I always find this month an interesting time in the garden!  Many of the summer veggies have peaked but are still huge and productive.  The tomatoes, for instance, are still big and beautiful, and thankfully still ripening.  The kale is so huge it stops people in their tracks.  The Swiss chard, peppers and eggplants continue to look good.   Meanwhile, it is time to pull out those that have finished and make way to replant for even more good eating down the way.

Today I spent a couple of hours out in the garden.  It was time to harvest the pumpkins and pull out the declining vines.  Same for the cucumbers that have climbed to the top of our six-foot hand-made trellis.  (Amazingly, there were about 6 pounds of cucumbers hidden in there!)  And by the end of the season like this, there are dead and fallen leaves littering the garden, which are becoming slimy and diseased.  A good strategy for a healthy garden is to tidy up – slugs love this kind of plant material, so let’s not make it too easy for them. 

It was also time to give another pruning to the tomato vines – as I’ve said before, it is important to cut out extra foliage to let in light and air.  I also cut out new blooming shoots that had sprouted since I last thinned.  All of this will promote ripening – a good thing!

Once the bed was tidied up and I could ascertain how much available space there was for planting, then the fun began!  I planted a traypack of Olympia spinach, which did so awesomely in the garden last fall.  I also planted a traypack of red Pac Choi, which hopefully will be as prolific as the green variety we put in last fall.  And lastly, I put in a traypack of cauliflower.  I hope I don’t regret that, because cauliflower takes a bit of room.  But since we’ve not had that in the garden yet, I thought we should show you what it does.  So check it out the next time you are here.

With all these tasty new things in the garden, I scattered a bit of Sluggo around, just to distract the slugs.  As you know, Sluggo is safe for birds and animals, but does the trick for our nemesis the slug.  I highly recommend taking preventive measures!  And using Sluggo this time of year will kill off the adults before they have a chance to lay eggs over the winter, thereby reducing your slug population next year – a very good thing.

So I hope you too can find a bit of time this week to do some garden clean up and maybe plant a few new things too.  Remember the strategy of succession plantings – when something comes out, plant something new!  We have a good assortment of veggie starts here now, as well as garlic and onion sets.   Now is a great time to get all those going.

Are you all sick of hearing about tomatoes yet?  This’ll be quick – folks always want to know what the favorites were at our annual tomato festival, so here they are, listed in descending order of votes.  Sungold and Cherokee Purple were by far the crowd favorites, and tomatoes I would personally recommend you try growing at home.  Sungold is a prolific cherry, with a sweet and fruity flavor.  Cherokee Purple is a large heirloom with a rich tomato flavor and a deep red-purple color with green shoulders.  Both are great additions to the summer garden.

Now this recipe is super yummy.  I will definitely be making this one when I want something warm and spicy this winter.  It will be great with chapati bread, and a yogurt/cucumber salad.

Chole (Curried Chick Peas)

Serves 6

 2 cups                    cooked chick peas, canned or soaked and simmered

4 Tbsp                    oil or butter

½                             red onion, minced

2 cups                    tomato, peeled, seeded, chopped or canned diced

1 clove   garlic, smashed, peeled and minced

2 tsp                       ginger, peeled and minced

2 fresh                   green chilies, chopped and minced

1                              bay leaf

½ tsp                      cayenne

¼ tsp                      tumeric

½ tsp                      cumin, ground

2 tsp                       garam masala

2 tsp                       amchoor powder

2 Tbsp                    cilantro leaves, chopped

TT                           salt, pepper and cayenne pepper

1                              lime, cut into 6 wedges for garnish

 Heat butter or oil in wok or heavy pan. Add chili and onions. Fry until golden. Add ginger and garlic, cook until fragrant.  Add tomatoes. Let reduce about 15 minutes. Add spices except for cilantro. Cook for another 5 minutes.  Add chick peas. Simmer. Reduced until fairly dry or add water/stock and serve soup.

 Serve with rice or whole wheat tortilla. Garnish with cilantro and limes

Aren’t we having some great tomato-ripening weather?!  I’m hopeful we can get them all ripe before winter arrives – the race is on.  And just a reminder: if your tomatoes look as thick with foliage as this one pictured, you really need to grab your clippers and start trimming away some of those leaves – you should be able to see some daylight through the plant.  The tomato plant doesn’t need all these leaves now, and you really need to expose the green tomatoes to light and air.  Trust me; it seems like a totally brutal thing to do, to cut off so much of the foliage, but you will be rewarded if you do!

I promised you a recipe a day until we covered them all from this week’s Tomato Festival.  This Arugula Pesto Couscous and Sundried Tomatoes was really yummy.  Very garlicy.  You could ad lib this recipe in lots of different ways; Chef Dan gave us permission to get creative!

Arugula Pesto Couscous and Sun-dried tomato

 Make pesto. Set aside.  Sauté tomatoes in olive oil.  Season. Cook Couscous. Lightly toss all components together. Serve immediately.

 Pesto:

 2 cups    arugula leaves    

3 cloves   garlic, minced                                     

1 Tbsp    fresh lemon juice                                               

1/4 cup   extra virgin olive oil                                            

1/2 tsp    salt                                                                         

1/2 tsp    freshly ground black pepper            

 1 cup      sun-dried tomatoes, drained, if in oil

2 Tbsp    olive oil

TT           salt and pepper

 Couscous:

 1 1/2 part liquid: 1 part grain

 Bring liquid (water, stock, etc) to a boil.  Add instant couscous, stir thoroughly, cover tightly, turn off heat.  Let stand covered for 10 minutes.  Fluff, season and serve or hold for service.

Chef Dan

For those of you who didn’t make it to our tomato festival, all I’ve got to say is, I’m sorry you missed all the great smells!  Chef Dan Brophy from the Oregon Culinary Institute cooked up some fantastic tomato recipes.  I’ll post one a day till we get all five out there to you. 

This creole sauce was very fragrant, and a little spicy with cayenne. 

Creole Sauce

Yield: 8 cups

2 cups                    onion, diced

2 cups                    celery, diced

2 cups                    bell pepper, red, green or mixed, diced

4                              garlic cloves, smashed, peeled, diced

¼ cup                     olive oil

2 quarts peeled, seeded, diced tomatoes (substitute canned, if necessary)

1 cup                      water

2                              bay leaves

1 teaspoon            fresh thyme leaves removed from stem

6 Tbsps  parsley, chopped

0-1 Tbsp                cayenne pepper

TT                           salt and black pepper

 Option:   1 Tbsp corn starch for thickening

 Saute onions, celery, peppers in olive oil. After they start to tenderize, add garlic and sauté for 2 minutes or so. Add tomatoes and water. Bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer. Add remaining herbs and spices. Everything except corn starch. Simmer for about 1 hour. Thicken, if desired.  Traditionally served with chicken, shrimp or fish.

Remember to join us this Saturday, September 12th, for some tasty bites! 

We’re putting the finishing touches on our tomato festival – scouring the state to bring you the tastiest and best varieties of tomatoes to sample!  They’ll all be locally grown – whatever is ripe and available this week is what we’ll have on hand.  This is a free tasting, and we encourage you to take notes of your favorites, so that you’ll remember what you want to grow next year.  As usual, we will have great handouts so you will take home tons of useful information.

Here is a reminder of what we have planned ~

• Free tomato tasting.  We group similar types together, so you can sample them side by side.   Tasting table will be open at 11 AM until 4 PM.
• 11 AM – Chef Dan Brophy cooks up tomato recipes – taste samples!  Chef Dan, from the Oregon Culinary Institute, has been cooking up tomato recipes here since we began our festival, and his concoctions always get rave reviews.  He will also send you home with his recipes.
• 1 PM – Tomato Talk – Want to know which varieties have been the festivals’  favorites over the years?   We will cover the crowd fav’s, as well as how to grow your own, and which are the best varieties for this climate.  A few tricks of the trade, and you will be well on your way to growing tasty tomatoes of your own next year.
• 2 PM – Chef Dan returns for a second cooking segment – more great samples and more recipes!
• Red Ridge Farms local olive oil tasting throughout the day.

We hope you can join us for this fun celebration of  The Tomato!

Tomato plant in our demo garden

Hopefully by now you know all about our upcoming Tomato Festival, on Saturday September 12th - one of our most fun days around here!  This is a great chance to sample literally dozens of varieties of tomatoes, side by side, to see which you like best.  You will be surprised to find how different they really are.

We invite you to sit down and take a break from all that sampling at 1 pm, when we will have our ‘Tomato Talk’.  Tony and Celina will be teaching this class, and will share lots of tips for growing the best tomatoes in your own backyard, as well as our staff and tomato festival favorites over the years.   It is always a very popular class.

This is another free class and registration is not needed – hope to see you there!

Our annual Tomato Festival is coming soon – one of our favorite days of the year!  This free event originated as a way to celebrate the wonderful diversity of America’s favorite.  No longer must we be resigned to hard, tasteless, storebought tomatoes – we can grow dozens of flavorful, colorful varieties right in our own gardens.  Come taste for yourself the differences between Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Green Zebra, Sun Gold and dozens of others – and discover your own favorites.  We provide lists to make note of your favorites, so you will know what to grow next season.  (Do you know that Farmington Gardens sells over 100 different varieties of tomato starts each spring?  We have become known as a favorite destination for veggie shoppers in the region!). 

Here is what we have planned ~

• Free tomato tasting, over 80 varieties, all locally grown.  We group similar types together, so you can sample them side by side.   Tasting table will be open at 11 AM until 4 PM.
• 11 AM – Chef Dan Brophy cooks up tomato recipes – taste samples!  Chef Dan, from the Oregon Culinary Institute, has been cooking up tomato recipes here since we began our festival, and his concoctions always get rave reviews.  He will send you home with his recipes.
• 1 PM – Tomato Talk – Want to know which varieties have been the festivals’  favorites over the years?   We will cover the crowd fav’s, as well as how to grow your own, and which are the best varieties for this climate.  A few tricks of the trade, and you will be well on your way to growing tasty tomatoes of your own next year.
• 2 PM – Chef Dan returns for a second cooking segment – more great samples and more recipes!
• Red Ridge Farms local olive oil tasting throughout the day. www.redridgefarms.com  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  
  
  

It is time to talk about what we should be doing to hasten the harvest of our tomatoes as we start to see the end of the season ahead.  I know, we still have a couple of months to go before first frost, but there are things we can be doing NOW to insure that we will have as many ripe tomatoes as humanly possible.  I think I have said much of this before, but since now is the time to be doing it, I feel it bears repeating.

• First of all, if your tomatoes are trained up on our round or square tomato cages, chances are the cage is chock FULL of plant material.  It is very important to thin out some of the extra foliage, exposing the green tomatoes to the light.  Find short branches that are nothing but foliage and cut it off at the base.  Don’t cut them all off, mind you, but I’d start with 1/3 to 1/2 of them, and see how it looks.  It sounds severe, but the plant will respond well to it.  You are bringing light and air to the inside of the plant, which will encourage the ripening process.  The further into fall it gets, the more foliage I cut off of my vines.  I am usually harvesting ripe tomatoes through all of October, and by the time frost arrives, I don’t have any fruit left to ripen.
• Now that you hopefully have green fruit on the vine, you can start cutting back on water.  Just let them get very dry before you give them a drink.  I have even heard some folks say that they don’t water their tomatoes at all after the fourth of July.  This will give a richer flavor to your ripe fruit.
• This next tip you will want to do about the first part of September, but not quite yet.   The indeterminate tomatoes are essentially long vines, and will continue to flower and produce fruit until frost.  However, the energy it takes to continue flowering takes away from the energy it needs to ripen fruit.  SO…. in early September you will want to prune back your vines, cutting off all of the flowering tips.  I usually cut mine back to the first juncture where there is green fruit.  This will cut off flower production and encourage the ripening of the green fruit.
• Don’t forget to provide support for branches heavy with fruit; use soft twine to gently tie them up to the cages so that they don’t break under the weight.
• Clean up and dispose of (in the garbage, not the compost bin) any diseased leaves.

Follow these simple end of season tricks and you will help your tomatoes give you an abundant fall harvest!

Now that we’ve got our tomatoes in the ground and summer is nearly upon us, we should give some attention to HOW we are growing these little beauties.  The right cultural practices will insure the best possible harvest.  None of this is hard, but attention to a few details can make all the difference.

• Our main objective is to encourage photosynthesis (the production of sugars from which it grows) and to discourage disease.  The single best way to accomplish both of these goals is to keep them off the ground by staking or caging.  It is best to do this shortly after planting, so that you don’t disturb an established root system.  Providing them upright support gets them up into the light and improves air circulation, which decreases the likelihood of disease.  After the plant get 18 inches tall or so, start trimming off the lowest branches.  As it grows taller, take a few more of the lower branches off, until eventually you have trimmed it about one foot up the stalk.  This pruning aids air circulation as well as prevents soil from splashing the lower leaves – another disease opportunity.  (Adding a little mulch under the tomato will also prevent backsplash as well as retaining soil moisture.)
• Pinch out suckers which grow in the crotch between a branch and the  main stem.  This can be hard to do, because you feel like you are robbing yourself of future fruit.  However, by cutting out these suckers which will inevitably be thinner and weaker, you are enabling your plant to produce large, healthy fruit. 
• Remember that tomatoes are vigorous vines and heavy feeders.  We recommend 2-4 tablespoons of organic fertilizer (like EB Stone Organics) every 30 days until fruit begins to set.  Simply sprinkle a little on the soil, scratch in with your fingers, and water well.
• The most common problem local growers have with tomatoes is blossom end rot.  This is when the bottom end of a tomato turns black and rather flat.   This is a physiological condition caused by growing conditions, and not a fungal disease or pest infestation, and therefore will not spread from plant to plant.  It is important to maintain a consistent level of moisture and calcium in the soil to prevent this.  Tomatoes planted early in cold soil are apt to have the first fruits scarred with blossom end rot; subsequent fruit can be fine.  If you didn’t plant initially with lime, sprinkle a small handful of lime under each tomato plant, and water in well.  This will add calcium to the soil.  And I’ve already mentioned mulching, which will help prevent this problem, by retaining moisture in the soil.
• In late summer, if you find you have plenty of large green fruit but too few ripe ones, I suggest you start thinning out some of the excess foliage.   This will open the fruit up to sunshine, and will slightly stress the plant, both of which should hasten ripening. 
• And finally, my most important tip for ripening tomatoes:  topping the vines.  Mid- to late-September it is important to curtail any further blooming on your indeterminate tomatoes.  I leave all the green fruit that has already set, but cut back each branch to where the fruit is attached.  This will cut off all the blooms and all future blooms, and will focus the plant’s energy into ripening the existing fruit before frost.  And it wouldn’t be a bad idea at the same time to do a little more thinning of foliage.

Follow these easy steps and you’ll be harvesting bushels of tomatoes this summer!

WOW.  I’ve never seen such a huge increase in inventory in such a short period of time.  We have easily over 100 varieties of tomatoes in stock today – who knows how long they will last, but shipments will continue to come in for several weeks.  Quantities are not high for some varieties – we only have one flat of some types - so come on out and shop while the selection is best.  We have some very unusual varieties that I don’t believe we’ve ever carried here before, and some of them sound worth trying.  Here’s a small sampling of those that caught my eye:

• Tumbling Tom Red – this indeterminate variety would be perfect in a hanging basket, cascading 20″ or more, with loads of 1-2″ fruits.
• Costoluto Fiorentino – this Italian heirloom is high is sugar and also high in acid, which gives it an outstanding flavor.
• Cour di Bue – another Italian variety, this one an ‘oxheart’ type – heart-shaped and meaty; vigorous plant
• Saint Pierre – this old traditional French variety is supposed to do well in cooler growing regions, and until frost
• Bloody Butcher – this is an early-maturing variety with excellent flavor and yields

I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you that our weather is still a bit cool for tomatoes, so please provide them with some protection if you are planting them outside now.  One of our water-filled season extenders would do the trick, and help you get a jump-start on the harvests to come.

Watch this blog for further posts on tomatoes.  I will be sharing our tips for growing the best tomatoes, as well as which varieties have been the crowd favorites at our annual tomato festival.  Stay tuned…..