Cécile Stelzer Johnson

Jen Fulkerson wrote:Like almost everyone who grows a garden I grow tomatoes. Being a serial gardener I'm always looking for ways to grow it better. Besides Permies ( my most reliable source) I spend a lot of time on YouTube. The wealth of information can make my head explode. I want to ask what you do or don't do in your gardens?

* Do you direct sow? If you plant transplants do you plant at soil level, deeper than it was in the pot, or sideways?
* Do you prune? Single stem, or just the suckers?
* How do you water?
* Do you fertilize?
* How do you support your tomatoes?
* Do you plant all your tomatoes together, on mix it up?
* Any special companions?
*What's your secret to amazing tomatoes?
* Do you do some of those things like dissolve aspirin in water, and spray on the leaves, or use Epsom salt, or any other unusual things,?
I'm interested in answers to these questions. If you post please don't feel like you have to answer every question, I'll enjoy what ever you want to share.

I'll go first I'm in zone 9b N. CA. So I have a very long hot dry summer season. I start my seeds in the house, then move them to my little greenhouse, then transplant into the garden once the night time temps are 50 or above. I did  manage to direct sow some in the garden last year. They did well, but took a lot longer to produce, and didn't out perform the ones I started earlier. I always used remove the bottom sets of leaves and plant deep. This year I read that slowed production down, so I didn't do it. I think I'm already regretting it. All my tomatoes are falling over and seem to need a lot of support. Usually I only have to worry about that once it gets kinda tall.  I add my fertilizer mix( what ever organic stuff I have, like blood, bone meal, azamite, greensand, biolive) twice a year when I transition from winter to spring, and summer to fall when I also add compost. I add a little of the mix to the bottom of the hole, and then soil then a bit of mycorrhiza. I strongly believe creating great soil is more important than fertilizing ( all my raised beds are hugel beet style) I usually grows indeterminate. The last couple of years I have been trying tomatoes that are supposed to do well in hot dry climate. I use tomato cages my son made for me that are awesome. That's about it for me. I water when I think it needs it when it's in the 100s that can be every day. I don't prune sometimes I remove suckers, but most of the time I don't get around to it. The last couple of years I did remove the flowers until the tomato got to a good size. I don't fertilize during the growing season, I tried compost tea in the past, but I didn't really think it made a difference. I definitely mix it up tomatoes go in every bed ( I have major gopher problem, so I only grow in raised beds,) lots of companions. Always basil, near by are always nasturtiums, marigolds, zinnias, radish, and all sorts of veggies, fruit, herbs and flowers. Bye August it's a jungle.  I usually get tomatoes, the last couple of years better than most for me. Is it because of something I'm doing, or just luck, I don't know, time will tell. The last couple of years I have gotten a lot of tomatoes, and my husband says they taste great (I don't like tomatoes unless they are used for cooking) I don't get production like I see on the Internet where the vines have mass amounts of tomatoes. I'm happy with what I have been getting, but always strive to learn more.  Thanks

In Wisconsin zone 4b, you have to start them inside and if you plant them after mid March, you can still get a decent crop if you start them on heat mats, but in March.
Tomatoes make "adventitious roots". They show up as little bumps at first on the stem close to the ground. Plant them deeper than the little bumps, either standing or laying down. I plant them in half barrels (the big blue plastic ones) as it makes harvesting with a bad back a lot easier, also, I wrap a piece of 2" X 4" fence around them ( I can pass my hand through for harvesting), a little copper and some straw to limit blight: We have a lot of blight around here. (Tomatoes and potatoes fall prey to it.) That's for support, too.
I plant only 1 tomato plant per half barrel but my barrels are mixed. Roma tomatoes, purple, yellow pears, gold especially are my favorites, the barrels almost touching.
Basil and French marigold work great, inside the same 1/2 barrel for companion plants.
I don't fertilize much. Sometimes with comfrey tea, sometimes with a bit of commercial if I have to, but nothing really unusual.
Watering is key, especially if your tomatoes are in containers as they cannot take advantage of the wetness of the soil that would surround them. So yeah: you really have to water them on a schedule so they never get dry if you grow them in containers: I have lengths of 10 ft, 1" PVC, little tubes comin out of it and into the 1/2 barrels. The little tubing is long enough to get under the leaves directly on 1" of milled straw.

Well, my husband has a shooting berm, about 15 ft high, and although we never planted anything on it (it might get shot at!) a variety of things are growing on it.
Halfway up the flank, in the back is an ugly jack pine growing 4 ft up the slope. It's massive. It supports a wild grape vine that is climbing all the way up. The grape vine seems sterile, but even if it had grapes, I would need a tall ladder to get at them.
On the southwest, a group of Eastern prickly pears (opuntia humifusa) were transplanted there by my hubby, and they are doing well.
The most surprising of all, way at the top of this mound of dirt is a wild cherry tree. The trunk is as big as my calf and more than twice as tall as me. It would be nice if it gave me some fruit, but so far, not a one. If it did, it would most likely be the tiny fruit with very little flesh relative to the stone. But I have another one like that from which I take the fruit to make Kirsch, a delicious liquor made by crushing cherry pits  with Vodka. My Kirschwasser has an interesting almond flavor.
Holding the whole berm together are rambling blackberry vines which also do not give much: I can't grow the really big blackberries that make my mouth water, like they have out West. Ours here have small fruit that too often dry on the vine before they are edible.
I should mention that the berm is made of a number of half rotted logs covered with the kind of 'soil', we have mostly here, plus a load of imported 'soil' (which is still mostly sand).
To the northeast, there is a volunteer asparagus, about 1 ft up the berm. It gives me the biggest asparagus, (bigger than my thumbs) bigger even than the 50 Millenia asparagus which I bought and planted 4 yrs ago.
None of these have been fertilized or watered and as I have often mentioned, we live in Central Wisconsin, a sandbox where some of the biggest potatoes are grown. (Sorry, Idaho, but at the last check, Wisconsin had the record for *useable* potatoes: Once they grow past 3 pounds, they are just a curiosity and are not particularly tasty).
While Plover, Wisconsin is the heart of the state's commercial potato production—and home to the iconic 39-foot-tall World's Largest Potato Masher at the Food + Farm Exploration Center—the state's standout agricultural records still point back to Embarrass, WI for massive backyard finds.

I didn't know I was doing it right, but as a 77 yr old, there was no way I was going to dig then fill with logs. plus I don't have the equipment.
That was only serendipity on my part, though: I had a bunch of red oak that had the wilt and I could not sell that wood because it would have contaminated some other property.
I can't quite claim that it's a hugel yet because I have very little soil on it, although as the bottom logs/brush rot away, it should almost qualify in a few years.
But you know what: I have a great double wind break and critters are coming to live in the (very) long piles of timber/ brush.
I'm not growing anything it it yet but I'm tossing old seeds in it and on it. So staghorn sumac is growing in it now and also false indigo.
I have solved the double problem of not being able to keep snow and rain from draining away into the ditch that's along the road and also, as I was saying I have a double wind break. In some areas, I can no longer see through, and it's impressive enough for the deer to go around.

Anne Miller wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:Does anyone know an easy way to bust them up and turn them into powder to use on potatoes and other tubers that like bonemeal?

Boiling the bones or pressure cooking them will soften the bones.
I found this out by making lots of bone broth.

Thanks, Ann. While I already have a lot of bone broth, I wanted to use the bones in my garden as an amendment. I figure on picking the chicken-cleaned, ant-cleaned, sun-bleached bones from their paddock and pressure cook them, then pound them to a pulp and air-dry them.
Thanks again for the tip!

I come across some bones too, and I wish I could make use of them... in my garden.
Whenever we eat meat, there's cooked bones attached to them, and we repurpose the carcass by giving it to our chickens.
Once they and some ants and the sun have had their fun with then, the chicken yard is littered with bones.
Does anyone know an easy way to bust them up and turn them into powder to use on potatoes and other tubers that like bonemeal?

Anthony Jones wrote:   OK, this sounds crazy but experience is the teacher. I (69yr young) work 23+ acers of wild land I am slowly building a family off-grid homestead food forest on.
  I have learned to cover up and wear a wide brim straw hat and one of those wet cooling clothes to cover the neck. I wear loose fitting sweatpants, and loose fitting long sleeve shirt.
  I am in South East Alabama and summer is hot and humid. I am totally soaked in sweat in just a few working minutes no matter what I wear. The sweats and shirt soak up and evaporate creating a bit of cooling effect. Protects me from mosquitos and briors.
  Looks very hot to wear but not as bad as you think. I am actually much hotter in shorts and tee shirt than in the full getup. Works especially well if there is even a slight breeze.
Give it a try.

You know, that's what my young friend Alex, who comes from El Salvador tells me: He comes all covered from head to toes and tells me that his getup is actually more comfortable when he does some work for me.
And come to think of it, when you see folks who work in the fields of cucumber or strawberries, they are totally covered, from head to toes. I was looking at men and women from the middle East, and you know it's hot there! I kept thinking: If I had to wear a hijab (and a black one, to boot!), I'd die of a heat stroke for sure. But those folks seem to be just fine, so there must be something to what you are saying. It's just a bit counter intuitive.
It takes some getting used to...

It will depend on the days, of course. It's usually an old cotton T-shirt and old cotton jeans, socks and comfy shoes.
I'll go sleeveless when the mosquitos are not famished.
I'm still trying to find some oil of lemon eucalyptus:
https://www.murphysnaturals.com/products/lemon-eucalyptus-oil-insect-repellent-spray?srsltid=AfmBOoo1OaxQvArHPh2tBMit_CuMrO1g34ZqQNVMqirrOhitSGlP6myl
If you need something harsher, spray that stuff on your clothes, not on your skin!
I'd like to get some oil of lemon/eucalyptus in drinkable form: Maybe that would make me toxic to any bloodsucker that lands on me? (I'm only afraid it would be toxic to me FIRST.)
Against wood ticks, I like to get 2 dog tick collars and cinch the bottom of my jeans. Now, I only have to worry about those that will fall on my head when I mow under my apple trees.
Otherwise, yes, I really like to bask in the sunshine, on the deck, scantily clad.
I try to pick a day when there is even a gentle breeze: That tends to keep the little bloodsuckers at bay.
Unfortunately, that's often the time when a customer comes to buy some eggs, darn.

Well, that's a tough question to answer really, but Cristobal has the right idea: plant as many as you can for the space you have: Some crops will not do well, some will be eaten by wildlife, like those @#$%^&*&^%$#@!!! rabbits that just feasted on my prized sweet peppers, and then, there are our chickens. Remember that you pay taxes on every square inch of your property, so if you don't make it pay for you, you are losing $$$ and opportunities.
You didn't mention farm animals, but if you have some, produce all you can in the space you have, because it will not go to waste: Our old lettuce, freezer burned meats and road kills of all types get 'recycled by our chickens and will give us more eggs. In turn, their manure can get used by all the trees in the orchards. In our little pond that we can't keep from freezing in the winter, I raise as many bait fish as I can. In the fall, the pond gets emptied, the fish gets dried and gives extra protein for the chickens in the dead of winter.
I maxed out on apple trees, but I have a few plum trees, cherry trees, basswoods for the bees, maple trees, not just for the beauty but for some leaves to turn into leaf mold. (I put some in the chickens' winter run (covered). they actually eat some, turn the rest into good soil.
I have lots of small fruit blueberry bushes, gooseberries, haskaps, elderberries...
Having more than you can use also means that if you turn extra fruit into jellies, jams and wine you will have something to offer your neighbors, your kids and take care of those in-laws that are hard to shop for: Jam, jelly, maybe a bottle of homemade wine or liquor is always appreciated. It won't gather dust, so  you can repeat with another home made gift every year.
But if you are lucky enough to have any amount of land, make it pay you...

Matt McSpadden wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:Black Oil Sunflowers offers food for birds, you, etc.

Joe Pyle Weed for Monarch Butterflies.

I like both of these suggestions. I learned something too. For some reason I always thought of Joe Pye Weed as a southern plant, but when I looked it up... it is here in Maine.

Joe Pye weed is also abundant in Central WI, sandy zone 4b, and good for pollinators. Unfortunately, the local authorities will not let us plant anything in the "right of way", a rather large zone that extends over the entire ditch.
The 'reason' given is that deer, turkeys etc. are attracted to it and we are already paying through the nose with nose bleed level car insurance premiums! They already mowed the ditch as of today (6/13), and they will do it again a couple more times before snow flies.
I keep it clean myself so that I can mow around some asclepias (milkweeds) that volunteered. Blue flags would do well there too, if the zone is damp enough, and could not really hide an approaching deer, but nope. Rules are rules and they want it cut to the ground, as if a herd of sheep had eaten there...
I plant forbes at the very edge of the 'acceptable limit', so technically, they are on my property, on which I pay taxes. They can't mess with that!
The nice thing about forbes is that they go back in the ground in the winter, so it won't be a problem for snow removal. I have lots of false indigo, peonies, along the edges of my driveway, and some cup plants (silphium perfoliatum). Those are nice for little birds who come to drink the water from the "cups" at the vase of the leaves.