Gardening Tips

Blossom end rot in tomatoes looks like this...

 

 It appears on the blossom end of the fruit as it develops, causing major blemish and rendering the crop next to useless for marketing. We have experienced the rot on younger garden beds before compost and organic matter move the soil to balance. The cause is primarily due to the lack of calcium in the soil or may be due to stress from drought or water logging.

A key for us is the addition of ground eggshells in the compost. We save all of our egg shells and dry them for crushing and processing in a mortar and pestle. This last job often falls to wwoofers and interns on rainy days when the activities in the garden are restricted.

Another method is to add dolomite or garden or agricultural lime to the soil at the time of bed preparation. Mostly good compost at this time should be enough but young gardens may need a boost.

We have found that the appearance of blossom end rot may be rectified by dusting the plants with dolomite, just as a foliar feed of calcium. Be sure to cast handfuls of the dust from up wind and ensure you do not breath it in. The drift of the application will cover the plant with an added benefit in deterring fungal problems by altering the pH of the leaf surface.

Affected fruits are fed to the chickens

Propagation

It's a busy time in the propagation house for me. It started way back in June using an underheater to get the summer crops underway. This gives us a head start on tomatoes, capsicums and basil -- those seedlings that like it to be a certain temperature before they will germinate. Since then, I have been potting them up into pots and waiting for conditions to be just right in the garden. Usually that means waiting for the threat of frosts to be over, but now we're waiting for a little rain!

In the meantime, the propagation house is full...

...as is the hardening off area.

The tomatoes have been potted up a few times now, each time a little deeper into a slightly larger pot. This gives them a strong root system.

We now have around 50 tomatoes ready to go in and some left over to sell. We grow Tommy Toes and Romas as they have slightly tougher skins and cope best for us with the fruit fly. We have a small range of other seedlings for sale also, including capsicums, marigolds and cucumbers, along with some seeds.

For more information on propagation you can find as at the Dungog Food Affair where we will be running a workshop. We will be sharing our recipe for our seed raising mix and potting mix. We will demonstrate how we propagate here on the farm on a commercial scale and how it can be tailored to fit the backyard gardener. Mark will also touch on the Biodynamic planting guide.

Succession Planting

Here are the snow peas we planted in April. We started harvesting them in early June. From this bed and another smaller one we are able to give our CSA customers 100g each a week, (that would be worth $3.30 in the organic shop). 

This is what that bed looks like now. We will leave it to  develop our seeds for next year before removing them to plant tomatoes. The tomatoes will love the extra nutrients provide by the nutrient-rich peas.

  

The pea is swelling and the skin is becoming clear. Once it's dry, it's ready to pick and store away for next year.

Here are more snow peas that we planted a month after the first lot. There's another similar bed and, with these two beds, we are harvesting as much as we need for the boxes and ourselves and other family members.

And when their harvesting time comes to an end, we have another bed of peas ready to take their place which were planted a month later. These should take us up to the harvesting of the beans.

Through successive plantings, we are able to maximise our harvests. The most often asked questions at our gardening-related workshops are to do with what and how many vegetables to plant. The what part of the question depends a lot on what people like to eat, but what they really want to know is at what time of year should each veggie be planted and that's mainly to do with our limited knowledge of seasonality. So we help them out with a generalised guide to what grows when in our local area.

To answer how many, I suggest that they make a list of the vegies they and their family like to eat and then think about the amount of each that they eat in a week. I suggest they plant four or five varieties of things like lettuce that can have the outside leaves plucked while leaving the rest to continue to grow. For others, make successive plantings every three to four weeks. For example, if you eat one cabbage a week, plant four in your first planting and then, four weeks later, put in another four. Likewise with beans, cauliflower, cucumber, peas, sweetcorn and tomatoes. Once again, this is only a guide as all  families are different. I suggest that they make a start and keep good records of what they planted, when they planted and how much they were able to harvest. Then next year they can adjust their plantings to better suit.

Here we are using the chooks to prepare beds for sweetcorn on the outside edges of the mandala gardens. The chooks scratch and fertilise the beds and every two weeks the dome will be moved on and 40 sweetcorn seedlings will be planted in the prepared ground.

Today we are featured over on Liz's blog Eight Acres. Liz interviewed us about our house cow in her  series, Getting started with homestead dairy. Please pop over and take a look at the interview and while you're at it take a look at what she's doing in her neck of the woods. Some pretty inspiring stuff!

Seed Saving - Tomatoes

While making passata this week, I saved the seeds from the best Romas, for planting next year.

 

 

 

 After cutting in half, scoop out the seeds and the pulp.Tomatoes like to go though alittle ferment in their pulp to activate germination just like in the compost heap. And we all know how much tomatoes like to grow in compost heaps!

Place the seeds and pulp in a jar with a little water and place on the windowsill. Give it a little shake whenever you're passing and after a few days drain off the liquid and pour in fresh water. Leave this for a day and then strain and leave to dry on some muslin ( or something absorbant).

 Once dry place in envelope or jar and label with type of tomato and the date. Store in airtight, dry place. We have a box made from coolroom panels which does the trick.

I will do the same for the Tommytoes and the Brandywines. These are the types of tomatoes that grow well here, as they are least susceptible to fruit fly, because of their tougher skins.

Making Passata

Last year we made about 20 bottles of passata. It didn't last long. We go through, on avarage, a bottle a week. It was fairly time consuming as, after heating the tomatoes, we only had a small sieve in which to strain out the skins and seeds.

So this year, knowing that we wanted to at least triple the amount of passata, I bought a passata machine....

I wanted something easy to use and easy to clean, stainless steel and didn't rely on electricity for power. This little hand powered machine fit the bill. A few days ago, while waiting for the machine to arrive, I hand strained a pot of tomatoes through the sieve. This machine is just so much quicker and less tiring.

So with a box of juicy, ripe red romas...

 

Mark and I spent half a day making passata. We cut the tomatoes into quarters and put them in a large heavy based pot and heat them through.

This just helps to get all the juice. From there straight into the machine. We put the pulp back through 3 more times to make sure we have as much liquid as possible. This goes back into the pot to be reheated so that it's nice and hot when it goes into the sterlized jars.



 

 

 

 We sterilize the jars in the oven so they are hot also. The lids are boiled on the stove top

 

 

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Once in the jars the lids are tightened and as it cools the lids pop and the jars are then sealed. If the lid doesn't pop then it can't be kept for an extended time, but can be kept in the fridge and used within the week.

We will be demonstrating this procedure as part of our Preserving The Harvest workshop on the 2nd February. More information  can be found on our  website.

Eating in Season

One of our favourite recipes for summer is Mexican Chilli Corn Pie fromVegetarian Main Meals by Kathryn Hawkins. Most of the ingredients are sourced from our garden at this time of year. Sweet corn, tomatoes,onions, capsicum (bell pepper) celery, garlic, chilli and tomatoes are bountiful at the moment.

The recipe asks for cans of tomatoes, sweet corn and red kidney beans, but why use cans when you have it fresh. The dried kidney beans are cooked in the solar oven ( energy from the sun is also plentiful right now, some could say a little too plentiful with another day in the 40's) and then added to the other ingredients once they have all been fried together and boiled for 10mins.

What makes this pie so delicious is the polenta topping. Mix together 2/3 cup polenta (cornmeal), 1tablespoon  flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 2teaspoons baking powder. Make a well in the centre, add 1 beaten egg, 6 tablespoons milk, and 1 tablespoon oil and beat until smooth. Spoon over the tomato mixture and sprinkle with 1 cup of grated cheese. Bake in oven at 220 cfor 25 30 mins. It will take a little longer in the solar oven as it doesn't get quite that hot.

served up ready to eat

 

 

 

Straight from the solar oven.

 

I thought it might need to be grilled for a few minutes but it came out of the solar oven quite crispy on top.Have you cooked with polenta? I do like it fried but haven't yet succeeded in getting it to set well enough for that.

 

 

P.S.  Mark down loaded these photos for me. Two via picasa and the last from photobucket. Sorry the last two are in the wrong order but just didn't have the heart to try and change them. Thank you to those who commented about downloading photos. I just wanted to be able to download like I used to, I'm a bit lazy and technically challenged to bother with all the fiddling, but I'll try.



Obtain a Yield and Catch and Store Energy

The tomatoes grew, caught and stored the energy from the sun, we harvested them.....

..Then preserved them as chopped tomatoes thereby storing energy for the winter.

This is 13 kilo of roma tomatoes, peeled and chopped. Preserved in a Fowlers Vacola water bath. Our customers get approx 20kilo of tomatoes a week, between them and we plan to preserve the rest. There's probably 20 kilo more in the fridge so far, and Mark's making tomato- sauce at the moment with less than perfect tomatoes.

This is the first year we have preserved in such earnestness. We are determined to make the most of all our produce, and set ourselves up for winter with summer produce. It is very new to us and a real learning experience. It has been very time consuming ( it took me most of yesterday to bottle the tomatoes) but I'm sure we'll get much more proficient at it, and I know it will be cheaper and healthier for us and will help to set us up for the'year without supermarkets' challenge that Tricia is running over at  little eco footprints. We are running a little behind Tricia, planning to start in February. But if it's anything like our year without buying anything new challenge that we set ourselves a few years back, it will become a habit and we'll just continue on indefinitely.