$20 Tomato and a Home Grown Salad

So here it is! My very first, and likely my only, Red Brandywine tomato of the season. Why $20 you ask? Because I bought the tomato plants (there were 5 plants in one container with 2 of them having 2 major stems - so 7 vines) from Home Depot for $14, then I bought a wire tomato basket for the plants to grow up inside of, then I bought some twine to secure the plant to the wire frame. All in with tax $20. So WTF happened? Why only one tomato? I was well on my way to having another 8 tomatos when that wind storm hit Calgary and my poor tomato plant got bashed to hell. I had to remove about 90% of it's leaves because they were either dead or dying. I lost 2 out of 7 vines as well. The next biggest tomato currently on my plant is the green one in my next picture.  Needless to say I am not hopeful that there will be much more than one tomato for me this season.

So those who know stuff about tomatoes are probably wondering why I only have 8 tomatoes on 5 vines?  That really blows, but the reason I suspect is that there aren't enough pollinators that venture up to the fourth story of a Condo to do the work.  The 8 I have are likely wind pollinated and/or they are the ones I tried hand pollinating.  It also could be that the Red Brandywine variety has thick tightly closed flowers that may need a certain sized bug to pollinate them.  I suspect this may be the case because I had some dwarf Red Robins and Yellow Canaries growing and they seem to be getting pollinated well.  So either their smaller, more delicate flower/pollen carries more easily in the wind, or the fruit fly infestation I had going in one of my planters allowed for those little buggers to do some positive work in exchange for how annoying they were.

In any case the one tomato has been consumed and throughly enjoyed.  I don't know if it was $20 worth of enjoyment, but it definitely had a richer flavor than store bought tomatoes and it was far meatier.  I think this is a trait of the Red Brandywine tomato.  What I mean by meatier is that it had almost no fluid/seed in it.  It was about 95% solid, juicy, tasty tomato.  I will definitely try my hand at tomatoes next year!

Next is my Home grown Salad.  It is a bit spartan being only 2 ingredients: Yellow Canary Cherry tomatoes and Butter King lettuce.  But hey, next year I will throw some romaine and spinach in there; maybe some peas and a radish and I will have as good a salad as any.  Best of all the farm to plate travel distance will be less than 5 meters!

Holy Yellow Tomatos Batman!

Oh yah! My first harvest of yellow canaries! Small sweet and bite sized. Yummmm. Over the next couple weeks I look forward to having them fresh off the vine. I have about 3-4 plants and I think I have 2 red robins, but I'm not sure anymore because I was lazy with the labeling. The seeds came from Caseys Heirloom Tomatoes and I was very impressed with the health of the plants considering this is my first season growing anything at all. Thanks Casey!

Next year I plan on having some non-dwarf varieties and grow the big ones. There's nothing like fresh tomatoes I have to say. What you get at the grocery store is 'good enough' but for real mouth watering goodness, grow your own! Think of it this way; it's like the difference between good home cooking and McDonalds. Sure Rotten Ronnies will fill you up, taste pretty good and is quick and cheap but nothing beats a good home cooked meal.

The Great Adventure Begins!

Okay so I did my first plantings today (okay I actually planted my Lemon Balm on Sunday but it was well established in a pot so it's nothing to write home about). I planted my first radish seedlings today (just 3) and I will continue plant them as the sprout because technically you should plant them in the ground to avoid damaging the main root but I am experimenting with sprouting them in my germination kit and planting them as soon as they break ground. I also planted a tomato plant. It probably won't survive any cold snaps (tomato's are not very cold hardy) but I'm not happy with it because I started it way too early before I had my germination kit, and it got way too tall and thin (that's what happens to plants apparently when they don't get enough light). So if it stays warm and it survives, cool. If not, well it was not meant to be.

So what's this germination kit I'm talking about? It looks like this:

Now this may not look like much, but it's a start and when I buy 2 more lamps for the bottom 2 racks, I will be able to start 296 seedlings at a time from this tiny little setup.

The mini-greenhouse cost me $32 with tax.  There are two square 40mm x 25 Jiffy greenhouses ($20) and one long 35mm x 24 Jiffy greenhouse ($8) on each shelf. I also bought two 2 foot full spectrum T5 fluorescent lightsfor $25 each. So total my set up (once I buy my two lower lights) will cost just under $250. Now as I said, this will start 296 seedlings at a time so that's not bad (under a dollar per seedling). The peat pellets cost roughly 13 cents each and each bulb consumes 24 watts. So once you get the gear, starting seeds will be CHEAP each subsequent year.

So here is a little picture of the set up. You can see the two square mini-greenhouses in the front and the longer one behind. Even though the rack is technically a greenhouse itself, I choose to buy the mini-greenhouses instead of open trays to allow me to plant/water/thin one set of seedlings without disturbing the temperature and humidity of another. Don't know if that's necessary but hey, never hurts to be careful. Oh this whole set up is in my condo right next to my balcony door, so that's why I was worried about temperature.

Now I think my lights are too far away from the greenhouses because as you can see in this picture, my seedlings are really long and spindly. They were about one foot away from the surface of the peat, but looks like they should have been closer. Right now my lights are fixed in place, but I'm going to modify them this weekend to be adjustable up and down to hopefully avoid this in the future.

Alright already, so what am I planting already? Well, since I'm worried about the cold I'm planting things that will hopefully take temperatures near freezing. I have already started radishes, broccoli, asian mustard, onion, spinach, parsnip, a lettuce mix and Rocket (Wild Grazia). I will be planting the radishes and parsnips as soon as they break ground to avoid damaging the tap root. I have yet to start my Snow wind sugar peas, sputnik Arugula and Parmex Carrots. Also, I bought a $10 thermometer/hygrometer with a hi/low memory and put it in the hoophouse near the seedlings. I'm going to track and post the hi/low temps as often as I can to see what my seedlings are going through. Another little experiment is I planted a wack of swiss chard just outside my raise bed to see what happens to seeds that aren't in the hoophouse. Now swiss chard is supposed to be one of the most hardy lettuce like plants so we'll see what happens.

So what's the plan with the Dirt?

Okay so we have a place where we can potentially keep the frost and cold off of our plants but is a thin sheet of plastic really enough if the temperature drops to -5 °C (23 °F) for a few days? Well no and that is a concern here because in our area, Calgary especially, there are wild swings of temperature in spring and fall. For those not from here, we are talking temperatures like 8°C-20°C (46°F-68°F) for two or three weeks where you start to think that you won't have any more cold weather, and then all of a sudden you get snow and 3-5 days of -2°C-14°C (28°F-57°F). This is why most people don't garden in early spring, it can be quite an emotional roller coaster ending with loosing your entire garden if you screw up.

But no matter, I'm a gardening newb. I have no pride or grand expectations of success. This year is purely about learning. So in the spirit of learning what is the plan to deal with mother natures mood swings? Well there are two things I want to try.

1) Heavy straw mulch.

2) Milk jugs filled with water as heat sinks.

The heavy straw mulch will act two fold. First to keep the baking heat of midday off the soil should we have some warmer weather and to trap moisture near the soil (rather than creating a wet sauna inside the hoophouse). Second, to insulate the ground and trap the heat that is radiating from the soil nearer the surface where the young plants need it most. Now this isn't like a warm blanket, it may only change the microclimate around the seedlings by 1°C or maybe half a degree, but when you are talking about frost that may be the difference between life and death.

Second is to fill 4L milk jugs with water, paint them black and use them in place of rocks to pin down the plastic and to place amongst the seedlings. What does this do? Hopefully it will act as a heat sink. During the hot day, the water will absorb heat from inside the hoophouse and from the sun, keeping the inside cooler than it otherwise would be. Then during the night the water will slowly release the heat warming the air slightly. Again, the effect may only be 1°C but this combined with the mulch and hardy plants (more on those in the next post) will hopefully keep me growing until the weather evens out around early summer.

Wish me luck!

The beginnings of a green thumb

So for those of you who know me, no this does not mean I have had an unfortunate case of leprosy. I am actually planting a garden this year. Where might this fateful land come from considering I live in a high-rise condo? Well my friend Mike and I have decided to get a plot at his local community garden and share it. Unfortunately the community garden in down town is located in a spot that is surrounded by high-rises and right next to a busy road; not exactly my idea of a zen location. It works out well this way because now there will be 2 people caring for the spot which increases the likelihood that it will not remain a barren patch of dirt. We wanted to start planting right away but since here in Calgary we live in zone 3a/b, normally you don't see any growing until at least mid-late May. Well I am impatient and I want to start now! So I convinced Mike to help me try what's called a Cold-Frame hoophouse. Essentially it's something like a mini-greenhouse. It looks like this:

Now how much money/time does this little gem take to make? Until today I could confidently say "I have absolutely no idea. My guess would be $75 and a couple of hours." If you listened to me then, you would be wrong on both accounts. The cost depends on the size of your plot. Obviously the larger it is, the more materials you need and the more sturdy your materials need to be. But for this roughly 4 foot by 8 foot plot (thats 122cm by 239cm) all you need is some vinyl siding strips (they are roughly 2 inches wide, I think they are used to finish off the end of the vinyl siding on houses), some painters plastic, some garden twist ties (the kind that come in a spool that you can cut to the length you want) and some rocks. The rocks we got from the river (price = free) and the rest of the materials cost just under $60 with Tax at our hardware store. It took 45 min to cut and assemble (yes we kept track of time).

The beauty of this design over others I've seen on the net using PVC pipe or wood is two fold:

1) It's cheaper

2) Requires less tools to assemble

3) It's fast and super easy to erect. (lol, I got to use erect in a sentence!)

The vinyl siding comes with holes down the length of one side so no need for drilling holes (like in wood/pvc). The vinyl is much lighter than the other two materials so you don't need nails, screws or heavy wire to hold it together. The gardeners twist ties are more than enough to lash everything together and it's easier to work with on a cooler day in spring than string/twine. Essentially the only tool you need is a sturdy pair of scissors (preferably tin snips, it will make cutting the vinyl a breeze). Once you have cut the vinyl to the right length (in our case it was 90 inches or 230cm) you push one end into the ground, bend the other end over and push it into the ground. You do this for all of the curved ribs, then you attach the horizontal stabilizing bars using the gardening wire. Then you cut a length of painters clear plastic (it comes in thin, medium and heavy thickness; we used medium.) and cover the frame pinning it down with rocks. Now you have a mini non-permanent greenhouse over your garden that you can remove once you are sure you are past the last frost date. This will keep cold wind and light frost off your hardy early spring plants. I have some further ideas about what to do on this plot and what to plant but that will be for another post.

Happy Growing!