Heirloom Tomatoes – Great Tasting and Easy To Grow

	What’s an Heirloom? Modern supermarket “hybrids,” are bred for their long shelf-life, but classic “heirloom” varieties are picked for their superior flavors. There are hundreds of varieties of heirlooms that gardeners around the world have carefully selected and preserved for generations, so you’ll find much more than just red tomatoes – you’ll discover green, yellow, orange, purple, and even black ones (man say these tastes best). Some will be sweet, some spicy and others smokey; they’ll range in size from tiny cherries to giant fruit that weigh over two pounds.
	How Do I Pick? With so many heirloom varieties, nurseries and chain stores are only able to carry a limited selection, so small gardeners have been stuck with just a few options. Recently though, specialty farms have begun shipping sturdy young plants direct to gardeners. Some even offer themed collections made up of popular varieties, so picking which plants to grow is easy. You can find these collections and a huge selection of individual varieties through websites like the online gardening center, Windowbox.com. They offer a range of packs, each with a different theme, including: beefsteak tomatoes container growers, high yeild plants, huge fruit plants, Italian paste & sauce, weather tolerant, cherry tomatoes, and more.
	From UPS to BLT Once you’ve got the right plants for you, it’s just a matter of raising them. Thankfully, heirlooms are hardy (they have to be to have lasted so long), and they’re easy to grow. Most heirlooms are “indeterminate,” which means they grow like a vine, and they’ll produce fruit all season long – until the first frost. “Determinate” plants are more like a bush, and they typically produce all their tomatoes in one batch. Depending on which you’ve selected, they’ll require slightly different care. Basically though, with sun, water, a little fertilizer and pruning, you’ll be enjoying delicious tomatoes all summer long.
	Where Do I get Help? Many tomato growers share their knowledge on the web, and this increased communication has helped the heirloom community expand significantly. Many sites feature growing hints and tips as well as discussion forums. Windowbox.com offers a detailed tomato growing guide (download here) that is a great help throughout the season, and if that’s not enough, their group of online experts shares basic growing tips and answers specific questions.

Natural Deer Repellent

>Animal Repellents Nothing can be more frustrating than having your garden destroyed by an unwelcome guest.  Prevent this problem by applying the right repellent or deterrent. Please select  the animal you would like to deter! Don’t see what you’re looking for? Let us know! Deer Repellents & Deer Control Mole & Vole Control Snake Repellents Mosquito Killers & Insecticides Rabbit Repellents Bird & Geese Repellents Burrowing Pest Repellents Mice & Rat Rodent Control Armadillo Repellents Dog & Cat Repellents Squirrel & Woodchuck Repellent Animal Traps

>Search For Repellent by Animal/Insect Armadillo Control Beavers Bird Repellent Cats & Dogs Chipmunks Deer Deterrent Geese Gophers Mice & Rats Moles Muskrats Opossum Otters Porcupines Rabbit Control Raccoons Rats Skunks Snakes Squirrels Voles Woodchucks Insecticides Ant & Roach Beetle Traps Slugs & Snails Lady Bugs Mosquito Moths Silverfish Spiders Termites

> The Scarecrow Motion Activated Sprinkler won’t give Bambi a heart attack, but it’ll make him think twice about your flower bed! Great for rabbits, dogs, and cats, too!	> The world’s only EPA approved, university tested, patented snake repellent!	> Control the moles and voles, and control the grubs that feed them!	> Kill Mosquitos before they are old enough to bite. Avoid the West Nile Virus!

>

Deer Control and Repellents

Rabbits Squirrels and Rodents

Snake Away Repellent

Mole & Vole Control

Goose Repellent

Armadillo & Gopher Repellents

Bird Repellents

Dog And Cat Repellents

Mosquito Killers

Animal Traps

Colorado Potato Beetles Eat More Than Potatoes, Dastardly Little Buggers

Potatoes taste good. They are good baked, broiled, grilled, hashed, home fried, deep fried, french friend, and stuffed. I really like some potato. They taste even better when you grow them yourself…organically, in your backyard or on your farm. Unfortunately, humans are not the only ones who love potatoes. There is a pestilence lurking out there that will decimate your potato crop and harsh on your garden.

The Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata, is native to North America. Despite it name, the beetle will also eat your eggplants and tomatoes. You know you have them when you see them. They are yellow convex beetles about a half an inch long and are covered with black stripes and an orange head. Their eggs are bright yellow and are laid on the underside of the leaves. The grubs (grubs look nasty) are plump and red with black spots and a black head. The grown ups and the larvae chew foliages leaving your plants looking like skeletons of plants. The defoliation and skeleton-like appearance of your plants is the other way to know you have been attacked by the little buggers.

There are many methods for controlling the potato beetles. Hand pick the early spring arrivals and squash them like the bugs they are (putting them in a pail of soapy water, while less visceral, is equally effective) and put down a thick layer of organic mulch. The beetles can’t climb out through the thick stuff.

Planting an early crop of black nightshade ten to fifteen feet away from your vegetable crop, will give you early warning of the coming infestation. If the beetles come, wait for your trap crop to become heavily infested and then pull and destroy the crop along with the beetles. If the beetles get by your defenses, first manually pluck as many as you can so they can’t lay anymore eggs. You are trying to interrupt the generations. Bacillus Thuringiensis (BT) are bacteria that come in powder form and kills leaf eating caterpillars; however there is a new form that does a fine job controlling the potato beetle in its larval stage.

If you sprinkle your plants with bran or cornmeal, the beetles will eat it, the meal will expand in the beetle, and the beetle will explode. Who wouldn’t want to see that? Mechanical and nontoxic control of beetles is cool.

Neem is effective at controlling the beetles. Mix your neem product according to the directions and apply it to the affected plants at weekly intervals until the beetles are under control. Pyrethrum is also effective at controlling the potato beetles. In general two applications, three days apart will get the little guys under control.

If you want to get out in front of the potato beetles and try to prevent them in the first place, you have a couple of options that I will discuss here. You can get resistant potato varieties. The Sequoia and Katahdin are resistant to potato beetles. You can coat your plants with Diatomaceous Earth. Dust your entire plant with the Diatomaceous Earth paying particular attention to the undersides of the leaves. The best time to apply the Diatomaceous Earth is in the evening when the beneficial bugs are less prevalent. Nylon netting or agricultural fleece may be used to completely cover the plants and prevent infestation.

The foregoing is a general discussion of how to control the Colorado Potato Beetle. Remember, don’t be afraid of the pests. You can control them without petroleum products and without compromising your health. Grow your own organic vegetables and save money!

Top Ten Ways to Save Money with an Organic Vegetable Garden

1. Do it yourself:  Don’t pay someone else to dig, plant, cut and prune for you.  In addition to saving money, the exercise will make your feel better.  If working in the yard makes you grown – get over it.

2. Set your mower deck higher: set it at its highest setting (or at lease higher than you do now.  Don’t bag..leave the clippings where they fall.  You save on fertilizer and your lawn will look better.  Clippings don’t cause thatch, fertilizer does.

3. Make your own weed killer: vinegar, salt and dish soap, evidently boiling water kills weeds, and gin dish soap and vinegar.  Hit google…or this link: Hit Me! Evidently the vinegar kills the weed, salt keeps it from growing back, and soap sticks to the weed so the first two things can work. Amounts vary from recipe to recipe (or is it a formulation…again I digress) and do not appear to be very important. As the salt sticks around for a bit, you need to wait a little before replanting. [Didn't someone sale fields in the bible or something?]

4. Get your tools at yard sales and use hand tools. Never pay retail. Good tools last forever. Power tools use gas, stink, pollute your yard and the world at large, and leave you smelling like gasoline after you are done. Oh yeah, they are expensive too.

5. Compost. Make your own dirt. Don’t buy a bin, you don’t need one. Dig a hole. Make a pile. If you just pile up everything that was once once alive [and not an animal] that is left over from your kitchen, you will have compost in six to nine months. If you follow the rules and mix your compose and turn it, you can have some super dirt in two to three months.

6. Make your own mulch. Shred your leaves with you lawn mower. Contact a tree service and ask for chipped branches. You may get them for free since you will save the company the dumping fee. Be prepared though, it doesn’t look as nice as bought mulch but it works great on your garden and saves money. You may also consider stones or pebbles, the initial outlay is higher but they don’t have to be replaced. A truck load of local stone costs less than you think.

7. Divide plants, share seedlings, ask you neighbors. Talk to you neighbors and see if they have any plants that need dividing. Join a garden club or plant exchange. Look for sale by garden clubs and botanical gardens.

8. Watering. Get a rain barrel. You don’t need some expensive system. Contact your water department or look for recycled plastic barrels. Use soaker hoses in your beds and garden; you will use much less water. Water deeply once or twice per week. Daily, short watering make for shallow roots and unhealthy plants.

9. Grow Vegetables and Herbs. The saving will take to be realized but you can save a lot of money growing your own food. The savings will only increase over time. Especially if you follow the above tips. See my previous post for a calculator on gardening savings.

10. Cancel your cable and get outside in your yard.

Organic Vegetable Gardening: A Few Words About Tomatoes

Everybody loves tomatoes. And the taste best when picked from the vine, walked to the butcher block, sliced, and put on the homemade bread with lettuce, bacon, and mayonnaise. My mouth is watering at the thought. First we have to grow the tomato.

Tomatoes come in a numerous varieties, heirloom and hybrid. I just like to eat them. From grape sized and red to gigantic and purple, you can get tomatoes in a virtually unlimited array of colors and sizes. They all grow between three to four feet for you determinate varieties and seven to fifteen feet for your indeterminate varieties. All tomatoes need twenty-four to thirty six inches of space to spread out. If you use deep beds, you can plant a bit closer together and train the vines vertically. The majority of the roots are in the top eight inches of the soil with some fibrous spreading roots going four plus feet down. They like their soil to have a pH of 6 to 7.

Tomatoes love eight or more hours of full sun per day. They cannot tolerate frost and should be started indoors and transplanted to your garden after the last chance of frost. Where I live in Tennessee, that is tax day here in the US, April 15. Did I follow my own advice? Of course not! I planted early and had to cover my tomatoes because we had a frost. Some stakes and old packing blankets over the tomatoes brought them through just fine. They look great and are moving toward the sandwich as I write.

When you do plant your tomatoes, if in rows they should be 18 to 24 inches apart. If you use deep beds as I do, they go 12 inches apart and should be trained up a trellis. Tomatoes love water and should get one to one and half inches per week either from rain or watering. Apply compost or slow acting fertilizer in spring. Tomatoes are heavy feeders and require light supplements every couple of weeks throughout the growing season. Go easy with the nitrogen. You will be well served by spraying your plants with the liquid seaweed extract.

I have had trouble over the years with the tomato hornworm. You know you have them when you see holes in your leaves and black droppings in the foliage of your lovely tomato plant. If you spray your plant with water, the hornworms thrash about and let you know where they are. You will recognize them from the large (3 to 5 inches) , green, caterpillar appearance. The dead giveaway is the horn on their head. They are relatively easy to control by picking of early in the season. You can also dust with BT (bacillus thuringiensis). If the infestation is too awful, use pyrethrum twice, three days apart.

Whiteflies have been the bane of my existence on more than one occasion. The little bugger secrete honeydew that encourages fungus causing the plant to weaken, turn yellow, and die. So sad. You know you have them because your plants start to turn yellow and, when the plant is shaken, a flying could of dandruff flies around your tomato. Insecticidal soap will get rid of the pestilence. If that doesn’t work, use the pyrethrum twice, three days apart.

Hey, have fun and eat the delicious tomatoes. I know I can’t wait.

Next Page »