A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Many times ripe tomatoes fall to the ground during the growing season. Oftentimes birds or squirrels will eat the fruit before we have a chance to pick it. Most of the time when I find tomatoes with big holes in them, I'll pluck them off the vine and toss them over the fence to our hens.  They make quick work of the tomatoes. Sometimes, however, the tomato falls to the ground, ferments in the summer heat, and dissolves into the ground.

The seeds, coming from heirloom, open-pollinated seed-stock, when the time is right, sprout and grow.  "Volunteer" plants, we call them.  I have several tomatoes coming up like that on numerous rows that are currently growing our Fall crops.  I really don't know what variety of tomato it is.  Here is one in the photo below that is competing for space with some healthy bok choy.  The tomato plant is very healthy, too, but will get knocked out when the first frost comes.

I don't have a hot house to move them to in order to save them.  A couple of years ago, I dug plants like this up and put them in pots in my garage to try to get some fruit off of them.  Really, I think you need a greenhouse for this, as I never had any success.  A friend of ours grew some beautiful tomatoes from plants like this, but she told us that they just didn't have any taste.  Maybe being outdoors in the sunshine, fresh air, cooling and warming temperature and rainfall is what gives homegrown vegetables their incredible flavor - flavor that is hard to reproduce in artificial conditions.

A tomato plant competing for space

You know it is really too bad that these tomatoes won't have an opportunity to produce fruit before the cold weather comes.  The average frost date according to this link is November 10th and that is only a week away.  What a beautiful flower this is!  It would have made a great-eating tomato, I'm sure.

There are times when I feel like this tomato.  I get an idea or a dream that I wait around and wait around and by the time I start moving on it, it's too late, and the idea or dream sort of withers and dies on the vine.  Timing is everything and often I'm a day late and a dollar short.  There are two good quotes about this very thing:

"The early bird catches the worm."   

But there is another quote that is equally true:

"While the early bird catches the worm, the second mouse gets the cheese!" 

A little too late!

The rest of the post is about a few things that the timing is right on.  Here are some turnip seedlings that are popping up out of the ground like popcorn.  While we'll eat a few of the smaller turnips and eat some of the greens, these turnips are largely for the benefit of the cows.  During the cold winter months when the pasture has grown brown and dormant and all the cows are eating on is hay, they really welcome cut up turnips and turnip greens that I'll toss them over the garden fence.

Future Feast for the cows

This picture captures a couple of very young Contender green beans that are just starting to grow.  In the background you can make out a bloom or two that hopefully will have time to turn into beans that we can harvest and cook.  Although the average frost is approaching quickly, this area of the garden where the beans are planted are shielded by the canopy of an oak tree that might provide some protection from winter's first frosty grip.  I love green beans and hope that we can harvest a bunch before the freezing weather gets them.  An added plus is that the plants are fixing nitrogen in the ground.  It is kind of cool that they produce their own fertilizer.

Green beans for the pot

The broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants are growing nicely and I'll give them a good spraying of fish emulsion soon for a foliar feeding.  They've been mulched with hay and now all the hard work is done.  We'll just wait for them to get ripe, not unlike the cows who wait by the garden fence for us to toss them weeds/leaves, etc.

Brassicas growing & Cows begging

Speaking of the cows, they'll be sorry to learn that I just read an article about eating the leaves and stem of broccoli.  Often, people just pick off the florets, but the leaves and the stem provide great nutrition, fiber and flavor to your meal as well.  Sorry girls, looks like you'll have to stick with the turnips!  It won't be very long now before we'll be able to start seeing heads develop.  

Soon!

I won't be late when it's time to harvest the winter crop...

From Planting Alliums to Protecting Brassicas

I remember in elementary school learning about the different biological classifications.  We learned a mnemonic device to help us remember the following:

• Kingdom
• Phylum
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus
• Species

I have forgotten the mnemonic device (I think it started with "King Phil") but for some reason can still remember the actual classifications.  Weird, huh?  I can remember that, but can't remember phone numbers to save my life.  If I ever lost my contacts on my phone, I wouldn't know how to reach anyone since I don't need to know their numbers - I just press their names on my phone.

Anyway, onions are in the Allium Genus which include a lot of flowers that grow from bulbs like lilies and also garlic, chives, scallions, and leeks.  Last year I purchased some red onion seeds.  I love red onions.  I planted them all, but did not have any success at all growing them from seed.  This year Tricia picked up some onion sets for me from the feed store.  They aren't red onions, they are yellow, but they'll eat just fine.  I'll educate myself more on growing onions from seed over the winter, but for now, we'll plant these sets.

Onion Sets

Planting onion sets are very similar to planting garlic cloves.  You simply plant them an inch deep and four inches apart, pointy side up, roots down, cover with dirt, water and they'll GROW.

One onion planted...

That didn't take long to get them in the ground.  While I was in the garden, I'll generally pull weeds that are competing and attempting to crowd out our vegetables.  While I was weeding I came across the following troubling sight:

Whoa!

I have a lot of Brassicas planted and every row of my brassicas had damage like you see above. Plants in the Brassica Genus include cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower.  For some reason a pest really likes them.  They weren't touching anything else in the garden.  We've experienced some success with applying lye soap spray to the leaves of plants that bugs are eating. All we do is grate some lye soap into some hot water to dissolve and then mix a few cups of water to the emulsion and put it in a spray bottle and spray the damaged areas.  So let's get that started.  

Lye Soap Spray

I didn't see at first what the pest was that was feasting on our plants, but while spraying, I spotted one of the perpetrators.  Can you see him?

The culprit!

I plucked the guilty party off of the plant and acting as judge and jury, sentenced him to capital punishment.  The hens were all too happy to be the executioner.  I tossed him over the fence and pretty soon the 'eater' became the 'eaten.'

Guilty Worm

I applied a liberal dose of lye soap spray to the vegetables on the Brassica rows to hopefully 'clean up' the problem and bring an end to the damages.

Leaves with a good application of Lye Soap

I'll diligently check the plants to ensure that we've discouraged additional damages. If this doesn't work, I'll try to go through and physically remove the worms.  I've heard that some people put some chickens in the garden for pest eradication and while I'm sure that works, my experience is that they cause more harm than good by scratching the ground and unearthing roots and eating the plants.