FarmerGirl Report - Tomatoes and Peppers and Gorillas, oh my!
We have the beginnings of THREE BEDS OF salsa!
The varieties of tomatoes that went in this weekend were:
The Big Beef (hee) - Considered "the perfect tomato," these tend to grow BIG with an old fashioned flavor
Mortgage Lifter (the seedling looked a little anemic, so perhaps will need some extra TLC) - an heirloom variety that was developed in the 1930s by an amateur gardener who paid off his mortgage by selling the seedlings at $1 a piece. HUGE, pink-skinned fruit with a meaty texture and a deep flavor
Red Brandywine - An Amish heirloom variety dating back to 1885 considered to be the "best flavored" tomato with fruit up to 1.5 pounds. Fruit grows in clusters of 4-6 on foliage that looks like potato vines.
Supersweet 100 - a vining cherry tomato variety that tends to climb like a lunatic but produces super-sweet fruits extra high in Vitamin C. Fruits tend to cluster like grapes and can continue to produce until the first autumnal frost.
Principe Borghese - An Italian heirloom that produces a heavy yield of small, red plum-shaped fruit with low moisture that makes it an ideal variety for drying.
and the Cherokee Purple - an heirloom variety cultivated from the Native American Cherokee tribe in Tennessee, the fruit tends to produce abundant dusty rose to purple colored fruits.
As I still have yet to begin any canning experiments for tomato sauces, etc., I chose indeterminate tomato varieties. (Indeterminate means they tend to produce ripe fruit throughout the season, rather than "determinate" - which tends to ripen all at one time - which is good if you intend to make big batches of tomato sauce.)
I was also reminded of a very useful planting technique when putting tomato seedlings into the ground: Remove the bottom most two leaves (assuming there are more than 2), and bury the seedling past that point up the stem. (deeper than its spouting container), because it will grow side roots from where the stem is below the surface of the soil and that will help stabilize the plant later.
Also? its a good idea to put the tomato cages up as soon as possible so as to avoid disturbing the plant roots later in the season when they need the support.
The peppers were:
California Wonder - the preferred standard variety of sweet bell peppers, introduced in 1928. Fruit averages about 6 oz each. good general purpose sweet pepper.
Marconi - A heavy producing variety of extremely sweet, 7" horn shaped deep red fruit.
Pizza Pepper - Cone shaped, mildly hot peppers that tend to lessen in intensity as they go from green to red.
Fish - An heirloom hot pepper is variegated both on the leaves and fruit, so makes an attractive plant at all phases of growing. Very hot peppers, 1-2" long. Was used in the 1930s and 40s to season fish and shellfish in the African -American communities around Baltimore and Philadephia. Matures green to red.
and the Mucho Nacho - Jumbo 4" fruits are fatter, thicker, heavier and a bit hotter than regular jalapenos with high yields.
Plus 6 cilantro plants, 3 African Blue Basil, 3 Genovese basil, 3 curly leaf parsley and 3 Italian flat leaf parsley.
so. excited!
and? as an aside - I did a little guerrilla gardening with some leftover flower, cucumber and pole bean seeds that came from my stash of seeds from several years ago.(what else was I going to do with them?) In my walks around the area, I found little patches of dirt on common land that looked like they might support such things and might have a chance not to get mown down by the community gardening folks - so? we'll see if there are random bits of foodstuffs and flowers pop up. I felt like such a rebel. hee.
*write-ups of the varieties were based on the Loudoun County Master Gardeners Association 2010 Spring Plant Sale Product Descriptions.