Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Bark louder, little dog.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

So many bastards, so little time.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

We still have time to mess this up!

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

No one could have predicted…

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

“Facilitate” is an active verb, not a weasel word.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Open Thread: “The Tomato Listener”

Open Thread: “The Tomato Listener”

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Two garden threads in one Sunday, because it’s that time of year. Pic is part of my personal harvest, two years ago. “In the midst of winter a dreary rainy week I found within me an invincible summer.”

From commentor Jim M:

In our little plot, we grow lots of tomatoes, from seed, mostly. Almost all for sauce. And some cherries for salads. We start the seeds indoors around April 5, move them to the porch May 1 and plant them Memorial Day. This year, we had a crop failure, and lost all our seedling tomatoes (and eggplants) by April 26. I used old peat moss as the starter medium. They all pinched off at the soil level.

Despair lasted only a day though. I thought about it: The end result we want is 30-40 lbs of plum tomatoes by Sept. 30 or so. These we wash and grind up, skins, seeds and all, and freeze them. Starting over in late April will likely yield that result, I reasoned. Here’s how I figured that out: Our volunteer tomatoes were trying to tell us something.

Part of the reason I knew this was because the tomatoes themselves told me. I chose to listen to them instead of the foot-tall plants at Home Depot. All the Home Depot plants were telling me was “you’re wayyyy too late, bro.” Our volunteers, however were whispering, “It’s OK, dude. It’s not too late!”

For the past 4 years, we’ve had a healthy crop of volunteer tomatoes, of which we let a half dozen have their heads. Some are Roma-like, some are cherry, some are medium-sized slicers. You never know. Lately, I had been thinking about tomato genetics because I read this: “Scientists Map the Tomato’s Genome.” We know Solanum lycopersicum has 35,000 genes on 12 chromosomes. Every tomato trait – flavor, germination date, size, days to harvest, membrane thickness, texture, color – is encoded on those chromosomes. I also know that hybrid tomatoes — which we like because of their disease resistance — revert to parents starting with the next generation.

Having read “Botany of Desire,” I knew that what looks like a dictatorship between us and plants — with us in the Kim Jong-Il rolle — is actually much more symbiotic. I also learned from my aadventures in Winter Sowing that a plant’s genes are way smarter than I am about plant culture. Trudi Davidoff figured this out a few years ago in an amazing insight into gardening, and has built an open-source movement around winter sowing. Not saying tomatoes are good winter sowing candidates, because they aren’t. But the takeaway is that plants know best. That’s what Michael Pollan, Trudi Davidoff and our volunteer tomatoes were saying.

Over the past 4 years we’ve grown these tomatoes: Black Cherry, Sungold, San Marzano, Super San Marzano, San Marzano 168 F1, San Marzano 15 F1, Sweet Aroma, Nepal, Cosatluto Fiorentino, Bellestar, Brandywine, Sweet 100, Roma VFN F1, EarlyGirl, Celebrity, Ace 55. Pretty good mix. So our volunteers are the offspring of those varieties. Since the parents of the F1 hybrids are trade secrets, we’ll never know for sure the provenance of these volunteers. I DO know that the Roma-shaped volunteers have been stellar. And I also know that any volunteers make their appearance around Memorial Day — or at least that’s when I notice them with their 1st or 2nd set of true leaves. I also know, thanks to Teh Google, that tomato fruiting is highly dependent on nighttime temperatures. The ideal range is 59-68F. And around here, the average minimum daily temperature for May is 52F. So while I lost 3 weeks of top growth, nothing much had been lost as far as fruiting.
What those little plants are telling me is that their genes have encoded for these conditions: mid-to-late spring germination, and harvest ready by Sept. 30 at the latest. In other words, generally speaking, the natural course for tomatoes at 42.43 N, 70.91 W, is to sprout in May and be done by early October. So starting over April 27 or so became no big deal.

And so far so good. Our second seedling crop is about at the same stage as our volunteers: sprouting their second set of true leaves They’re hardened off. And with an average days to maturity of about 70, we should be OK by end of July. Assuming the weather cooperates. And the blight stays away. And we find the tomato hornworms in time.

Apart from dreaming of things that money can’t buy, what’s on the agenda for the end of the weekend?

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  3. 3.

    BGinCHI

    Dear country people with extra produce: please send your city blog neighbors your fruits, your vegetables, your legumes, your wild mushrooms.

    In return we’ll bring Chicago-style politics to the entire nation.

    Thanks in advance.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Gorgeous photo! What’s the stripy one on the left (at about 8:00) called?

  6. 6.

    Yutsano

    @rikyrah: I have a black thumb too. Which is why my condo has no houseplants. I can even kill tillandsia, I’m that fatal to greenery.

  8. 8.

    Mike in NC

    Tonight’s big event is definitely the season finale of “Game of Thrones”.

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @BGinCHI:

    please send your city blog neighbors your fruits, your vegetables, your legumes, your wild mushrooms, your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…

    Completed.

  10. 10.

    lamh35

    FUCK Maureen Dowd! Refuse to link to Down directly, Booman has the link at his place.

    Casual Observation

    This is probably Maureen Dowd’s worst and most irresponsible column ever. Truly beneath contempt, and totally dismissive of any kind of stakes for anything she has ever pretended to care about.

  13. 13.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Yutsano:

    I killed the Ancestral Philodendron, begun (as a potted houseplant) shortly after the Civil War by my great-great-grandmother and maintained faithfully and healthily by every generation unto, and except, the present one.

  16. 16.

    PurpleGirl

    Two weeks or so ago I had a consultant in to test for the vibrations through my floors. After doing tests, we were sitting in my living room and he commented that if he had a terrace like mine, he’d grow tomatoes. It was about 5 pm and he could see the late afternoon light I have.

  17. 17.

    gaz

    Umm, well I’m hoping that most people have already fulfilled their weekend agenda, seeing as how it’s Sunday afternoon. Just sayin’ =)

  18. 18.

    Raven

    I had a busy weekend and I won’t bore you again with the details. A good friend came in from Iowa for the memorial and we had lunch and walked around the old Athens neighborhood. I am a Tiger fanatic but completely forgot about the tournament today. Turned it on and watched Tiger win!

  19. 19.

    gaz

    @Yutsano: Seconded. I leave it to my spouse. As for me, I prefer animals to plants. They’re not only cuddly, but they have the advantage of actually reminding you when they need food or water. =)

  22. 22.

    PurpleGirl

    @gaz: There’s still a few hours to go… I’m timing myself to head for dinner and then taking in a movie. Think I’ll go see Snow White and the Huntsman. (Can’t stay home with the vibrations having started about an hour ago.)

  23. 23.

    lamh35

    @lamh35: while I’m at it, FUCK Howard Fineman too.

    This is what Mr HuffPo tweeted this morning:

    ” Big AM news inside Beltway/punditocracy and with good reason: Maureen Dowd’s mournful take down of Obama signals start of media stampede.”

    “Also: looks like ClintonWorld has decided Obama is a loser: Rendell and Bubba team up to trash him. “

    “And a warning to Obama, who mesmerized most media. Churchill said of the Nazi-era Germans: “They’re either at your feet or at your throat.”

  28. 28.

    Anne Laurie

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    What’s the stripy one on the left (at about 8:00) called?

    The one that looks like a clenched fist? Chocolate Stripes — every one I’ve ever grown looks this weird, but they’re delicious.

    The stripey one in the center is Vintage Wine, which I’ve been unable to find for sale again, unfortunately, since it was also very tasty. The perfect pink specimen at 2:00 is a Rose de Berne, the golden cherrys below it are Sungolds, and the Roma-shaped ones below them are SomekindaRomas, but I’ve lost my notes & don’t remember the names of the rest…

    For a number of years, I included a couple Roma plants amid the heirlooms as “fallbacks”, in case everything else failed, but I’ve switched to Opalka as my favorite slow-roast-and-freeze type, Juliette for abundance over the longest season, and Carmello for a steady supply of reliably tomato-flavored tomatoes. I don’t know why Opalka isn’t better known — the plants are just about unkillable, and very prolific. Of course the fruits look like mutant red bananas, and their raw taste is only so-so, but when roasted (or, I’m told, canned) the sauce has an incredible richness and smells even more wonderful than regular home-cooked!

  29. 29.

    muddy

    To the topic of plants knowing what they want, consider asparagus. The advice had always been to dig a deep trench, double dig and all, plant them deep and then keep hilling up as they move to the surface. The first asparagus I grew took me 39 hours to dig the trench, 5′ wide x 20′ long, 2 feet deep. I took out the first foot, then double dug the 2nd foot, mixing in the removed soil with the amendments as I put it back in. Then got too busy to ever hill them up in subsequent years. The asparagus was quite happy and the crops were tremendous, both green and purple.

    Years pass, I’m in another house, and I read research by some ag-extension guy at I forget what university, who has the brilliant notion (and obvious in hindsight), why do the plants keep moving up if they are supposed to be so deep? So he digs 8″ and plants them, to great yields. I followed suit, and really it might only have been 6″, as I was older and more tired by this time. The asparagus was equally happy as the earlier bed, and of course I was much happier not having dug a damned big ass trench.

    Most people blanch at the thought of planting asparagus due to the impression that it is a lot harder than it really is. It’s a great crop, I have all the perennials in one area, asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries. I do nothing but pull a few weeds and harvest.

    I pick off asparagus beetles by hand, their defense is to fall to the ground when you nudge the branch they are on. So I hold a cupped hand under them, nudge the branch, catch them and then break them with my fingernail. It is especially satisfying to get them when they are fking. The asparagus foliage gets to be about 8′ high or more, and you can cut a lot off that to use with cutting flowers.

  34. 34.

    Southern Beale

    Hate to harsh everyone’s gardening mellow but this crap from senior Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom has me boiling mad.

    Sunday Mitt Romney’s senior campaign adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, said that social issues important to women, like contraception coverage and abortion rights, were “shiny objects” that were being used to distract voters. What an odd thing to say, after their every focus has been on undermining women’s rights instead of jobs during this economy.

    Yes, reproductive health issues are just important during the primaries, I’m so sorry, I forgot. So sorry that my uterus is in the way of the inevitable MItt Romney.

  35. 35.

    muddy

    I really like the Green Zebra tomatoes. My sister grows a lot of the black varieties, they taste great but they bother me because they look like they are rotten, so I don’t grow them. However I am not too proud to accept them as gifts.

  37. 37.

    Rhoda

    @lamh35: That would mean something if most Obama news stories weren’t negative. The jobs report just opened the door to go full blast “he can not win” and everyone knows this. Fortunately, the MSM can’t do much more damage. Btwn them and the billions from Citzens United, the Obama campaign has been preparing for trench warfare: see Stephanie Cutter and Kasim Reed this morning.

  38. 38.

    Corner Stone

    @muddy:

    catch them and then break them with my fingernail. It is especially satisfying to get them when they are fking.

    Remind me…

  40. 40.

    FlipYrWhig

    @lamh35: What is this “trashing” by Clintonistas referring to? It’d better not be the Clinton “sterling business record” bullshit, which Fox News was gleefully spinning to high heaven, from what I could tell from the TV over the elliptical machine at the gym.

  42. 42.

    wenchacha

    I, too, have depended on the kindness of my volunteer tomato plants. This last year was not a great one for my garden-fu, and I didn’t get to the heirloom plant sale I like. I bought plants from a couple different locals and Home Depot. I’ll get more volunteers next year.

    Two years ago, I transplanted wild strawberries from my folks’ cabin in PA. They are flourishing in a large planter out front.

    Happy gardening, to all who love it.

  43. 43.

    piratedan

    @David Koch: and yet, he handled everyday idiocy and mental vapor locks with charm and aplomb…. despite a certain smarminess, he was still more enjoyable to watch than the likes of Bob Eubanks.

  44. 44.

    Anne Laurie

    @Southern Beale: Eric Fehrnstrom is Mitt Romney’s id, the Karl Rove to his Dubya. I wish more people knew what a professional jackhole Willard has chosen as his designated representative, because it might jolt some of the proudly low-informtion crowd into reconsidering the lazy Mitt-seems-like-such-a-nice-man trope.

  45. 45.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Anne Laurie: Who thinks Mitt Romney is such a nice man? There’s nothing remotely nice about him. _Maybe_ he seems like he wouldn’t say “fuck” or “shit.” That’s about it.

  46. 46.

    David Koch

    @piratedan: Yeah, I like him. I don’t know if you remember this, but he was really good on the 70s game show “Match Game”. I’m surprised he didn’t do more television after he left Feud.

  47. 47.

    Hill Dweller

    @FlipYrWhig: Melissa Harris Perry, who has been a huge disappointment since taking the MSNBC gig, told me Willard was nice.

  48. 48.

    Linda Featheringill

    @lamh35:

    Maureen Dowd:

    Relax. Maureen is a valuable resource because while she is frequently quite accurate in listing arguments for her conclusion, SHE ALWAYS DRAWS THE WRONG CONCLUSION.

    Think about that. How useful is it? [A: Very useful.]

    Besides, Obama just might be harder to destroy than Rasputin.

    :-)

  51. 51.

    David Koch

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t get it either. The only thing I can think of is that the Village has always overreacted to everything Clinton says. There’s something about the Clintons (perhaps being of the same age leads pundits to project their self-hated on to Bubba) that has always driven the Beltway insane.

  53. 53.

    Anne Laurie

    @muddy:

    I really like the Green Zebra tomatoes. My sister grows a lot of the black varieties, they taste great but they bother me because they look like they are rotten, so I don’t grow them.

    We’re opposites — I’ve tried several different kinds of green tomatoes over the years, but none of them have ever impressed me flavor-wise, and they never do well in my planters. (Even tried “Heirloom Great White” last year on a whim-at-the-nursery buy, but the impressively sized fruit tasted like Nothing At All.) On the other hand, I’ve never found a “black” tomato that I (and my supertaster Spousal Unit) haven’t liked. This year it’s Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Black Prince, Black Cherry, Black Plum, Cherokee Chocolate (that’s new), Chocolate Stripes, Sara Black, and Japanese Trifele… also Indigo Rose, which is supposed to be blueberry-colored. Along with my beloved White Currants, Kelloggs Breakfast (yellow-peach), Pineapple, Golden Sweet Pear, Golden Honeybunch, and an experimental Mr Stripey, not to mention Isis Candy (striped gold-on-orange), Big Pink, and pink-blushed Rose de Berne. Ordinary “tomato red” tomatoes need special qualities to earn a space in my precious limited sunlit area!

  55. 55.

    FlipYrWhig

    @David Koch: I think the pundit set keeps proving itself to be colossally stupid and extremely poor at interpreting language. Clinton says things about how there is such thing as _good_ private equity — does not, mind you, say that Romney practiced it — and suddenly there’s disarray everywhere and the kind of political circle-jerk where everyone has someone else’s dick in one hand and a knife in the other.

  56. 56.

    beltane

    @David Koch: I’m not a big fan of picking on the Baby Boomers in general, but in the specific case of the relationship between the Clintons and the Village there does seem to be a very large element of Beltway Boomer angst driving the weirdness.

  57. 57.

    muddy

    @Anne Laurie: Oh, I love the Kellogg’s breffuss tomato and the Pineapple too. The yellow pear is nice, eaten as is, or if you want to skin them you just have to pinch the top and the middle pops right out the end. I use the attachment on the Kitchen Aid mixer to take out seeds and skins and have put up a lot of tomatoes that way, it really is so easy peasy. None of that blanching BS.

  58. 58.

    FlipYrWhig

    @beltane: And somehow it ping-pongs between “That devil Clinton, he’s incorrigible” to “That charming Clinton, I wish we had him back.”

  59. 59.

    Culture of Truth

    Tomato Listener: speak to me tomato

    Tomato: I’m poisonous – no really I swear i’m deadly

  60. 60.

    Culture of Truth

    Clinton will be appearing in person with Obama at a fundraiser in Harlem. Screw Howie

  61. 61.

    artem1s

    @muddy:

    I love Green Zebras but I don’t think any of those seedlings are going to make it this year.

  62. 62.

    Suffern ACE

    @Culture of Truth: I’m not certain what Ed Rendell has to do with this either. From what I can tell, he said Hillary will run in 2016 and that he’d love to be her campaign manager (well, Ed, that’s nice. Do you need a job or something?)

  64. 64.

    Narcissus

    Seems like every time I hear something about Ed Rendell I come away thinking he’s an idiot.

  65. 65.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Narcissus: I lived in Philly when he was the mayor, and I liked him fine then. Of course what sticks in my mind was a hilariously atrocious picture of him jumping into a public swimming pool. He was a dead ringer for George The Animal Steele.

  68. 68.

    David Koch

    @beltane: The Village media is nothing but nerds. In fact they love calling the annual WH correspondence dinner “Nerd Prom”. Matthews has often said, Washington is like a permanent high school. Clinton is the guy they wanted to be in high school: the smooth, talented, popular kid, who got lotsa women. Hell, the media even dubbed him “Elvis” (an icon straight outta their shared 1950s youth). The media, instead, were Potsie and Ralph Mouth in high school. So their deep seated, visceral, teenage inferiority complex/resentment/jealously just boils over when they see “Elvis”.

    Obama. Meh. He’s the boring history course they had to take. He’s Abe Lincoln, a historical image with a better face.

  69. 69.

    gogol's wife

    @lamh35:

    I read the first sentence of Dowd this morning, started blowing my top, and decided life is too short. I’m so happy I didn’t read it.

  70. 70.

    muddy

    @FlipYrWhig: Reminds me of this song from Dessa, Matches to Paper Dolls:

    I changed the locks
    But your key, your key’s still working
    Can’t train a moth, I guess
    Each beast gets her burden
    So we circle this old flame
    Too much at stake
    But too late to change
    My nerves are shot
    My reserves are exhausted
    It’s a tired plot, but we bought it.
    ….

    Built like a moth you see
    I still get chills when you talk to me
    But the years pass by now
    In twos and threes
    These thrills ain’t as cheap
    As they used to be
    …..

    If you’re asking, I can’t say no
    Just one more chapter,
    Our book won’t close
    And I know it’s madness
    To play these odds
    It’s like giving matches to paper,
    To paper dolls

    youtube.com/watch?v=CK8Jys3K6rI&feature=related

  71. 71.

    FlipYrWhig

    @muddy: “It’s a tired plot, but we bought it” seems highly apropos.

    ETA: I kind of collect songs with interesting image patterns, and that one is doing something cool with books and paper, as well as fire… I’m saving it for later, thanks a bunch!

  72. 72.

    muddy

    @FlipYrWhig: I’ve had Dessa for a soundtrack the last few weeks along with a certain project I was working on, her songs keep jumping to the front of my mind. Happy to share.

  73. 73.

    FlipYrWhig

    @muddy: A song that I don’t particularly like as a song but that does unusual (and creepy) things with language and imagery is John Mayer’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” But I want more up-to-date examples than that, so, thx.

  74. 74.

    jnfr

    Tomorrow will be the first day in weeks that I don’t get up with work to do on refinishing our deck. We are done! I am thrilled! Or I would be if I weren’t exhausted.

    Must get the tomato plants into the ground. Seriously, it’s getting late and they are gorgeous plants that deserve better than I’ve had time for this month.

  75. 75.

    brettvk

    @muddy: I never saw an asparagus beetle until I planted a bed, and suddenly I was hosting every one of the little bastards west of the Mississippi, and their icky little grubs too. I took advantage of the dropping behavior by holding a coffeecan full of soapy water underneath each frond as I groomed them. They’re like Japanese beetles in that they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time mating.

  76. 76.

    mainmati

    @Valdivia: Also done as an absolutely luscious TV episode on PBS. Apples, potatoes and cannabis were demonstrated and how those plants so totally schooled humans. We live in Silver Spring, MD just outside DC and have had a multiple purpose garden for a long time. It’s always good to maintain the compost or other natural soil amendments but I agree that the volunteers in our garden play an important role in the garden. For us, they are tomatoes (indeterminate), pumpkins and a variety of herbs.

  77. 77.

    muddy

    @FlipYrWhig: I had never heard his music but kept seeing him pop up in rags in the checkout aisle acting like a douche, so then I never wanted to hear his music because he seemed creepy. I don’t keep up with modern music much but my 30 year old son turns me on to things he thinks I will like.

    I had a great experience recently with music on a road trip. The CD player broke, so I plugged an iPod shuffle into the tape deck. I chose the whole 2GB of songs I liked for driving. It was great because I never had to rely on the radio, nor did I have to choose a CD and keep changing them out. So every song that comes on is one I love, but if not just right for the moment then hit Next. Every song is the right song.

    I also used a GPS for the first time, I have a tendency to get off track by missing turnoffs due to trucks blocking the signs in the right lane as I blast past in the left, or me lost in thought and not reading them, leading to backtracks. Between the gps and the shuffle, all I had to do was drive, but not really to plan or decide. It was a totally different traveling experience than I have ever had, and I loved it. 1000 miles never went by so quickly and happily.

  78. 78.

    FlipYrWhig

    @muddy: The upshot of “Your Body” is basically having a childlike sense of wonder… about sex. So. Gross.

  79. 79.

    muddy

    @brettvk: Lily beetles are along the same lines. And their demon spawn cover themselves with their own poop in huge quantity so that they don’t get eaten by predators. I generally have no problem squishing bugs with my fingers, but that mess is like trying to squish a slug. Hate them.

    The asparagus grubs are pretty messy, but don’t learn the dropping off trick until they are quite large. I try to find all the eggs as fast as I can. No one in my neighborhood has asparagus, I don’t know where the damn bugs come from and how they find it. I don’t like to put poison on the asparagus as it is perennial and I think it might build up, but I pyrethrin the shit out of the lily beetles. Well, the ones I have not broken while they are fking. That’s just too good to give up. I also spray the ground underneath the lilies as well, and have had some success with that.

  81. 81.

    Corner Stone

    @muddy:

    Well, the ones I have not broken while they are fking. That’s just too good to give up.

    This was what I was talking about. Remind me to not touch your fking garden.

  82. 82.

    muddy

    @Corner Stone: Don’t worry, you will never get in my fking garden, because you hurt my feefees a long time ago by saying I should be on a reality show. Now that’s just mean.

  83. 83.

    Corner Stone

    @muddy: Anybody who has an actual saying about being the fois gras goose should be on TV. You’re selfishly denying the rest of us.
    That’s all I’m saying.

  84. 84.

    mclaren

    …a fair amount of it involves throwing the students into the deep end of the pool, and then making sure they have enough invisible scaffolding to climb out OK on the other side.

    Current cognitive neuroscience suggests this is the best way to learn a subject. FWIW.

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