Today brings us our first two cucumbers, first French fillet beans, first tomatilloes, and first jalepeno. The two tomatoes we picked came as damaged goods but still tasted great. The black prince tomato had nibble marks and the San marzano tomato was suffering from end blossom rot as so many seem to in the perrenial plot. Need to figure that one out.
It has been hot and no rain for a few weeks with little in sight.
Our first tomato. A Black Prince. Strangely, it seems to be the first by a long shot. It might be as much as a week before we see our next one ripen.
Three quartes of the perrennial plot is now weeded and planted! We finished off the left side with fillet, fava, and soy beans along with a patch of sweet corn.
Our Saturday harvest of mesclun. With the cool, wet weather we have been having, the mesclun has been quite happy!
Panic!
We have about 60 tomato plants in our allotments that have been doing so wonderfully. Many of them have tomatoes forming on them. The thermometer this morning indicates that we may have been to early and will pay for it. I hope the repercussions are limited. As I understand it, anything around or below 50F can be bad news for tomatoes.
According to NCSU, hopefully the worst we will see is blossom and/or fruit drop. Other sources tell of stunted plant growth. I like NCSU’s take on it instead so I’ll stick with that one.
Although we think of tomatoes as an adaptable crop, they are actually quite sensitive to low light and adverse temperatures. Tomatoes need at least 6 hours of direct sunlight to flower. Slender, non-fruiting tomato vines are a common complaint of home gardeners and are usually traceable to shading. Many homeowner and grower complaints can also be attributed to high or low temperatures. Although tomatoes grow well over a wide range of temperatures (65 to 85 degrees F), fruit set is very sensitive to high and low temperatures. Above 90 degrees F day or 70 degrees F night temperatures and below 50 to 55 degrees F, flowers may produce oddly-shaped (rough) fruit or flowers may fall off without setting fruit at all. Malformed fruit are sometimes said to be ‘catfaced’ or to have open locules. These malformations are the result of incomplete separation of cells during the early stages of flower and fruit development. Adverse effects seem to be worst when both day and night temperatures are high or when both are low. Proper coloring of the fruit is also temperature dependent. Lycopene and carotenes are not synthesized above 85 degrees F and lycopene is not synthesized below 50 degrees F, precluding normal color development in ripening fruit.
Impressed by a garden neighbor’s 2009 early greens harvest, we made sure to plant our own in February. As a result, we have been harvesting chard, collards, kale, and spinach for over two weeks. We have even had a harvest of broccoli and mesclun. Each day we have been incorporating our garden greens into at least one of our daily meal. This has given us quite the opportunity to play with new recipes while enjoying our tasty veggies. Here are some highlights from this week’s menu:
Collards:
Collard Frittata. from NY Times (the left over sauce I used to replace the diced tomatoes in the Kale Soup recipe)
Kale:
Lentil-Kale Soup. from The Ordinary Vegetarian/101 Cookbooks YUM!!!
Chard:
Tofu & Swiss Chard Stacks. from MyRecipes.com/Cooking Light
Spinach:
Spinach-Broccoli pizza with homemade mozzarella
Lots going on at the farm today. From the first alpine strawberry flower to the sprouting of the white turnips as well as the Jacob’s cattle and great northern beans it has all been good news.
We also planted a row of fava beans as an experiment and more sunflowers behind.
Our greens are doing very well. This harvest was enough for dinner.
