Grow Better Veggies

The Winners of the Class Tuitions Contests Are...

I run contests every time I send out a newsletter (I know I keep saying that, but some of you haven't gotten the news yet!).  Only my newsletter subscribers can enter.  In my last installment, a couple of weeks ago, I promised to give away a couple of class tuitions to one of my upcoming gardening (and chicken) classes.  The winners get to pick which class they want to come to.  Click here if you want to subscribe to my free newsletter and get in on these contests.  Click here if you want to see a list of my classes.

The winner of a full class tuition goes to Annette T. of San Jose, who wanted to win a seat in my chicken class.  Congrats, Annette!  You'll be receiving three chicks, a starter brooder kit, and two hours of learning how to care for these babies, with the end result being fresh eggs for you and your family!

The winner of a buddy seat tuition to a class in which they've enrolled, is Diana C. of Santa Cruz.  Diana greatly increased her chances of winning the buddy seat because she enrolled in four of my classes.  She gets to bring a friend for free to any one of those classes.

My next class, Grow the Earliest Tomatoes, is this coming Saturday, February 2, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. here at the farm in Ben Lomond.  I'll be showing folks how to get their tomatoes to fruit a whole month early, with some hard work and perseverance.  Class participants get to take home 6 already growing plants of my proven earliest maturing tomato varieties.  There are a few spots left in that class, so email me at loveapplefarm@gmail.com if you'd like to enroll.  The class costs $30, plus a materials fee of $18.

In the meantime, congratulations to our two winners, and we'll see you soon!

Grow your own Tomato Transplants from Seed

Learn how to sow and care for young tomato seedlings. Participants choose from over 125 varieties of heirloom tomatoes from my seed bank, sow them in seed flats and soil (supplied), while receiving direction and instruction on proper soil to use, heirloom variety selection for your individual growing conditions, germination conditions, care after seedlings emerge, proper transplanting techniques, and more.

Kohlrabi: A Kick-Ass Winter Veggie

Kohlrabi is a wonderful cool-weather crop because it tastes great (like broccoli some say, or a tender turnip) and it grows really fast.  It's also easily grown from seed, which makes it an all-around wonderful and satisfying plant to cultivate.  The slow growth of most winter veggies is frustrating, but kohlrabi is one of those that busts that rule.

Many people don't know that kohlrabi is a member of the cabbage family. Its name being derived from the German "kohl" for cabbage and "rube" for turnip.  It's sometimes mistaken for a root vegetable, but the bulbous part of the plant grows above soil, with a thin tap root below ground.  I grow both a white and a purple variety for Manresa, and they can use it either raw or cooked.  It's best picked when the bulb is small, tennis ball sized or less, as it tends to get woody and tough when larger.      

The culture of kohlrabi is much like that of cabbage. It prefers temps under 70 degrees; if your temps get above that when the plant is small, put a shade panel in front of it to reduce heat stress (more on my home-made shade panels later).  They prefer an elevated soil Ph, so add lime if your bed Ph is below 6.3.  I use oyster shell lime.

You can sow kohlrabi seeds directly in the ground in early spring (it can withstand minor frosts) and thin to three or four inches apart.  I would use the tiny thinnings as salad additions or in stir fries.  Since it grows so quickly, if you want a continuous harvest of it, make plantings every two or three weeks until the hottest part of the summer.  You can begin sowing again in the fall.  I like to start my kohlrabi seeds in flats in the greenhouse, prick them out into 2-1/4" pots, and then transplant out into the garden.  We plant them closely together, as they do not need much room.

In this photo, you can see this young purple variety growing in our hoophouse.  Kohlrabi loves the hoophouse and grows extra fast in there, but we also have plenty of it growing outside as well.  The purple type of kohlrabi, although beautiful, does not maintain its color all the way through, so be aware of that.  Don't just throw away those leaves; they're great used like turnip or beet greens.  Now go kick some ass and plant some kohlrabi!

Soil Heating Cables Work!

Soil Warming Cables are handy tools for the gardener to have when he wants to manipulate nature a bit.

I first used them last winter when I needed to get a bed of carrots to germinate in January.  Germinating most directly sown seeds out in the garden would be nigh impossible here in January, as our night time lows are typically between 25 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit.  And as most of you know, you cannot sow carrots in a nice warm flat in the greenhouse and transplant them out in the garden.  Veggies with tap roots just don't tolerate that.  Things like radishes, carrots, beets, turnips, salsify, burdock, daikon, all need to be sown where they will stay put. 

The cables are placed several inches under the soil surface, about 4 to 6 inches apart in any arrangement (straight lines, squiggle lines, etc.) just as long as they don't touch or cross each other.
You can dig mini trenches and insert the cable into them, or you can do what I do and place the cables, affix them with landscape staples, then add a good two inches of soil on top.  Here, we've just started adding compost, and will finish topping it off with garden soil. 

Once the cables are placed and covered, they are plugged into an extension cord, with the connection wrapped in waterproof tape, and carefully protected from moisture intrusion.  The cables are supposed to keep the soil surrounding them at 70 degrees, which is a good average temperature for most seed germination.  Truth be told, though, the cables do not quite warm the soil that much.  Fortunately, though, they do warm it enough to get some germination going on this long bed of carrots (a little wispy and hard to see in the foreground of this picture), beets, and at the far end, turnips.  The cables can no longer be seen, but my black irrigation lines are clearly present on top of the soil.
We moved the white row cover to the right in order to take the photo, but we usually leave the bed covered with the lightest weight floating row fabric from seeding to harvest, as it keeps the carrot maggot fly from laying it's nasty little eggs on the soil surface and burrowing into the roots.  We do remove the cover, though, after the seeds germinate, and we need to thin.  As you can see here, these gorgeous beet shoots are way too close together, and we'll need to spend some good time carefully removing the excess.  What's nice is that we have little waste here, the chef loves to see these thinnings in the harvest delivery.  They make tasty and unusual garnish.

Once germination has been achieved to my liking, I unplug the cables and leave them in place.  The roots easily grow around the cables.  When the bed is completely harvested, I can remove the cables and use them again.

So would you use precious electricity to get a bed of veggies going?  Well, if your mortgage payment depended upon it like mine does, then you might.  If you were trying to get a jump on tomato growing season by warming your soil a month earlier, then that might entice you to use them as well (more on that later).  The cables themselves can be pricey, but I've been lucky to get mine off of ebay (brand new) for about a third of the price.  Click here for a link to where you can get them full price. 

Farm Animal of the Week: Buff Laced Polish Hen

Isn't she a pretty girl?  This breed is called a Polish, also known as a "Top Hat" chicken because of the feathers poking out of the top of her head like some crazy Rod Stewart impersonator.  These chickens' head-dresses are so lush and full, they sometimes obscure their eyes, much like a hairy Lhaso Apso dog.  Her coloring is called "buff lace" because of the delicate white edging around her beige-colored feathers.

With chickens, we just can't call them a regular color name, like beige or grey.  For some reason, the poultry breeders have to sex it up a bit and euphemize it, much like nail polish.  "Red" is changed to "Hot Kiss" and "Pink" is not going to sell unless it's named "Valentine Ice."

So the same with chickens.  We call brown "buff" and grey "silver."  Is this more than you wanted to know about chicken colors?  Perhaps for most of you it is.  But for the few of you who have thought it might be cool to have your own hens for homegrown eggs (not ANYTHING like store-bought eggs, mind you) and manure to enrich your compost pile, then you might be interested in my "Keeping Chickens" class that I'll be having on April 19th.

You don't need to live in the country to keep a few hens.  You can do so with proper planning in your backyard.  At this class, you'll learn how to keep baby chicks happy and healthy until they are full sized and start laying eggs.  You'll learn what to feed them, how big of a yard they need, how to keep them from flying out, how to get them to lay eggs throughout the winter months when they usually stop laying.

You get to take home three baby girl chicks (no roosters - your neighbors will thank you), along with supplies to keep them happy until you can build or buy a proper coop (about a six week window).  We'll talk about coop design and a simple do-it-yourself plan will be one of the hand-outs.

The three chicks you get will be a Polish like the cutie in the picture, a Cochin, like my previous post, found here, and an Araucana chick.  Each breed lays a different egg color, so you will end up with white, brown and green eggs, like those shown in this gorgeous photo taken of our eggs by Pim Techamuanvivit.

So if any of you in the greater California Bay Area want to come learn about chickens, click here to be directed to my "Upcoming Classes/Events" page.

 

Oseille Rouge - Red Sorrel - Such a Beautiful Thing!

I thought this would be a quick and easy post to write, but after trying to find the botanical name of this plant on-line, it proved to be quite a project.  The plant above, with its shiny crinkly green leaves and deep blood-red veining, were the happy result of a French seed packet brought back to me from Europe by one of David Kinch's cooks, J.P.   The seed packet says "Oseille Rouge" on it.  "Oseille," pronounced "Oh-Zehy," means "Sorrel" in French. 

I've been propagating it for Manresa and Chef Kinch for months now, and most of it doesn't make it big enough to plant out in the garden.  Not because it dies, or it's not the season, but because Chef loves using it small, straight out of the seed tray.  I insisted on saving some from the last batch to plant out in the garden, and this was the day to do it.  I had to choose a place that it could stay for years to come, because my knowledge of its supposed sister plant, green sorrel, is that it's a perennial, and will last for years well tended in perpetually damp soil.  Here's what regular sorrel, often called French Sorrel, botanical name, Rumex Acetosa, looks like:

I wanted to include the botanical name of the Oseille Rouge here, but like I said, when I started researching it, I found that there are as many different kinds of sorrel as there are paparazzi hounding Britney Spears. I spent way too much time looking at images of what purported to be Red Sorrel (none matched the plant I'm growing) and found out that the synonyms of Red Sorrel are as diverse as Bloody Dock, Sheep's Sorrel, Jamaican sorrel, Roselle, Rozelle, Hibiscus Sabdariffa, and Rumex Sanguineus.  Whew! 

I even went to the source, the seed company that packaged the seed, Graines Voltz.  They list it on their French website, but do not list a botanical name.  At least I know where to go when I need more of it.  The great thing about European seed packets is that you get a lot of seeds, much more than in our stingy American packets.

Regular green French Sorrel, is a fabulous herb/salad green.  It's one of the things that I have people taste when I'm showing them the garden.  They are amazed at it's very lemony flavor.  The Oseille Rouge is similarly flavored, but much prettier.

So alas, we have it, and you can eat it at Manresa, but if you want to grow this beauty yourself, you'll have to order the seed of Oseille Rouge from Graines Voltz yourself.  Good luck with the French translation!  If any of you know for sure, without a doubt, no foolin' what the true botanical name of this is, and where I can get it here in the States, I'd love to hear from you!  Update:  As you can see in the comments, we got it sorted out.  It is indeed Rumex Sanguineus, and it's available from Johnny's Seeds.  They call it "Red Veined Sorrel," but they also list the botanical name underneath it.  Here is a new shot I took of the babies that the chef likes to use:

Gardening Class: Grow Your Own Tomato Transplants from Seed

This class used to be called "Tomato Seed Sowing," but I thought I needed a more descriptive name.  I mention the name change so that those of you who like to take this class year after year will know it.  Here's a photo of my tomato apprentice, Rachael, after last year's class.

Rachael has probably been my youngest student, as most folks who attend my gardening seminars are adults.  When I first saw her, I worried that she would not be able to focus for my entire lecture.  But she did great, taking home a sown flat of tomato seeds that she was able, with her new knowledge, to nurture into about 70 or 80 tomato starts.  She didn't need that many, so Rachael ended up selling her extras at my seedling sale later, and made over $100.  I was very proud of her.  Rachael has continued to come to the farm and volunteer over the past year, and has learned a whole bunch of stuff about plants.

Believe it or not, but this is the time to start thinking about starting seeds for tomatoes. The "Grow Your Own Tomato Transplants from Seed" class is all about learning how to get that little bitty seed into a healthy, robust plant, ready to go out into the garden.  As some of you know, doing that is harder than it looks.  Soil, airflow, lighting, watering, fertilizing, potting up, are all important to know how to do right.

The thing that keeps a lot of people coming back to this class is that they get to take home a sown flat of tomato seeds, and choose up to 48 different varieties to place in their 48-cell flat.  My seed bank currently holds over 125 varieties of tomatoes, some "normal" such as Early Girl, but most highly unusual like JD's Special C-Tex, Purple DogCreek and Portuguese Monster.

It has not been unusual for my students to successfully propagate 100 or 150 plants from this class alone.  I know that some folks have even sold their excess, just like Rachael.  I love hearing those stories! 

I'm offering the class on four different dates.  Choose an early date if you want to plant out in early April.  Choose a later class if you want to plant out in May.  Click here to go to the dates and fees. All classes are held here at Love Apple Farm in Ben Lomond, California.  We are located 45 minutes from San Jose and about an hour and a half from San Francisco. Here is a complete list of the tomato seeds you will be able to choose from: 

Amazon Chocolate (new for 2008)
Ananas Noir
Aunt Ruby’s Green
Aunt Ruby’s Green Cherry
Azoychka
Barad’s Yellow
Basinga
Beauty Lottringa
Bi-color Cherry
Big Beef
Big Rainbow
Black Bear (new)
Black Cherry
Black Ethiopian
Black from Tula
Black Krim
Black Oxheart (new)
Black Plum
Black Prince
Black Stripe Cherry (new)
Black Zebra
Blondkopfchen
Bloody Butcher
Brad's Black Oxheart (new)
Brandysweet Plum Cherry (new)
Brandywine OTV
Brandywine Landis
Brown’s Yellow Giant
Burpee's Supersteak (new)
Camalay
Camp Joy Cherry
Caspian Pink
CelebrityVFFNTA
Chapman
Cherokee Purple
Chocolate Vintage (new)
Chuck’s Yellow
Church (new)
Copia
Cosmonaut Volkov
Costoluto Genovese
Costoluto Florentino
Coustralee
Coyote
Earl’s Faux
Early Girl
First Lady
Fourth of July (new)
Gardener’s Delight
Gary O'Sena (new)
German Red Strawberry
Giant Belgium (new)
Gold Medal
Grandma Josie (new)
Grape
Green Doctors (new)
Green Giant
Green Zebra
Grub's Mystery Green (new)
Hawaiian Pineapple
Heart of Compassion
Hippie Zebra
Homer Fike’s Oxheart (new)
Hugh’s
Isis Candy Cherry
Lemony
Japanese Black Trifele
Japanese Oxheart
Jaune Flamme
JD's Special C-Tex (new)
Jersey Devil (it's back!)
Julia Child
Kellogg’s Breakfast
Kentucky Beefsteak
King Pineapple (new)
Lemony
Love Apple
Love Happy (new cross of mine)
Magnum (new)
Mammoth German Gold (new)
Mandarin Cross (new)
Marianna’s Peace
Marvel Stripe
Matina
Moskvitch
Mr. Brown (new)
Nebraska Wedding
Neves Azorean Red
Northern Lights
Oaxacan Jewel
Orange Russian 117
Orange Strawberry
Oregon Spring
Paul Robeson
Peacevine Cherry
Persimmon
Pineapple (new)
Pink Accordian
Plum Lemon
Porterhouse Steak (new)
Portugese Monster  (new)
Purple Brandy
Purple Calabash
Purple DogCreek (new)
Purple Russian
Red Pear
Riesentraube
Rosalita
Rose
San Francisco Fog
Siletz
South American Giant
Southern Pride (new)
Stupice
Sungold
Super Marzano
Sweet Horizon
Taxi
Texas Star
Thessaloniki
Tigerella
Tommy Toe Cherry (new)
Top Sirloin (new)
Tree's Bottom Yellow (new)
Valena Pink (new)
Vintage Wine
Virginia Sweets (new)
West Virginia Sweet Meat (new)
White Cherry
White Tomesol
Wild Bill's Big Red (new)
Yellow Brandywine
Yellow Pear
Zogola (it's back!)

Major Storm Damage - Blessing in Disguise?

Here in central Coastal California, we've had a major storm, with hurricane force winds and 10 inches of rain in Ben Lomond within a 36 hour period. My 90 foot tall Cypress tree fell with a big crash onto my 60 foot tall Sugar Maple that held my really cool treehouse. Correction:  My  tree-removal guy just told me that the Cypress was 120 feet tall.

The base of the trunk measures around 18 feet in circumference, if my math skills hold up. I'm basing that on a diameter of about 6 feet.  Pretty damn big tree.  It also took out my power lines,a cabana, and as you can see in this picture, landed on my travel trailer, poking two holes  through the roof.

After making sure everyone was safe, and breathing a sigh of relief that the behemoth didn't fall on my house or someone else's house, I started thinking, "Hey, you're going to have a much sunnier space over in this area.  Maybe you should put some new crop beds here?"  So that may be the blessing in disguise.  Unfortunately, it's going to cost me a pretty penny in clean-up.  Anybody want to come over for a free "class" on chainsaw skills, demolition, and dump runs?

The Winner of the TomatoFest Poster and Seeds is...

We had another contest for my newsletter subscribers; to enter, people had to leave a comment on my Harvest Tuesday post of December 18.  I asked folks to tell me what they were doing in their garden right now.  As you can see, we had a lot of interesting tasks outlined and many of you peeps were harvesting a nice array of your own winter veggies. Here's what a lucky subscriber won:

This is a beautiful heirloom tomato wall poster generously donated by Gary Ibsen of TomatoFest.com.  He is also throwing in 3 packets of his heirloom tomato seeds for the winner.  I chose the winner at random, after jotting down everyone's email address and stirring them around in a box.  Congrats go out to Cheri from Tracy, California. If you'd like to sign up for our free newsletter and get a chance at many more seeds, posters, books, class tuitions, etc., click here.

TomatoFest has 600 different kinds of heirloom tomato seeds on their site, and right now they have put on sale 70 of their most popular varieties for only $2.00 a pack until January 20th.  So if you are in the market for tomato seeds, go on over and take a look.  I love Gary and Dagma, the husband and wife team who run TomatoFest.  Their annual tomato festival is my favorite event of the year, and it benefits many children's charities.  They work very hard to preserve old heritage varieties of tomatoes, and I've personally seen them both laboring in a gigantic tomato field, sweating buckets in 90+ degree heat, harvesting tomatoes for seeds.  They are the real deal.

Thank you, Gary and Dagma, for supporting the cause of righteous tomatoes, and for supporting me!