Late Blight on my Tomatoes

I've been quiet here in the blogosphere. I've been avoiding posting about this.... maybe hoping that if I didn't write about it, somehow it wouldn't be true. But sadly, it is true.

My tomatoes, those 136 babies of mine, lovingly planted with fish heads and guts - yes. Gone. All gone.

For those of you that follow me on Facebook, you have seen the horrible photos. 

My tomatoes were attacked by Late Blight. This is an airborne disease that LOVES the drizzly and cool conditions we have had here on the Central Coast. In my 20+ years of growing tomatoes, I have never seen anything like this before. I noticed what I thought was a bit of leaf curl on a late Friday afternoon. The Lovey and I did some chores around the farm during the weekend, so the next time I was in the field was Tuesday. The 'leaf curl' had advanced to black areas on the stems and the leaves were just devastated.

I emailed Cynthia from Love Apple Farm. At her suggestion, I took a sample to the local Agriculture Extension in Salinas for diagnosis. Two days later the Late Blight was confirmed and I let Cynthia know. She was able to spread the word to a lot of people through her newsletter. 

I, however, had to take all my tomatoes out. ALL OF THEM. I had tried to prune away the bad parts of the plants daily, but this disease spreads FAST. The tomatoes went from having a little curl to completely decimated and thus removed in a week. Eight days. Gone. I cried, drank away my sorrows a bit, cried a little more, and then got to work. Because the disease is airborne, we had to cover the tomatoes with a tarp so that it doesn't spread to others with tomato plants (or eggplant or potatoes). This will NOT go into the compost. We will bury them to completely smother the spores.

So my field now looks like this:

These words from an Aerosmith song are ringing in my head: 

There's a hole in my soul that's been killing me forever
It's a place where a garden never grows 

And for you that would like to take a listen, here it is:

How my Garden Grows

Blogger is giving me fits today, but I did want to post some photos so you can join me in celebrating the progress of the farm. Slowly, we are growing!

Lazy Housewife Bean     

Anazazi Bean

Bloody Butcher Tomato

Black Ethiopian Tomato

Cinderella Pumpkin

Carrots

Callendula

The flowers bring in the bees and the good bugs that will deal with the bad bugs.

Beets

Bee on Borage

Ketchup

To get us all back on track, here's a recap (to catch up) on what's been happening at Seven Cats Farm~

We've done soil samples - both home kit and lab analyzed. The results have been close, with the lab giving us much more information. Basically, our soil lacks some nutrients and a LOT of organic matter (it's testing out at 2%). I'll need to increase the organic matter through compost and cover crops... need to increase this by at least one percent. I am aiming for a total of 5% organic matter, but that will take time.

We started plants

and more plants

and more plants!!

and then hardened them off.

The Lovey mowed the cover crop

tilled it in the field and made rows.

And then on May 15, we put deer fencing around our humble test field and began to plant tomatoes.

Yep - we dug two feet deep holes, put in fish heads (and tails), aspirin, bone meal, worm casting and a little bit of all purpose organic fertilizer, then covered that stinky mess and put in our little babies.

136 tomato plants were planted! Plus corn and beans, squash and pumpkins, carrots and beets, cucumber and eggplant, fennel and okra, cantaloupe and watermelon, peppers and herbs, and on and on....

We water in and wait. And wait.

In the meantime we've had some pretty fantastic days and nights. Not so warm for growing, but what a view!

Highs in the low to mid-60's are not so great for fast growth. I was beginning to think that my babies would stay healthy but really really small. The things I direct seeded did sprout, but would stagnate at one mature leaf set (that is, if the evil crows didn't get them).

And then - look what shows up! One month after planting and things ARE growing!

And I've added a little extra bling for crow control. Mylar bird tape. That's my kind of bling.

Speaking of crows..... I think I hear them. Time to get to the field and run around like a crazy person. If the shoe fits......

Tomato Plants for Sale!

Attention Central California friends! Currently, Seven Cats Farm has 51 varieties of organically grown heirloom tomato plants available. Each was planted and grown with love. Most have been sung to. :- ) We've grown some really interesting varieties this year!

 Email me at: sydneyamw at hotmail dot com and I'll send you a list to choose from. Each plant is $2.00.

Crazy Tomato Lady

At last count, 8 1/2 flats = 272 plants

Oops, I did it again......

It's that time of year folks! Yep - getting ready for Spring, which for me means tomatoes. And this year - AGAIN - I planted way too many seeds. Now, in my defense, this IS the first year on the farm. More space, more seeds, more plants. Makes sense.

However, I went overboard. Again. Remember the year that I planted a bunch of seeds because I didn't know if I had saved them correctly? And they all grew? Yep - that was the year of 206 tomato plants. But the varieties were limited to 10 or 12, I think.

This year I did it differently. I have 'all this space', so I can plant all I want. Right? Well... no. I can't plant all I want. I need to determine what grows here and when it ripens so that next year when I will be selling, I have a good idea of what I can plant with success. Yet this year I actually have limited space because of two reasons: 1) the lovely deer that are so well populated around this area make it so I must fence where I grow and 2) the field where I planned to grow has trees on both sides, so I am limited to the beginning of the field where there are no trees and therefore the sunlight is not blocked. Next year said trees will be trimmed and much more light will get onto the quarter acre field.

But back to the very well thought out plan (said with HUGE sarcasm). I need to figure out what works well here at Seven Cats Farm. I'm thinking that I will plant all kinds of different varieties to see what grows. That goes for tomatoes as well as other things - yummy eggplant, fantastic beans (green and shell), melons, summer and winter squash, and on and on. This is the summer of experimentation! This is even more reason that my space is limited!

Do you remember last summer when LW gave me a bunch of tomatoes so I could save the seed? Ten varieties were saved here. Then there were some of the varieties that I grew last year and wanted to grow again, like Copia. That was a great tomato. And then (how could I resist), I went to a class last week on tomato seed starting, and got another (...... wait for it...... are you ready.....................)

48 varieties.

With my seeds from last year and with what I started from class, I have 66 potential varieties of tomatoes to plant at Seven Cats Farm. That's not individual plants, that's variety. If all the seeds sprout and grow into mature, fruiting plants... well, I don't want to even think about it. It will be well over 250 plants. I am thinking that there will be a plant sale in my future this year.

Anyone want to buy a really cool heirloom tomato plant that's been grown with love? I know where you can get some. They might have been sung to as well. Maybe. I'm just sayin'......

It Feels Like Fall

.... and I feel like cooking! Our tomato crop has been about half of what I harvested last year. I don't know why the drastic change, so I blaming it on the weather. We had a REALLY cool and cloudy summer. Also, the majority of tomatoes I harvested had blossom end rot or were sun burned. Good for cooking, not for selling (I'm not selling - yet). This will be our last year of planting at The Mayor's home. Next year - we'll be planting the first ever (and experimental) crop of Seven Cats farm.

Although we didn't have a huge crop, here is a photo of some of what was harvested! The cool striped one is called Copia. There is also Black Krim, Fourth of July, Orange Globe and Marvel Stripe.

 

You may remember this post when I roasted tomatoes last year. Well, I am doing it again this year. No canning of tomato sauce or whole tomatoes. I think this is much easier and it tastes better. I've refined the way I cook it a bit, thanks to friends input and a plain old taste test. The ingredients are the same, but the cooking method is a tad different.

Recipe:

• Drizzle oil (I am using rice bran oil. You COULD use olive oil, as long as you don't heat it above 300*. Anything about that temp and olive oil's composition changes into bad stuff) in the bottom of a pan
• Sliced onions to slightly cover bottom
• Tomatoes, cut in half
• Minced garlic over top
• Drizzle oil over all.
• Lightly salt and pepper

All that listed above is old. The new thing I'm doing is cooking at 250* for four or five hours. Then I squish the tomatoes with a spoon, and put back in the oven (this time at 300*) for an hour.

The new temperatures lets the sugars in the fruits caramelize, and then the last hour helps the moisture evaporate which then condenses the flavors. YUM!

Preparing for next year

I love tomatoes. I know everyone loves homegrown tomatoes, but I think my love spills over and is bordering obsession. I love growing all different types of tomatoes. I love the way the plants smell even before there is a fruit on the vine. I love watching them grow. And yes, I talk to them, too. I think if you love the little guys, they will show their love by doing their best to give you tomatoes.
Here is how it all starts for next year: Saving seeds. Look at the different colors!

A HUGE thank you to LW for providing the tomatoes! With the seeds from your tomatoes and the seeds from mine, I think I'll have about 20 different varieties to plant next year! What a great start for Seven Cats Farm!

Tomatoes, ready to roast

Heirloom Tomatoes on a bed of sliced onions. A little salt and pepper, some minced garlic and a bit of olive oil.

Roast until all liquid is gone. About an hour or so at about 400*.

Use, or freeze and use in the winter. Great on pizza, in sauce, bruschetta.... yum!

In the pan are: orange paste, orange globe, Marvel Stripe, black krim, Brandywine, 4th of July, and a yellow mystery tomato.

The 206

So I went a little crazy. Actually, I was just being on the safe side. I planted 10 different types of tomato seeds, four of which I saved the seeds myself. Some of the other seeds were a few years old and I didn't know if they would grow.

The result? They all came up. 206 plants. And they all look really strong and healthy. I began to harden them off yesterday.

What will I do with 206 tomatoes, you might ask??? Well, I'm going to keep between 20 -30 to plant here on the extended homestead. Patrons of the Yarn Store have put in orders for five..., two..., six..... . My farmer has asked that she get several for her Standford students to plant around campus. And a chef friend of mine wants to pass around what is left in his neighborhood. Cool.

No waste. All natural. All heirloom. All gone. :-)

Sauce

'Tis tomato season at the homestead and Full Circle Farm. LOTS of tomatoes are ripe and need to be processed in some way. So, I've asked my Lovey's Minnesota Farmer Friend (MFF... also his BFF, but I like the sound of MFF much better!) for he and his lovely wife's tomato recipe. We have a ton of empty quart jars ready to be filled for use over the course of the year, until next year's bounty. Soon we will have a massive sauce production kitchen going! Until then, I will do small batches of my own concoction!