We have not planted any of these for years and continue to get harvests as they self seed wherever a rogue tomato may fall.  They are prolific producers that grow like weeds here in central PA.  Thriving on the warmth and humidity of mid summer, the first harvests begin to appear in early to mid July. Hundreds of tomatoes sprouting up on each plant in little bunches.  If left to run wild, with no pruning or staking, they will cover a 2′x2′ square and produce for several weeks as long as you continue to pick the ripened fruit.

Though advertised as having a high sugar content (11 Brix), described as being like candy, ours are rather neutral in sweetness, but full on flavor.  Very tomato-ey. Exactly the flavor for a salad or sandwich.  If anyone has tasted a slicing tomato like this, post it to the comments and I will plant it in a heartbeat.

All around it is a wonderful tomato and if you are looking for a cherry for your garden, this is the one I recommend.

Here are some places to buy them:

http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/product_details.aspx?item_no=S13479
http://www.localharvest.org/matts-wild-cherry-tomato-seeds-C12442
http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/4924-product.html

For anyone who is interested in attending the 2010 PASA Conference in State College, PA, today is the last day that you can pre-register.  If you are interested, you can register at:

http://www.gifttool.com/registrar/ShowEventDetails?ID=1946&EID=5895

The 19th annual PASA Farming for the Future Conference is being held February 4th-6th.  PASA is the Pennsylvania Sustainable Association for Sustainable Agriculture which seeks to “Promote profitable farms that produce healthy food for all people while respecting the natural environment”.  A laudable goal that supports local fresh foods throughout the state of Pennsylvania.

The conference brings together a plethora of individual and organizations who are expanding responsible agriculture within Pennsylvania and beyond.  Keynote speakers this year are Michael Reynolds, an architect responsible for the Earthship Biotecture, and Lisa M. Hamilton, author of “Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness“.  In addition to their lectures there will be a number of educational tracts and workshops held each day.

It is the workshops I am most interested in as for the first time I am attending the event.  My day starts early however as I am making a day trip of it and will need to leave by 530am to make the  7am opening. Being tardy will likely see the classes I want already filled.  For the AM this means Beekeeping for Beginners I and II. Running my own hives has been a goal for sometime but first hand knowledge from mouth to ear is better than page to book in this case.    The afternoon is less specific with a short list of possibilities, in order of interest: Itching to Farm? Start from Scratch: No Land Solutions, Earthen Building from the Ground Up, or Luscious Landscapes for Everyone — with Fruits!.

If you are interested in attending the conference, registration is open up until the day of the event, though early registration ends on Sunday, January 24th.  After that prices go up $15 until the 31st.  After that, add an additional $25.  If you are not a member, it is worth signing up as you can get a membership and register for the conference for the price of a non-member registration, this provides you with a number of benefits including a bi-monthly magazine.

I hope to see you there!

As my wife and I are planning to limit our gardening this year, we have decided not to buy any additional seeds and instead put our 2009 remnants to good use. A few days ago I wandered through the seed bins and came up with a large menagerie of ornamentals and edibles to populate the earth with once the soil can be worked.  Flowers, brassica, leaf lettuce, kale, spinach, asparagus, brussels sprouts, peas, peppers, and more will be available to us this year at no extra cost.  Though some will be lost due to decreased germination rates, for our reduced space this year it should be more than enough.

One place we will be getting around the no new seeds is that there will be some new plants.  Tomatoes are hard to get going here in our valley so 4 or 5 plants will be bought from our local garden supply shop.  An additional 25 crowns of day neutral or everbearing strawberries will also be added to our strawberry patch after suffering more than a few losses over the past two seasons.  Keep your fingers crossed that the ones I find this year are as good as our initial purchase.  Those produce these lovely perfectly sweet quarter size strawberries from early June through until the first heavy frost in mid October.  Though not nearly as productive as June bearing, we can harvest a pint a day from our 60 square foot patch every few days while they are in season.

Overall I am looking forward to this season as one of change.  The time saved on shopping, shipping, and sorting will be put to planning.  That planning should lead to a garden that I can look to as productive and enjoyable rather than stressing over where things are going wrong.

My wife and I sat down a few days ago to decide on what direction our garden was going to take.  After spending several years struggling with too much space and not enough time, we started by deciding how much we were going to plant.  Answer?  Not nearly as much as we have tried in the past.  Currently there is gardening space in front yard, side yard, and field, with approximately 220, 400, and 800 sq/ft in each area.  Our desires to grow great are huge, but time requirements elsewhere have proven to be substantially more demanding than we expected when we first started down this road 3 years ago.

That leaves us wanting to do a kitchen garden in the front yard focusing on the essentials: cucumbers, peas, onions, tomatoes and strawberries.  Cucumber, peas, and onions will start from seeds indoor well before the last frost so we can have an extra planting or two as the season progresses.  Tomatoes will come from our local garden supply house.  The variety and quality are hard to beat for not much more than a pack of seeds, without the frustration of getting them to germinate.   Ever-bearing and daylight neutral strawberries adorn the strawberry patch already, but there are a few places that could use a few fresh crowns.  One pack of 25 should be enough.

The side yard are is getting dismantled this year and the cinder blocks that form the perimeter moved back into storage.  It was a nice location but I have learned through experimentation with this area just what a difference a micro-climate can mean to growing conditions.  Moisture would settle in after a heavy dew and never quite evaporate.  When the rest of the yard is comfortable and windy, the air around this section was humid and stale.  So many differences abound on our little acre.

Experiments will go out into the field.  In an effort to not buy any new seeds this year and put the remnants of 2009 to good use, anything left over that doesn’t go in the front will get placed here.  With that unknown multitiude will also go some planned for Halloween pumpkins and birdseed sunflowers.

Last on the list is another test: transplanting brambles.  Six blackberry canes were potted up during dormancy in the very early spring and allowed to set good roots over the summer.  Once the hard frosts break and the ground becomes workable again they will get placed along the periphery of the field.

Planning gets the process started with the first plantings only a few weeks away.  A few short months from now the work can begin in earnest and before too long winter will be a memory and we can harvest the first taste of summer: a ripe, juicy tomato on the forth of July.

I know that I have been writing a lot lately about Celiac disease, living gluten free, cooking gluten free, and reviewing products safe for those with gluten issues, but that has all been because it has been a large part of my life since the diagnosis.  Simply put, it is a huge change that has ramifications over your entire life.  Food is one of the 4 essentials for life.  If you haven’t been exposed to it before, the other requirements are water, shelter, and clothing.

As I get into the swing of things with the diet and life in general as a Celiac patient, it isn’t as all consuming on my consciousness. The rest of life opens up and I can focus on the other large aspect of this blog: gardening and actually growing food.  Stuff you dig up out of the ground, covered in dirt, run under water to wash off, and turn into something fantastic for your family and can then sit down and eat and share camaraderie while nourishing your body.

It is great exercise to boot.  Nothing like wielding a hoe with vengeance in 90 degree summer sun to work up a good sweat and remind you of what it is like to be alive.  Warm moist earth is the smell of life.

http://www.farmshow.state.pa.us/

This is a great event.  Family friendly, great exhibits, and the food court is to kill for, though may give you a heart attack.  For anyone who is thinking of goingp some things to check out:

Lancaster Farming.  You can get a free issue at their stand which is worth checking out.  This is an excellent weekly newspaper about agriculture.  Though the focus is primarily PA and the surrounding areas, it also addresses national and world issues.  The latest issue has an excellent article on antibiotic resistance in animals and how it is effecting people.  Also opinion pieces about food security.

Milkshakes.  All the way down on your left when you enter the food court from the main exhibit hall.  Chocolate.  Vanilla.  Black and White.  You can’t go wrong.  Stand in line and wait it out.  They are worth it.

Fries.  These are immediately on your left when you enter the food court from the main exhibit hall.  This line moves quickly.  Even if you see it wrap halfway across the floor, you won’t be standing there long.

Fried veggies.  Directly across from the milkshakes.  You get a lot for the money and the onion rings are outstanding.  Mild onions with a slightly sweet batter.  Mmmm.

The Junior Rodeo.  There are two shows of the Pennsylvania High School Rodeo on opening day.  Go out and support the kids who do it, they put on a great show and work real hard.  Doing well here can earn them points towards a spot at the national competition.  There is no prize money for them plus they pay $50 per event they participate in.  Go out and give them the biggest applause and roar of the crowd you can.  It is their biggest reward.

The Professional Rodeo.  This rounds out the week and is on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.  Tickets are reasonable at $15 for general admission and $25 for “VIP Gold Seating”.  On Thursday only children 12 and under are just $5.  I do recommend the upgrade to Gold Seating if it is in your budget because you are looking down directly onto the rodeo floor from the sides, like if you have 20-20 yard seats at a football stadium.  The rest of the seating curves around then ends and isn’t as good if the cowboys are pushed to the walls.

One final note: Parking prices have been raised this year to $10 per vehicle, so if you are going make sure to carpool.

I enjoyed this article for it’s light discussion on the ethics of eating meat but found that Jennie Yabroff’s final paragraph turned towards juvenile condescension.  You can blame that on my love of Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbooks, even if I’d never cook from it, Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet, and a desire to see an end to factory farming.

My family will continue eating meat and look forward to the day it comes from our own animals.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/228720

The mailbox held the Totally Tomatoes catalog and the Vermont Bean catalog – both are owned by the same company so I’m not surprised they arrived together.

I have to be honest that I do not even look at these catalogs.  They are kind of like “spam” to me and the things in them can all be found in other places for less money.  Just my opinion.

Well, finally had a few minutes to peruse the Stokes catalog.  I have to admit that this was not nearly as fun as Pinetree or Seed Savers – lots of things I’ve seen before.

I did like a few things from their “Flowers of Merit” section on page 2, but I wish they’d have put the ordering info here instead of later in the book:

• Mammoth Glamorama White Pansy $2.75 (page 75)
• Cora Cascade Cherry Vinca $2.95 (page 85)
• Starlight Rose Zinnia $3.25 (page 87)

Then there were the wide selection of impatiens.  My father loves impatiens and with so many colors to choose from on pages 68-69 he’s bound to find a few he likes.  Prices are all over the place for these.

I want everything on the viola page (76) and the marigold pages (71-73.)

I find Stokes prices to be on the high side so I doubt they will get much of my business.

If you’d like to request a catalog, visit www.stokesseeds.com