY:  53 pounds!

Here’s hoping your garden is giving you great harvests of tasty treats!  Please join us for our “Preparing for a Fall Veggie Garden” class to learn more about planning ahead for autumn harvests – the class will be Sunday, August 8 at 10am, and will be repeated on Wednesday, August 11 at 10am.  Call to save your spot! – 503-649-4568.

p.s  I’m trying to figure out what should be planted next.  If you’ve got suggestions, comment to this post!  Is there something you’ve wanted to know how to grow?  Let’s test it here.

Is this crazy cold weather slowing down your veggie garden?  Will it ever end?   The warm weather crops, like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and melons aren’t looking all that happy right now; and  I’ve had a few conversations recently with folks who haven’t even tried to put in their warm season stuff, because of night-time temperatures. 

This got me to wondering today what we have left in early-season tomatoes, so  I went searching for all the tomatoes we still have in stock that will ripen in less than 70 days.  That gives you a very reasonable chance to still get a good crop before the season is over.  I came up with a pretty impressive list (those with an asterisk are available in gallon size); the numbers are days to maturity:

So, don’t despair of not having your own tomatoes this year – it’s not too late!

It’s looking like maybe summer will arrive after all - I was beginning to wonder if the clouds would ever part.  There is still plenty of growing season left for summer veggies, but don’t wait!  And if you’ve already planted out things that aren’t thriving, the cool and wet weather may be to blame.  Sometimes it pays to replant rather than wait around for them to revive (because oftentimes they don’t).  We’ve still got a great selection of:

• tomatoes (4 inch and gallon size)
• peppers (4 inch and gallon size
• squash – summer, winter, and pumpkins
• onions
• cucumbers
• basil and other favorite herbs
• corn
• melons
• beans
• eggplant
• tomatillos
• celery
• broccoli
• cabbage
• kohlrabi
• lettuces
• spinach
• arugula

Don’t forget to water in your new transplants well with the EB Stone Organics Fish Emulsion and Kelp – that is our favorite product for giving your plants a great start.  Here’s to an abundant summer harvest!