thinking about cherry tomatoes

A basket full of super-sweet "Sungold" cherry tomatoes, from two summers ago.

Earlier this month, it was tomato seed starting time in the greenhouse.  All those shriveled up, almost microscopic seeds make me uneasy.  Every spring at seed starting time, moments of  anxious doubt creep into the picture as I plant those sad looking dried out things. I've been doing this long enough now to know better but still, I just can't help it...while I enjoy happy dreamy visions of piles of produce coming out of the garden in the summertime, it also seems like such an unbelievable miracle.

How is it that we plant these tiny little dots and expect bountiful crops?  But we do, every year....well I do, anyway, and I'm full of doubt too, every year, in the springtime...

 What am I thinking?....all this work, time and cash invested and no guarantee....I mean, seriously, can this really work?

oh look!!

it does!!  every year.  phew!!

With each newly germinated seed, Mother Nature has once again proved it to me that it's safe to believe.  One of the many therapeutic aspects of working in the dirt and growing things.

And the little plants just keep on getting bigger and better.  And so does my gardener's heart!  Amazing.

By the time my little seedlings are ready to plant in the hoophouse, I'm well on my way to believing that this idea just might work out after all.

Some "Tumbler" plants last spring, hardened off and ready for market.

Now that I'm growing for market,  I produce lots of tomato plants to sell to home gardeners on Mayne Island and to some in Vancouver and Victoria too.  There are so many folks who love the "Tumbler" cherry tomato plants that I offer up every year.  Some who started out buying one or two a few years ago are now buying ten at once.  I love the growing enthusiasm!

They're such a fabulous and prolific plant for patio containers and hanging baskets too since they are a "determinate" or bush (not a vining) variety.  No staking and pinching required!  The first to ripen every year.  So nice and easy for both beginner and seasoned tomato gardeners who have great tomato growing aspirations!  Around here, they do well even in our cool summers and that really builds tomato grower confidence.  It gives a sense of fulfillment too and we all  feel much better with lots of that!

This year I've started over 500 tumbler plants. Along with the other cherry varieties and the larger tomatoes I grow just for us (CJR likes to be able to use our own slicing tomatoes for the summer burgers and sandwiches he's so good at making) I've started over 750 plants this year. (nervous chuckle) That's going to be a lot of potting up for me to do in April/May (not to mention all the other seedlings) yikes.....I hope I can do it!  Anyone wanna help?

These are some "Sungold" plants last year, waiting to go to market.

I decided a couple years ago to focus on cherry tomatoes for both my tomato plant sales and my tomato fruit production for market.  So while most of the plants I grow for plant sales are the Tumblers, I've also started "Black Cherry", "Snow White", "Sun Gold", "Green Doctors" and "Isis Candy" for their fruit and I'll likely have a few of these plants for sale too.  A combo of heritage and hybrid varieties.  I'm really looking forward to enjoying all the different tomato colours in  cherry tomato salads this summer.  We simply cut them in half, add some fresh herbs, maybe some sliced onion from the garden, maybe some feta, a little olive oil....yum!...a favourite summertime staple!

Once the plants I grow for fruit get in the ground, they grow fast!

If I were growing larger tomatoes, I'd probably tie the hoophose vines up with string but since I grow cherries, these remesh cages are the best!

While the larger tomato production benefits from removing the side shoots, I've found that all those side shoots on the cherry plants produce lots of fruit that actually have a chance of ripening before winter.   And since I grow them in the sheltered hoophouse, I only begin removing branches of green fruit in September and by that time, there are just too many side branches to keep tame by tying so these tall home-made cages really do the trick.

Every busy springtime, I find it helpful to look at photos of past years to get a good look at what I'm working towards.  Very helpful!

The Sungolds look like sparkly little ornaments decorating the hoophouse vines.  I use these babies in my floral arrangements too because they just look so darned happy and good tucked in there with the sunflowers, nasturtium and amaranth!  Sometimes you can have your floral arrangement and eat it too.

Time to get picking!

Beautiful red Tumbler jewels.

Hope springs eternal! ~Alexander Pope

cherry tomato superabundance

The sungold tomato vines that are growing in the hoophouse have been producing fruit galore these days!

They're such beautiful little things and oh so sweeeet.

I think they're best kept displayed on the table in a big bowl so that all who see them can pop one or two into their mouth as they pass by....yum, better than candy!

The red cherry tomatoes are also amazingly productive. All that I don't sell to my customers are going into the freezer to be thrown into winter slow cooker stews.....but some are being slow roasted in my toaster oven....

These are quite possibly the best tasting thing I've ever eaten!

Here's what I do: First I harvest and collect my homegrown cherry tomatoes, green and purple basil and garlic. I cut the cherry tomatoes in half and arrange on my oven pan with the cut side up.....crush garlic and place some on each tomato, a little sea salt, then chopped up basils on top of that and into oven (or toaster oven) for 4-5 hrs at 225 degrees....

Here they are just before going into the oven. Beautiful.
I'm so into these right now that I think everyone needs to go run out and pick their cherry tomatoes and do this with them, asap. Can't have a summer without this treat at least once or twice!
And if you're on Mayne Island and don't have any cherry tomatoes growing in your garden, give me a call (I have some for sale) and then make a note to self to grow some next year :-)

This is the display of my hoophouse cherry tomatoes at Happy Tides Health Foods at the Fernhill Centre. Tamara's clever "canned tomatoes" are 1/2 lb. each. They're available at Happy Tides all week long and probably next week too.....

Tumbler tomatoes in containers, part 2

This is the time of summer when container grown tomato plants will start to go yellow and look really sad if they aren't getting enough of the nutrients and minerals they need to be healthy and produce delicious fruit. Folks who grow the Tumbler tomato plants I sell in the spring ask me about what I do to provide the plants with the nourishment they need, so......
......here's what I do:
I start by mixing up a potting soil (in my wheelbarrow) that's made of SeaSoil potting mix (from Home Hardware on Mayne Island) some of my compost and some shredded coco coir (for water retention). I fill my growing container with the potting soil mix and then I add about a cup full of complete organic fertilizer and mix it all up and moisten. Then I make a hole and plant the seedling in the hole with some earthworm castings...water...top up with potting soil and lightly press down the soil...that will give the little plant a good start!

The greenhouse Tumblers, just after planting up in their summer growing pots, end of April/beginning of May. I wait 'til end of May/beginning of June to plant my outdoor pots.

Complete organic fertilizer is a mixture of natural ingredients that supply a combination of nitrogen, phosporous and potassium, plus a few other goodies that plants like. I buy these ingredients in bulk and store them in metal bins in the garden. In this photo: bags of alfalfa meal, kelp meal, soft rock phosphate. If you live on Mayne Island and go into Victoria from time to time, 2 good sources of ingredients are Buckerfield's on Keating Cross and Borden Mercantile near Quadra and Mackenzie. Many farm supply stores carry these ingredients.

These are the metal garbage cans I use for storing my complete organic fertilizer ingredients and the finished mix.

The basic recipe I follow:
for nitrogen: 4 parts seed meal (canola, alfalfa)
for phosphorous: 1/2 part soft rock phosphate or bone meal
for potassium: 1/2 part kelp meal or sometimes a mix of kelp meal and greensand
for calcium: 1/2 part dolomite lime and wood ash combined
I often add a little extra bone meal to the mix when making this for tomatoes because I read somewhere that phosphorous encourages the plant to produce more flowers and so therefore more fruit...and I've noticed, it really seems to work!

I find that the complete organic fertilizer breaks down in time to continue providing nourishment to the plant after the compost in the pot has been depleted, usually beginning of July. As the plant starts to set and ripen lots of fruit, sometime in July, I like to start watering it with a seaweed tea. This has worked wonderfully for me and my tumbler tomato plants produce loads and loads of delicious red jewels.

There are liquid seaweed concentrates available to buy and I basically make a tea with them by mixing a small amount with water in a watering can....these are 2 that I use....Home Hardware's garden centre on Mayne is now carrying some of these.
But eventually, I'd like to make my own concentrates for watering and feeding.

These are some old wine barrels we've set up to collect rain water from a shed roof. I'm planning to steep all sorts of good things in them to create some lovely homemade feeds for my container plants while I water them....I hope to make concentrates of nettles, comfrey, seaweed, horsetail, manure, compost, etc...but that is another story for another day....now I must be off to water my Tumblers with kelp infusion and harvest some more for dinner!

Tumbler tomatoes in containers, part 1

Every spring for 4 years now, I've been starting a couple hundred Tumbler tomato plants from seed. I sell most of them at the first Farmer's Market of the season on the May long weekend and some of them stay in my garden to grow on.
I grow them in hanging baskets in my glass greenhouse and in containers outside around my garden....this year, I'm also trying them in the ground in my new hoophouse but that's another story.

Look at these lovely young tomato plants in the seed starting greenhouse in April, waiting to go to their forever homes.

My tumblers are really producing beautiful, delicious red cherry tomatoes these days. They make me think of all the fabulous folks I've sold to who are growing them right now on their decks and patios too...many tell me about how much they love them and how well they're doing but I can't help wondering about the one's who may have encountered problems with their tumblers and don't tell me about it.

This past May, I had the opportunity to lead a gathering/workshop at our Home Hardware's Garden Center...we were talking about growing veggies in containers. Lots of people here on Mayne Island grow food crops in containers for various reasons and tomatoes are a real favourite. Thinking about what ideas to talk about at the workshop helped me to organize some issues that we have when we're gardening in containers.

I like to keep the thought in mind that just like we human-beings, plants mostly need food and water to live a productive life...well, sunshine too!
And because container growing pretty much requires creating a natural environment out of an unnatural situation and because we have extreme water shortages here on Mayne during the hot, dry days of summer....growing food crops in containers in a conscientious and sustainable way can be quite a challenge!

Like most people I know, I water my containers by hand. I've found a system that seems to work really well. I put most of my tumbler tomatoes in hanging pots. The pots are plastic and are fitted into a hanging wire cage that's lined with sphagnum moss...the plastic pot stays moist longer than clay, especially when it's insulated with the moss. When I water them, the water eventually drains through and moistens the moss which helps too. I place another plastic pot that sits in a tray beneath the hanging basket...this year, they're growing cucumbers and as the water drains from the hanging basket, it waters the cucumber pot below. As the cucumber pot drains, the water collects in the tray beneath and as the cucumber pot dries out, the soil absorbs the extra water from the tray...and because cucumbers really hate to dry out, this is ideal for them. Next year, I'm going to try melons! Many things would work tho'...even another tumbler in a pot, under the hanging one.

I think it's essential to set all containers in trays for the summertime because water isn't wasted and the pots stay moist for a longer time.
Another nice thing about this method is that none of the goodness from the complete organic fertilizer and the seaweed tea that I use to feed the tomato plants gets lost and wasted either....more on feeding the tumblers and other container food crops next time....