Posts Tagged: tomato plant sale
Stalking Big Game in Your Garden
The allure of stalking game wasn't something I understood until I spent a perfect day planting...
Tomato Plants Here! Get Your Tomato Plants Here! The GTPS Continues
Saturday was Day One of the Great Tomato Plant Sale in Walnut Creek. Tomato lovers, young and not-as-young, formed a line that snaked around the corner and down the street as they waited for the sale to begin. The garden was abuzz with activity as CCMG volunteers set up the tents and tables, did plant inspections, and found their stations. The help desk tent was ready to answer questions about tomatoes, gardening, or the Master Gardeners' programs; the garden guides were ready to help with location and selection of tomatoes and other veggies; the expeditors were posted at the end of the garden to guide the customers through the checkout process; and the cashiers and CI's were at the registers to ring up the purchases.
The gates opened promptly at 10:00 am. Customers, with lists in hand, focused on finding the tomatoes they had carefully selected from the myriad of varieties offered, for their gardens this year. For the next two hours, there was a frenzy of tomato buying. There were flats, there were bags, there were bins, there were carts, and there were wagons. It was amazing. I manned one of the cash registers and by the third hour, I think I had rung up over 900 plants. The seven other cashiers were also ringing up about the same amount. The pace continued, with only a few lulls when many of the attendees stopped to listen to Our Garden's Janet Miller, give presentations on growing tomatoes and other veggies. It was a great turnout!
Even after selling so many plants, believe it or not, we still have lots of inventory at both locations and they are definitely not “left-overs.” While we sold out of a few varieties, we still have over 3,500 tomato plants at Our Garden. And, we've set aside 3,000 plants for the upcoming West County sale.
So, if you missed the first day of the GTPS, don't despair – Our Garden will have plants -- tomatoes (of course!), peppers, various other veggies and herbs, beans, and even some flowers -- available this Wednesday and upcoming Saturday, and West County will have its very own sale on Saturday as well. CCMG volunteers will be on hand to help you out.
Come check it out!
You Say Toma-ato. . . Queen of the Summer Garden
By Liz Rottger
First discovered in the Andes more than two thousand years ago, the tomato was cultivated extensively by the Aztecs where it grew like weeds, year-round. Spanish explorers first took tomatoes to Europe in the sixteenth century. Initially, it was thought to be poisonous because it was a member of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), famous for its toxins. Early on, tomatoes were used only as table decorations. Italians were the first to discover the tomato's culinary prowess and introduce it into their cuisine. The earliest cookbook with tomato recipes was published in 1692 in Naples. Once it caught on, it spread across Europe and adapted again and again to the climate and soil of that specific region.
Tomatoes come in a dazzling spectrum of colors; belying that aphorism that ‘red' is synonymous with ‘tomato.' Colors range from black, purple, pink, green, orange, and even white to every shade of red imaginable. There are also spectacularly beautiful striped tomatoes like the striking Big Rainbow with its neon-red striping throughout its rich yellow flesh or Chocolate Stripes with its dark shoulders draped over a deep red. Each color has its own unique taste. Some are sweet and fruity; others have rich, complex flavors, acidic and tangy.
Today, there are literally hundreds of varieties of tomatoes whose names like Aunt Ruby's German Green, Black Sea Man, Caspian Pink, Nebraska Wedding, or Black Krim attest to their place of origin. There are tiny, bite-size cherries, colossal, one-to-two pound Hawaiian Pineapples, plum-shaped San Marzanos grown for tomato sauce and the beautiful, perfectly round Japanese heirloom, Mandarin Cross.
The word “heirloom” is difficult to define, but nurserymen have used it for decades to indicate varieties of plants and trees, which have a well-known and established provenance and breed true. Heirloom tomato varieties are by definition open-pollinated and their seeds can be collected from one year to the next with the same characteristics as the parent plant.
Many tomato varieties have been preserved for generations by home gardeners from their family gardens (Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine, San Marzano, etc.). Each year, they carefully selected and saved their most flavorful fruits in order to plant their seeds again the following spring. Some of these tomato varieties were even brought to America in a form of reverse-migration by immigrant families (Czech Bush, Azoychka, Eva Purple Ball, the Russian “Blacks,” etc.). Saving tomato seeds has preserved the genetic diversity of tomatoes.
There is no doubt that the tomato is the undisputed queen of the summer garden and nothing tastes better than homegrown!
PS. The Great Tomato Plant Sale is happening now! April 4th at Walnut Creek Our Garden and April 11th at Richmond - come find your new favorite tomato.
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A Cautionary Tale
Herein lies acautionary tale. It may fall on deaf ears, but I still feel the tale is worth...
APRIL4morning glory
Diary of A GTPS Propagator: Linda H. - Class of 2014
Dear Diary:
This year, I decided to volunteer to help propagate tomato seedlings for the CCMG Great Tomato Sale. It's our biggest annual fundraiser. I've never propagated seeds before, but I thought it would be a fun way to earn some volunteer hours.
Upon arriving at Our Garden in Walnut Creek, I received instructions about: (1) the structure of the soil flats we would be planting, (2) the number of seeds to plant per row, (3) how deep to plant each seed, and (4) how to immediately place the identification markers to avoid confusion over varieties. My assigned tomato was "Black from Tula". It was fun to take a flat full of soil and draw a thin line for placing the seeds (about an inch apart in 5-6 long rows). It was also nice to hear from other volunteers what seeds they were propagating this year and what success they had with other varieties planted in previous years. When completed, the flats were recorded and placed in the greenhouse and gently watered.
More to come in the next several weeks . . .
Dear Diary: I'm back! Its been two weeks since the seedlings were planted, and I returned to help move the sprouted seedlings into their new home – each one gets a 4 x 4 inch plastic pot with its own label! It was tough to separate some of the closely rooted seedlings, but with gentle encouragement, teasing, and promises of greatness, they saw the light! A place of their own! I'm so excited! The sprouted seedlings were planted deep down below their cotyledon leaf and then gently watered in the greenhouse. Done for now. Back in two weeks.
Dear Diary: It's hard to believe another two weeks have passed. I am back to help with more transplanting - this time I was working with "Bloody Butcher". This tomato variety is quite large and has a long root system; so long, in fact, that it was recommended that we slightly bend up the roots in order to fit them in the new pots. Later in the day, I counted labels we removed from seedling pots that did not make it. "Wisconsin 55" was the worst with the most seedling failures. As a Milwaukee native, I took it little personally and was a bit disappointed.
Overall, Diary, this has been a great experience. I got to see former classmates and catch up, I learned the proper way to plant seeds and handle their resultant seedlings, and I especially enjoyed the community feeling while working in the garden. It was not only educational, but it was fun too!
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