Today Charming
and I have plans to play outside. The
temperature is supposed to be in the high 50’s.
That’s really close to the 60’s and, in my mind, the 60’s are just a
hop, skip, and a jump away from the 70’s.
Spring is here! (Well…once we get
past the “wintry mix” the weather girl is calling for later this week.)
We’re slowly
gearing up for planting season. Last
week, I filled seedling trays with dirt then Charming poked two holes in each
compartment of the seedling trays and planted seeds. So far, he’s planted seeds for green peppers
and Jalapeno peppers. In addition, he
planted several kinds of tomatoes, including:
Mortgage Lifter, Beef Steak, Amish Paste, and Mr. Stripey.
The seeds he
planted are from last year’s crop. Charming
takes great pride in and goes to great pains with his seed-saving endeavors. Unfortunately, he keeps many of my dishes
tied up for weeks during the summer due to the drying process. Whenever I bring in a particularly large or beautiful
tomato, he gets a gleam in his eye and immediately confiscates it. Then, like some kind of Samurai soldier, he
slices and dices and digs out the seeds.
After the shower of tomato juice stops flying through the air, he grabs
the salt shaker and makes a snack of the leftover pulp and skin…Yea, sometimes
he’s Charming alright.
The Mortgage
Lifter tomato is a really good producer.
The story behind the name tells of the man who developed this
tomato. In the 1930’s, although he had
no formal plant breeding education, he selectively chose four different plants
that were known to produce large fruit…I forget their names. He cross-pollinated one plant with pollen
from the other plants. The following
year, he took the strongest seedling form the seeds of this plant and repeated
the process. (This is a lot more
difficult and time-consuming than it sounds.)
It took him years to develop his own stable variety, but he finally did
it. By the time the 1940’s rolled
around, he was selling these tomato plants for $1/plant to people who would
drive miles to get them. The end of the
story is that he was able to off his mortgage with the money he got from
selling his tomato plants. Isn’t this
just a wonderful story?
A few years ago,
Charming made a “hoop house” of sorts that fits over one of our garden beds. Using PVC pipe, he made the rectangular frame
then attached four lengths of the pipe to the sides of the frame in order to make
the rounded supports that would hold the 4-ml plastic up off the plants. He made hinges and grab handles out of the
pipe as well. This enables either one
person or two to lift the side of the frame up to check on the plants or to
simply leave it open on particularly warm days.
Because this winter has been pretty fierce, the hoop house has taken a
beating, so we’ll be repairing any damage done by the heavy snow. The reason we didn’t disassemble it in the
fall is because we had nine Napa
See below for
pictures of the starter seeds (although there’s really nothing to look at yet,
except dirt) as well as pictures of the hoop house. Before we know it, the dirt will be warm and
the garden will be in full swing. From
my point of view, a garden is one of the most beautiful sights on earth!
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| A small portion of our seedling trays. (Note the use of recycled popsicle sticks for the markers...I love recycling!) |
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| Charming's hoop house is about 4 foot tall and covers an 8' x 4' vegetable bed. This is where we over- wintered our Napa cabbage. |
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| The hinges and handles on the hoop house allows one person to open it up when the days are warm and also makes it easy to water the plants. |
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| I took this picture today (3/10/14). Three of our Napa cabbage made it through the harsh winter. What great little troopers! |
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