I wrote a song.

♪♫ I've got a shittload of Brandywines! ♪♫
♫♪ I've got a shitload of Brandywines! ♪
♫ Oh, I've got a shitload of Brandywiiiiiiiines! ♫
♪ And I'm one dang happy girl! ♪♫

Yesterday, after the rain, I went outside to take pictures and noticed this:

Can you see them?  All those gorgeous Brandywines?  Here, let me help you.

 

 One, two, three, four, five, six, ... 

...seven, eight, nine, ...

 

...ten, eleven, ...

... twelve, ...

 

... thirteen, fourteen, ...

 

... fifteen, ...

 

... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, ...

 

... nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, ...

 

 ... twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, ...

... twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight and a half.  Looks like something else likes Brandywines, too.

~*~

Update:  Well, I figured out the mystery of why they're producing so much.  Stick me in a corner with a dunce cap on.

I'd meant to start both pink and Red Brandywines, but apparently only started the Red.  It's really funny because I KNOW pink Brandywines are potato-leaved, yet this whole time I was walking right by the regular-leaved reds and didn't even click.  Doh! *slaps forehead*

But all is not lost.  I did mean to try the Red Brandywine since it's said to be as good as the pink, but more productive (I guess so!).  So far it's turning out just like I read, so if it tastes anywhere close, I've found a new tomato to grow every year.

It's coming...

 

It's here!

 

And it's gone.

Can't you just see the plants' sigh of relief...

A Giant Butterbean in the Garden

One would think a Butterbean in the garden would be a welcome thing.  Not when she weighs 800 pounds.

See the evil in her eyes?  They even glow green when I take a picture of her.  

    

Luckily, she didn't have a taste for beans.  Other than the ones she tromped, they were all left undamaged.  The tomatoes and potatoes fared fairly well also.  Just a few tomato cages knocked off-kilter as she sauntered past to get to the above squash.  I set them upright and it appears all is well.  

This happened Saturday, and the pictures were taken today, so you can see the eaten plants are already starting to grow back.  I was worried about the corn, but I think it'll be okay, too.  Might look funny, but I think it'll come back.  The above squash came back in a few days after having been eaten last time she got in.  I've really got to learn to close the garden gate. *sigh*

First beans

Aren't they beautiful?!  Clockwise from the green ones (Black Valentine), then the purple ones (Royal Burgundy) and lastly the red ones (Red Swan).

We ate the Black Valentines tonight, steamed with bacon, and man are they wonderful.  Sweet and tender.  They really were stringless, too ~ even the more mature ones.  I think they're the top ones so far in the Year of the Bean race.

Update: I boiled up the Red Swan the next night, but got suddenly tired before we ate them, and George forgot to put them up.  So no review of them yet.

My Chicken Tractor

Chickens!  What a wonderful thing to have in the garden.  But only if they're cooped so they don't eat your tomatoes.  Because they will.  The easy solution?  A chicken tractor.

A chicken tractor is a portable, bottomless chicken coop.  They're handy for multiple reasons: if you don't have the room for a full-fledged (get it? *giggle*) coop, if you don't want to let your chickens free range but don't want to take up a ton of space or expense for a fenced run, or if you want to clear an area of noxious weeds.

The latter is why I have one.  I have places in the garden where I'm fighting bermuda.  If you've ever tried to get rid of that stuff, you'll understand perfectly why I say that after a nuclear apocalypse the only thing left will be roaches driving Dodge Darts down roads choked with bermuda.  That stuff is pure evil and it's roots go all the way down to hell.  But it does have an Achilles' heel: shade or chickens!

Before the chicken tractor, one of the only ways I'd ever successfully gotten rid of it was to cover the area with black plastic and leave it on for months (or longer).  I'm not talking about solarizing the soil.  This isn't using heat to kill it since I don't think even 140 degree temps would do it.  It's shading it, taking away the sunlight for an extended period of time.  That does it.  But it takes a long time and black plastic isn't only rather expensive, but it breaks down in the sun after a while, leaving pieces all over the place.  I did try covering it with bark mulch once, but that just added more expense and time.  So this method is very successful and doable, but not quickly or easily so.

Then I found out I could do repeated tillings and rakings.  This would remove as many of the pieces as possible.  I'd need to be vigilant in looking for sprouts and digging them, but that wasn't too bad, and fairly effective.  Since the soil was soft and loose from the tilling, I could fairly easily dig all the pieces out, removing all of it and not leaving any to sprout again.  But this, again, wasn't optimum: it still entailed hooking up the tiller and tilling, and sometimes the bermuda was in places I couldn't get to easily with the tractor.  I still do this, but only on big new easy-to-get-to garden plots.

This year, I'm trying a new way to get rid of some bermuda: sheet mulching.  You put down a thin layer of compost, then cover that with mutiple layers of newspaper and then a layer of cardboard, then top it with either mulch or a raised bed and water it often.  The idea is that the layers shade the bermuda, weakening it, then the beneficial bacteria and fungi in the compost finishes it off.  I did only one layer of cardboard, so I see sprouts in places where the bermuda could get up through the holes in it, but otherwise so far so good.  This might be a good way to start new beds, but I kind of don't like that the soil underneath the new bed won't be tilled. I'm sure it will eventually soften up over the years, but that still seems like a long time.  Plus, what if you want a new bed there, but don't want to build a raised one?  I'd still maybe use this method to kill bermuda in places I don't intend to put a bed.

But enough about bermuda.

When George and I were enlarging and fencing the garden earlier this year, we had to move the chicken coop.  The coop is actually a giant chicken tractor of sorts itself.  It was my first greenhouse made of cattle panels and built to be portable so I could move it when I needed to.  I built a bigger greenhouse, so I decided to cover the old one with chicken wire and use it as a chicken coop.  It worked great not only for keeping the chickens in, but for clearing more area for more gardening space, as you can see in this picture (which is a baby picture of my current garden ~ the chicken coop is sitting in the area where the potatoes currently are).  You can see how I'd moved it over a few times over the course of a few months (I had more chickens then) and tilled.  But after a few years of being out in the weather and moving it around, it'd gotten weak.  So when we moved it this last time, it kind of fell apart.

We couldn't leave the chickens in there, so we moved them to a cage that's been around since I was a kid.  Don't know where Daddy got it originally, or even if Grandma Wall had it first.  But it's so handy!  It's made of metal, so is heavy enough that even a pack of marauding neighbor dogs wouldn't be able to turn it over.  I've used it to hold various animals over the years, and it's where I put out new chicks when they're old enough to be outside, but not quite old enough to be put in with the bigger birds.  It's really cool when I get to do that.  I usually put it just outside my bedroom window so I can keep an eye on them, and on the owls that come to investigate what they hope is an easy snack.  Too cool.

Grass is GONE in the chicken tractor.

Anyway, I decided to put the chicken tractor over a few spots of bermuda I couldn't get the big tractor to.  I didn't feel like dealing with more compost-cardboard-mulch, and quite frankly couldn't afford to spend more on mulch and such that I couldn't use in the garden.  So I thought to put the chickens on those spots and leave them there.

It worked great!  As you can see in the picture at right.  (Notice the hen's caught a grasshopper.  Good girl.)  Since that picture was taken, we've moved the tractor to the right to kill out more of the bermuda that's there, and we'll keep moving it on down 'til they've gotten it all.  I also used it on the sitting spot, clearing out the bermuda and weeds so I could mulch that spot and move in the table and chairs.  Sweet!  And oh-so-easy. 

The way it works is the chickens graze down the grass and other greenery inside the coop, then they constantly eat any sprouts that ... well, sprout from the bermuda rhizomes, weakening them until there isn't any energy left in them.  It doesn't take long.  As a matter of fact, I'd inadvertently put the waterer stand over some bermuda once, shading it completely.  Yet when we moved the chicken tractor later, the bermuda under there was still very much alive.  That showed me that even shading with plastic isn't as quick as a chicken tractor.

A nice side benefit of doing this is that the chickens also get most of the weed seeds so you don't have to deal with them later.  The only weed that popped up again after moving was horse nettle, but hell, even Longhorns can't kill that stuff out.  And still another nice thing about this: chickens poop, so the area you are making into a new garden bed is pre-fertilized.



And I just have to show y'all this.  In a post about birds in the garden.  Found just inside the garden shed door.

Tomatoes Coming Out My Ears!

In honor of the first tomato of the season (a Sungold, seen at right), I thought I'd put up a list of all the tomatoes I'm growing this year.  I went a bit crazy so it's a long list, but I'm hoping to save seeds from the heirlooms to offer for sale as a fundraiser for the Spicewood Pea Patch.

I started out this year starting seeds of my top faves: Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter and Matt's Wild Cherry.  I was going to start another round of a few more heirlooms, but didn't get around to it.  Then the plants started coming in at work.  Uh-oh.

For years, I've wanted to grow more heirlooms to taste-test them for myself.  Some years I actually did grow quite a few, but would get them in so late they didn't produce, or they'd suffer some horrible blight or devastation-by-fence-jumping-cow or ... or ...  You know how it goes.  But us gardeners are an optimistic lot.  This year, I said, This year will be my year!  It's still early!  I can beat the heat!  The mesquites are leafing out and Grandma always said that means no more frost!  I can do this!

So I grabbed a few different kinds and planted them in a second row, next to the already-full one of the seedlings I'd started.  I filled that second row (ten plants) quickly, but kept seeing more kinds I had to have.  So I thought one more row and that's it.  Yeah, right.

Four and a half rows and forty plants later and I still have five to plant.  I'm insane. 

And now, here's the list:

Brandywine! My absolute favorite.

Heirlooms and OPs:
Cherries:
Matt's Wild Cherry ~ I'm about convinced that this is the same as Texas Wild, a currant type found growing on the Texas/Mexico border around 1900, though Johnny's Seeds says it is from a woman who brought it to Maine from her home in Hidalgo, Mexico, then gave it to a university professor named Matt who then gave it to them.  Produces loads of tiny, red, tart tomatoes.  Good acidity.  Found this little ditty on the 'net: "Matt's Wild Cherry! Indeed it is swell; Delicious as ''heaven'', Prolific as hell." *snicker*
Riesentraub ~ German heirloom whose name translates as "giant bunches of grapes", though this isn't a grape tomato. Red fruits are about 1". 
Red Pear ~ Red, pear-shaped, cherry sized tomato an inch or two long. 

Matt's Wild Cherry. George is in love with this one.

Yellow Pear ~ Yellow, pear-shaped, cherry sized tomato smaller than Red Pear.  The color is incredible.  They look like little jeweled Christmas ornaments hanging on the plant.  Incredibly productive, so much so that I get tired of eating them and make salsa from them.  It's gorgeous, all golden yellow with green flecks of jalapenos and cilantro and red onions.


Paste/Plum:
Amish Paste ~ Good for canning or drying. Red-orange plum to oxheart shaped fruits are 8-12 oz. From the Amish near Lancaster, PA.
Principe Borghese ~Determinate.  Red, 1-2 oz. fruits are good for drying, maybe not good for cooking but I'm going to try it.  Italians hang the entire plant, fruit and all, to dry. I think I'll try the oven method: just put them in a barely-on oven for 24 hours, then put in jars or olive oil.
Roma ~ Determinate.  Red, plum shaped, medium sized fruits.  I read somewhere that it can be cut back after harvest and second harvest will be ready in a month or so.  I think I'm going to try that.  A mid-1900s introduction bred from Pan American (descendant of Marglobe), San Marzano and Red Top (possibly a descendant of Italian Red Pear, which may be a San Marzano strain).  Supposedly, I can scald them, slice off one end and squeeze the other to skin them.
San Marzano ~ Indeterminate.  Red, medium sized, longer and more pointed than Roma.  Many sources say this is the quintessential paste tomato for sauce, being widely grown and treasured in and around Naples.  Said to be from Campania region of southern Italy, brought there from Peru in 1770.

Mortgage Lifter, livin' up to it's name.

Slicers:Note: still working on adding descriptions to these.
Arkansas Traveler ~ Medium sized pink tomato.  Supposed to produce well in the heat.  Might actually be Traveler or Traveler 76.
Black Giant ~ Beefsteak type, 6-12 oz. Originally from the Baltics.
Black Krim ~ Beefsteak type up to 12 oz.  From the Isle of Krim in the Black Sea off Russia. Supposed to have a slightly salty taste.
Brandywine ~ Pink beefsteak type up to two pounds. THE heirloom tomato, the one you want if you want that old fashioned tomato flavor.  Seeds offered in 1982 by Seed Savers Exchange who got them from Ben Quisenberry who got them from Doris Sudduth Hill whose family had been growing them for 100 years.
Cherokee Purple ~ One of my faves.  Large, beefsteak type that produces well in the heat.  Seed given to a Tennessee man's family by the Cherokee Indians 100 years ago. 
German Johnson ~ Large, pink beefsteak type up to a pound or more.  Mother of Mortgage Lifter.
Golden Jubilee ~ Yellow beefsteak type around half a pound.  Supposed to be great for juicing and so big that one slice hangs off the sides of your hamburger.
Green Zebra ~ Small (4 oz. or so), striped green tomato that turns slightly yellowish when ripe.  A "created" heirloom, only been around since 1980 or so.

Oxheart from Nancy. They're HUGE already!

Hillbilly Potato Leaf ~ 85 days.  Yellow beefsteak streaked with red on the blossom end.  Up to a pound.
Kellogg's Breakfast ~ 85 days.  Orange beefsteak, 1-2 lbs. or more.  West Virginia heirloom. Described as the color of orange juice and suposed to be very meaty with few seeds.
Japanese Black Triefle ~ Triefle=truffle.  74 days.  8-10 ounce pear-shaped, deep purple-black tomato with green shoulders.  Russian tomato despite the name.
Mortgage Lifter ~ 82 days.  Huge pink beefsteak, 1-2 lbs. or more. Meaty with few seeds.  The full name is Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter and there's a great story behind it.
Old German
Oxheart
Persimmon
Silvery Fir Tree
Snow White
Striped Cavern
Striped German
Yellow Belgian Giant
Variegated

Gold Jubilee

Hybrids:
 Defiant ~ Every time I think of this one, I imagine a fat little red tomato shaking it's fist at me and saying, "You want a piece of me?!"  Why, yes. Yes, I do. 
Juliet ~ A red grape tomato that customers at the Natural Gardener have raved about for years, so I had to try it.
Sungold ~ Another one customers have raved about, but this one's an orange cherry.
Viva Italia ~ A paste tomato that I probably won't grow again since it's owned by Seminis Seeds, who in turn are owned by Monsanto.
Solar Fire ~ F1, unfortunately, but maybe I'll try to stabilize it one day.  Determinate. Red, medium sized fruit.  Produces well in the heat.

A couple of these I haven't even planted yet, but hope to this Thursday when we get the addition to the garden ready for planting.  Garden addition?  Yeah.  I ran out of room. Don't judge me! ;)  I'd already planned on "The Year of the Bean", where I'd try many different kinds of beans to find the perfect one, so that was going to take up a lot of room already.  So when I went a bit crazy on the tomatoes, it took up most of the rest of it.  No room for corn, sweet potatoes or black eyed peas!  Must. Be. Fixed.

Two of the ones I haven't planted yet (Snow White and Defiant) were grown by Judge Harley Clark, a wonderfully interesting man who worked with us at the Natural Gardener weekends this spring.  He was our tomato expert, dispensing advice on vegetables in general.  I learned a lot from him, like how to recognize Early Blight and other tomato problems.  I was rather let down to hear that his last day was this past Sunday, but he'll still be bringing us transplants, so I'll get to see him again.  And hopefully they'll bring him back when it's planting time again.

Cherokee Purple. Yum!

An oddity: Variegated Tomato.

Water Chestnuts Update

About a month ago, I posted a picture in this post of my newly sprouted water chestnuts.  Well, they're growing like weeds!  Most of them are a foot tall or more already.  I'm impressed with how well they're doing.  From what I understand, they'll shoot out "daughter" plants once they get big enough and those will fatten up before frost.  I'll need to feed them a lot of manure before then so they'll have enough ooomph to get there.

Just before frost is when I'll dig them.  I'll separate the biggies from the smallies, saving the biggies in the fridge for replant and eating the smallies.  I think I might leave a few in the pond all winter to see how they do.

They're kind of plain looking as far as water plants go, though if you look closely you can see the interesting stripes at the base of each reed.  I may grow some in the koi pond in the plant bucket anyway.  They might look good in front of the umbrella papyrus, thalia and Louisiana iris ~ a different texture.

Better get the wok ready!

Interesting stripes on the bottom of the reeds.

UPDATE: Well, between the drought and the cows tearing them up, I lost them.  I need to look at Newflower again for more, and maybe the Asian grocery stores up north, to try this again.  I recently found another source online, too, so even if I can't find them locally, I'll be able to try them again this year.  

Onions, Onions, Onions!

George and I planted 450 onion sets (nine bunches) some months ago.  I can't remember exactly when, but it must have been late January or early February.  Later, George said doing this was giving him street cred at work.  "What'd you do this past weekend, George?" coworkers would ask.  "Planted 450 onions," he'd answer, getting many "Wow!"s in response.  He seemed to like that.

I think watching them grow drew him in to gardening a bit more, too.  When they started bulbing up, I pointed them out and he noticed one in particular that was rather large, rushing over to it and exclaiming in excitement about it, his voice going up in pitch at the end like all of us gardeners' do.  Yep, he's bitten the line.  Once we harvest the potatoes, I think the hook will be set.


We harvested them today.  It looks so nice, all those onions hanging on the fence!

Southern Belle Red & Yellow Granex

1015Y

The red ones are Southern Belle Red and they did quite well.  The others that did the best were the Yellow Granex.  Those are the two most prevalent in the picture.  We planted three bunches of each of those, and one each of White Bermuda, 1015Y and Contessa.

The 1015Ys did pretty well as well, for just one bunch.  I think it was just one bunch anyway, could have been two but I think it was just one.  These are the ones that are supposed to store better than any other short day onion.

Contessa

The Contessas didn't do so well.  There was an estimated fifty sets in each bunch, so I think the 1015Ys outdid these.  They just kind of seemed to limp along in the growing.  But apparently they bulbed up okay.  We'll still give them another try since they may not have gotten a good start because we planted them on the ends of the row.  Maybe the ground was harder there?

White Bermuda

  Lastly and leastly, the White Bermudas.  These didn't do well at all as you can see from the picture.  But again, part of that may have been our fault, planting them at the front end of the row where the ground was definitely harder than in the middle or even the far end. 

Overall, I think we'll try them all again next year.  But they we need to plant them all earlier, as soon as the sets come in at work.  Or maybe I'll try growing my own sets, planting the seeds in October.  I've been reading up on them and I've learned that they grow leaves for a while then stop when daylength triggers bulb production, then each leaf translates to a ring in the bulb, putting it's energy into it.  So if we get them in earlier and fertilize the heck out of them then, we should get bigger bulbs.

We'll also plant all of them in loose soil to give them all an equal chance.  I'd hate to lose out on a fabulous variety just because I gave up on them after one bad showing that could have been my fault.  I'm already looking forward to next year. ;)

A Pine Tree Blew Up in the Garden

I just finished mulching using pine straw. Man, what a chore! Mostly because I had to weed before I put it down. But now that it’s (almost) done, I feel SO much better! I’ve got the water running right now to soak everything down and I’ll bet I won’t have to water again for a week now. I was almost up to twice a week before this. Some things needed it twice and the rest were looking like they would like that as well.

I ran out of pine straw before I could completely finish, but there’s only a couple rows that didn’t get covered completely.  Some beans and the first row of tomatoes ~ I need to pull the rest of the onions before I do that one. Hopefully, I’ll get more mulch soon and get the whole thing done next week.

Man, I'm proud of myself!  Looking forward to not having to weed and water as much.

Garden Update: See How It Grows

Garden, just weeded.  Notice the beans in the background.  This is the Year of the Bean.  I'm planting many, many heirloom types to try to find the perfect one for planting every year.  I did this with squash a couple years ago and found a couple winners ~ spaghetti, Long Island Cheese and Early Butternut.  Too bad Early Butternut's owned by Seminis seeds, thus Monsanto.  Won't be growing that one anymore.  This year I'll try Waltham butternut.  Hopefully it'll be as good or even better.

Tomatoes, herb pots, then favas, bush beans and patty pan squash on left row.

Tomatoes I planted March 2 along with peppers on the left.  The onions have started falling over.  I noticed it right after we uncovered them after a freeze.  I wonder if the extra warmth of the Xmas lights and row cover contributed to it.

Cute little herb pots.  Oregano in top, spearmint on left and peppermint on right.

Water chestnuts!  Little sprouts noticeable in the first (bottom) pot.  I about had a cow when I first found these in the grocery store.  Kept them in the fridge until I thought temps were warm enough.  Can't wait to see how they do.

Succulent wagon, planted with all sorts of little starts that fell off pots, or were "helped" out of them. ;)

Horse trough I moved in today.  I want to plant a blue lily in it, Nymphaea caerulea, the sacred blue lotus of Egypt.  But for now I need fish!

Sitting area.  I need a better fire pit setup.

Jerusalem artichokes in the corner there.

Peppers ~ mostly anchos and anaheims on this side.

More peppers ~ bells, jalapenos, serranos, and cayennes over here.