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Have you had a real tomato recently?  If you don't grow them yourself they are difficult to find.
This time of year my garden is full of them, enough to give to neighbors with plenty left over for the food dryer.  These can never be commercial tomatoes. They have a short shelf life once picked and are the very best eaten right out of the garden.  I often cut a 3/4" slab from the center of the tomato and the rest goes to the dryer!  Nothing better than a BLT or a hamburger with a thick slice of tomato!  I experimented this year and grew some in 7 gallon pots and they produced well but offered fewer tomatoes.  Worth a try if you have limited space.  The advantage of growing your own garden is this is the only way to get these tomatoes and you know what is in them.  We eat far more poisons and pesticides and GMOs than we would care to know about.

Harvest Time

This is the time of year my garden turns into a jungle and produces more than we can eat.  I feel like a millionaire and the Powerball isn't until tonight!  Heirloom tomatoes, especially Cherokee Purple and Black Krim simply cannot be bought.  They have a shelf life from perfect ripeness to way too mushy of just three days.  No tomato has the flavor and texture and aroma that can replace the homegrown.
I am popular with the neighbors this time of yer and wen I have too many to give away I get the dryer out.  Today I sliced and diced and cut up about 25 pounds of tomatoes, what it takes to fill the dryer.

My Tomatoes are UP!

 this is from last year

Three years ago when I had Cancer and was under going chemo-therapy (chemo-torture!) I still planted tomatoes.  I planted them last weekend and they are up already, a beginning of their life and a milestone in mine.  I have planted a garden every single year since I was about twelve years old and saved tomato seeds from previous seasons for about the last 20 years.  I use Heritage seeds and prefer the darker varieties, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim and other varieties that you can't get at the store.
Store bought tomatoes have the taste and texture of apples compared to the home grown varieties.
They are picked green and colored in a room full of gas and never allowed to naturally ripen.  A real tomato is juicy on the inside and can be smelled from across the room.  They are packed in flavor.
   One year I went a little crazy and planted 135 plants, devoted my entire garden to them.  Now I limit them to 20 to 25 plants and give the rest away to neighbors and friends.  I start about 50 to 75 in my greenhouse every year.  Mostly I dry them in a dehydrator I built about 25 years ago.  I dry  them to the consistency of potato chips and give lots of those away when I have a good season.  I like them best as a chip of tomato and a slice of cheese on a cracker offering an explosion of flavor to the pallet, but they can be used in salads and soups also, or reconstituted with balsam vinegar  and a little olive oil.
Commercial dried tomatoes are made from commercial tomatoes and are not the same thing at all.
   If you don't have a garden a tomato plant will do well in a five gallon bucket as long as you tend it and it has good composted soil.  My plants get about seven feet tall so staking them is important.  Put it in a sunny location and make holes for drainage.
   Saving seeds is easy.  Just squish them out on a paper towel and put them on a shelf to dry.  In the Spring I just tear off a seed with a piece of the towel and plant it.

I put slate over plywood where there are no windows.

   I have a great greenhouse I built about 40 years ago.  It has a concrete floor and concrete walls (concrete block would work) about three feet up.   This great foundation is why my greenhouse has lasted so long but it also acts as a heat sink and store the heat built up during the day.  I can heat my greenhouse when necessary using only a little 100 watt heater, set on low at that.  It has a big fan in the eave that turns on automatically when the temperature rises over 100 degrees which happens all the time when the sun is out, even in the winter!

I love Spring, another season, another year.  I am always after that "perfect tomato"!

You can see more of my garden HERE

Real Tomatoes!

Garden is In!

Once my garden is plotted and planed and tilled and prepped the planting can begin.  Tomatoes that have been in the green house for a couple months are sensitive to the full sun and must be shaded for a few days to allow them the strength to face the full sun.  I have seen beautiful green plants turn pale and fry in an early Spring sun.
   It is a lot of bending and digging and working with my hands and my whole body aches!  But my garden is in and by May 13th, a full two weeks earlier than last year and they are not predicting the torrential Spring Rains we had last year.  This appears, so far, to be a great Tomato Season, much like it was three years ago when I got tomatoes by the wheel barrel load.  Wouldn't that be nice?  Being a farmer is a bit like going to Reno, a gamble every time.  The hot weather crops will do well or the cold weather crops, you can't have it both ways.
I plant both and after doing all I can to ensure a great season, pretty much hope for the best.
   I have tried corn again this season although last year it was pretty pathetic and didn't produce much.  In a good year it is my second favorite vegetable from the garden, next to my tomatoes which will always be King with me.  Corn needs to be "knee high by the Forth of July" here in Oregon to produce any yield at all.  In a good year you would swear the corn was grown in sugar!  Even bought from a local farmer it is just not the same as picked fresh from the garden.  Nothing is actually.  We have all had fresh home grown tomatoes and know there is no comparison to what you can buy from the store but carrots are the same way, they are supposed to be bursting with flavor!  Head lettuce has developed a bad reputation simply because the variety you get from the store has no flavor, but it shouldn't be that way.  A bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, that wonderful lunch of kings should always be made from fresh head lettuce right out of the garden.
   I could go on and on about my tomatoes!  I  baby them from the beginning, saving the seeds from year to year and planting the dark, almost black heirloom varieties which can grow over seven feet tall.  Oh, I plant the big red ones too, the brandy wines and beef stakes and huge two pound yellow ones, but the deep red, purplish black have the most flavor and I plant most of these.  Different colors are different flavors and are great in salads and any kind of cooking but my very favorite is dried tomatoes, dried to the point of potato chips.  These can be rehydrated with olive oil and a balsam vinegar or added to soups but my very favorite is a simple tomato chip with a bit of cheese on a cracker.  It is a burst of flavor like you wouldn't believe!  Store bought dried tomatoes are not the same because they use the same flavorless varieties sold in the stores.
   So, what is in my garden this year?   Here is the list:

                                                         25 Tomato Plants
                                                         short row of potatoes (same family as tomatoes!)
                                                         Peppers, about 20 plants
                                                         Green Beans
                                                         Cabbage
                                                         Broccoli
                                                         Brussel Sprouts
                                                         Carrots
                                                         Lettuce (several varieties)
                                                         Leeks, Onions and Green Onions
                                                         Cucumbers, three varieties
                                                         Zucchini, Yellow Crook Neck
                                                         Two varieties of Winter Squash
                                                         and here and there, like a painter gone mad, Sun Flowers!

There are actually flowers all over, everywhere in my garden, some in the ground along the paths and others in pots at the Garden Entry and at the very back of my garden.  I probably have 30 five gallon sized flower pots scattered here and there in and around my garden, some on the ground and others sitting proudly seven feet in the air.  My garden is my best canvas and like any good artist I will intend your vision, your experience while there.
    Soil preparation was the earlier blog if you missed it.


                                             

BLT

I had my first bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich yesterday and there is no finer meal.  The season is late this year, about a full month late, but I have had my eye on a particular tomato for this past week.

   Most produce from my garden is picked in the early morning hours, before the heat from the sun and while still crisp from the cool of the night.  Not the perfect tomato.  A midday picking after the fruit has been warmed through, kissed and loved by the sun is best.

   My plants are vibrant now, tall and green and proudly displaying their gifts to me.  The tomatoes are getting big, some turning a bit of color, offering a hint of a bountiful crop.  You can't buy these tomatoes.  There is no relationship between store bought and what can be grown in the home garden.  I have 27 plants, nine varieties, mostly heirloom, some black, some purple, stripped, yellow and red.  Each has its own distinct flavor, subtle or dramatic and you can smell them from 20 feet away.

   I have told you I like to dry them and if the season continues to be good ALL of you can expect a gift of dried tomatoes from me this year!  That's is the advantage of not having too many "followers"!

"Cherokee Purple"

   What I can't send you is a fresh tomato sandwich.  Just a simple one with a slice of cheese and a huge slice of tomato or the "complete meal", the BLT! or maybe a hamburger where the tomato slice is bigger than the hamburger itself?  I wish I could describe this better!  It is a burst of flavor like you wouldn't believe.

   I was so intent on making and eating this sandwich that I forgot the camera!  I forgot to take a picture of it.  But this is just the beginning!  There will be many more and other things to make.  I will keep you posted and if you should ever be near, please stop and visit and you can taste these for yourself.

My whole garden, my shop and what I do is HERE.http://www.ArtWanted.com/slate

Yes, We Have Some Tomatoes!

 My First Tomatoes!

Finally, almost exactly one month late, the first tomatoes are ripening!  I have nine varieties and a total of 27 plants.  Some get only 2' tall and others, over eight feet tall.  Some are Black.

Many are purple, some yellow, orange, and of course, some are red.

   At the moment most are green.  The weather is good now, better than most of the country, low '80's every day, but it took a long time getting here.  One of the coldest, wettest Springs on record.  I lost two plants to early blight and chopped branches off others to try to save them.

   Can you imagine the anxiety in being a farmer?  Too wet, too dry, too cold, too hot, seldom "just right".

   A lot of the tomatoes for the fresh market are grown in greenhouses these days.  They can be grown in Iceland now!

There is something about the warmth from the Sun, how that marries into a tomato to offer the perfect fruit. 

   Tomatoes are related to potatoes and are part of the "deadly nightshade family"!  Such sweetness from a plant thought to be poison!  A native of South America, the world didn't know much about tomatoes until the 19th Century.  I feel sorry for the Kings and Queens that never had a "BLT"!

or just a tomato and cheese sandwich.

   I like the color combination of my different varieties, makes salsa pretty and each color is a different flavor.

August tomatoes are the best.  It is the warmth at night that is important to the tomato.  I am hoping for a late Summer.  The cool Fall evenings can drain the flavor from a good tomato.

Tomatoes ready for the dryer!

   Until I discovered food dehydration and dried tomatoes I canned them all.

   Most commercial dried tomatoes are the same as store-bought tomatoes.  They are grown from a variety designed to ripen all at once and be picked by a machine.  Their genetics are for perfect roundness and firmness.  They are picked green and allowed to turn red in a room full of gas.  They never ripen, just turn red and have the bite of an apple.

   My tomatoes and my dried tomatoes have a full flavor that is difficult to believe.  You can do a million things with dried tomatoes but what I like best is just on a cracker with a piece of cheese and to give them away.

   It is one of those "art things", a gift that can't be bought.

More of my garden is HERE

The Art in a Tomato

 This is from last year but I am hoping that this year will be better!

As many of you know my first love is my garden.  I have a million flowers in my garden but what I am really after is "the perfect tomato"!  There is nothing better than a home grown, sun rippened tomato, just picked off the vine.
   I grow mostly heirloom varieties and start them all from seed.  It never fails to amaze me that from one tiny seed, well nourished and taken care of, so many tomatoes can be picked!

 Be nice and talk to them!

   There are tricks to getting that perfect tomato.  They love to be transplanted and while still young I will do this several times, always into bigger pots and each time deeper and deeper.  All the little hairs along the stems will become roots and that is a key to growing great tomatoes.  The final planting into the garden I will bury half the plant into the ground.  The deeper the better.
   Tomatoes will develop a lot of side shoots, little suckers than need to be clipped off giving more strength to the main vine.  Heirlooms will get tall, over seven feet tall if they are supported and I have ornamental iron all over my garden, very strong supports indeed!
    My garden is organic, pesticide and herbacide free and I don't use chemical fertilizers which is sort of like meth for plants.  I add lime every year to get a proper balance in the ph of the soil.  Organic soils are almost always a little on the acid side.  I also add bone meal, blood meal (tomatoes are carnivors!), kelp meal, coffee grounds and egg shells and most anything else I can find at a reasonable price.  Forty years in the same place creates wonderful soil.

 About to go into the dryer!

   Don't let the soil dry out.  Only two things will cause a tomato to split, not enough calcium in the soil and allowing the soil to dry out between waterings.  That is confusing to the plant.  Without water the tomato thinks the season is over and it will stop its effort at growing and turn to rippening instead.  Then, if you add water, it will begin to grow again and that will cause the splitting.  I keep the soil evenly damp until towards th end of the season when I stop watering altogether.

Two years ago it was the perfect season!  I dry more tomatoes than I preserve in jars and I sent them as gifts all over the world.
Keep your fingers crossed, maybe this year you will get some!
More of my garden is HERE

Food Dryer



 This is the food dehydrator I built about 25 years ago.

  I have the plans to build this dryer but they are on a pdf file and for some reason I am having difficulty in creating a link for you to find it. That means I can't do it.  But I will send them to you personally if you are interested.
This is a pretty serious tool, costing about $100 in materials but mine is 25 years old and still working perfectly.  The heat source if from 12 60 watt lightbulbs and it requires a small fan and thermostat.  It has five shelves made of window screens and can dry about a five gallon bucket of tomatoes at one time.

 Seven varieties of heirloom tomatoes

You can buy dried tomatoes at the store but not like you can do yourself!

The year before last was a terrific season for tomatoes and I sent dried tomatoes all over the world.  I dry them to the point of potato chips and there are lots of ways to prepare them for eating.  My favorite by far is nothing.  Just as is, on a cracker with a bit of cheese.  It is an explosion of flavor in your mouth
like you wouldn't believe.  The problem with store bought dried tomatoes is they are from store bought tomatoes, picked green and flavorless.

 it takes about 5 days to dry a batch

  You can also rehydrate them with a dash of wine and some olive oil and put them is salads.  You could cook with them and put them in soups but that is such a waste of a perfect product that I never do it.  They are just too good on their own.



 "Cherokee Purple"

     You can buy little kitchen top dryers at your local hardware store for smaller batches and maybe to see beforehand if you would like to make this bigger model.  I seldom can my tomatoes anymore as drying them is so much easier, less work and not so messy.

  I am hoping for a good season this year but the weather is so strange.  We got a dusting of snow only two days ago in the nearby hills and it is still frosting at night!
More pics of my garden HERE and I will try once again to link to the plans for the food dryer HERE.http://courtneymeier.artifex.org/dehydrator/
Cool, that worked this time!!!  These are great plans for a perfect dryer!