Friday Bounty

From A Tomato Grows in Brooklyn?

There was another weekend storm coming to the NYC area on Friday so I picked as much fruit off our plants as I could. Our tomato crop has had very thin skins on the fruits, so over-watering / skin breakage has been a significant problem. Also, our staking setup seems to be at the upper limits of its capacity, so I was concerned that the weather would bully the plants around.
Friday was our most bountiful harvest date yet!

The September 26, 2008 crop yield:

• Rutgers: 3
• Large red cherry: 6
• Sweet 100: 21
  

Is Fall Here?

The days seem a lot shorter and the weather has cooled down in the last two weeks. Normally, I would be rejoicing the lower humidity and milder temperatures, but our babies need sun! We got a late start on our planting so that is also a concern.

The tomato plants have definitely slowed down their growth and the tomatoes seem to have slowed in getting bigger.

Another thing that we noticed is that the tomatoes aren't getting that big and tend to have thin skins; a number of the fruits have split. Reading up on the Sweet 100s, seems like thin skins is a characteristic of that variety, but we are also concerned about over-watering.

Tomato Burst?

You're the Inspiration

(note: I had originally started this article back in July and am now catching up on finishing up some unpublished posts)

I tried growing tomatoes last year in San Francisco, with a tiny bit of success. I hadn't really thought of growing tomatoes again this year, but a few things added up and here we are.

A bit more about my inspiration:
Da Heat
One huge and obvious difference between San Francisco and New York is the summer weather, which I was introduced to during the early June heat wave in New York (what happened to spring this year?!).

Lots of people, especially tourists, come to San Francisco, thinking California equals sunshine and are greeted by the fog and cool nights. The weather in San Francisco tends to be cool year round with foggy days rivaling the sunny ones in the summer, especially July. I actually love the weather in San Francisco, "scarf weather all year round", but it isn't very conducive to growing tomatoes, which need a lot of sun.

The summer weather in New York is actually a bit too hot (and humid too) for perfect tomato growing weather, but with all this sun, I see many tomatoes in my future.

The Old Man
Last year, when I was growing my single tomato plant, I had pretty much killed anything that I had tried to grow in my life, so I made the decision to grow the tomato plant "by any means necessary", which to me meant plant food and fertilizer. I was looking for low maintenance and the time release fertilizer stakes that I had purchased were not organic.

My dear old dad was visiting and when I showed him my plants, he asked me whether the tomatoes were organic. Emotions swirling. Did my dad just call me out for not growing organic? Proud, the old guy knows about organic produce! You can teach a dog new tricks. Now if only we could teach him not to vote for party that lies and misleads in the upcoming presidential election.

Any how after feeling that shame, I'm going organic this year!

Tomatoes by Evan + Renee
I finally got around to visiting my friends Evan and Renee at their new house in Los Altos around the beginning of July, 2007. The had moved into a fixer-upper house with a completely run down front yard, so they decided to put their vegetable garden in the front yard.

I was kind of flabbergasted. What if someone just started stealing all of your vegetables? What about dogs and cats running wild and through your garden?

I guess I was inspired by two things:

1. Space - they rolled with the punches and put their garden where they could. Obviously, I'm going to have to grow our tomatoes in pots, but we have a huge terrace and lots of sun.
2. Hard work - Renee had the raised garden boxes put into the yard and they had obviously read up on what they needed to do to have a successful garden and prepared for that.

The key was that they had a passion to make it happen and they did it.

Now if only Cal could have the passion to get to the Rose Bowl and do it! (passion there, but not yet to Rose Bowl).

You can also do it the easy way if you don't have the time: A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss (NYTimes). I love San Francisco, but it sometimes makes me nosh.

Epitaph for a Peach
This beautifully written book was my first introduction to the concepts of organic and sustainable farming and has had a lasting impression on me. I read the book nearly 10 years ago in the long (and still) running "Brian + Linda Bookclub" and it seems even more relevant today with the localvore and Slow Food movements.

Growing up in California, I've always been spoiled by having good, fresh produce available, but it wasn't until I read Epitaph for a Peach by David Mas Masumoto that I realized that our collective choices have a significant impact on our world and how we eat and live.

I've had the pleasure of buying the Suncrest peaches featured in the book have been available at Berkeley Bowl (best market in the world) and they truly are amazing.

... and yes, I have romantic notions of farming potted tomatoes for a living.

Tropical Storm a Comin'

We were going to go up to Montauk today to hang out with my sister's family, but a huge storm is coming into the New York area. Supposedly 5 inches of rain, with crazy winds are supposed to fall in NYC.

We'll that storm has arrived and it is dumping rain right now!

We brought most of the tomato plants inside, with the exception of the Striped Germans. We had originally brought that plant inside too, but there were a lot of bugs in that pot (eek! a spider), which didn't sit too well with the lovely Sarrita, so out it went again (though not with a tantrum by me. i hate doing more work).

Batten down the hatches!

We created a little alcove in the corner of our terrace to shield the plant from the elements by draping a garbage bag over the top of the plant and putting a table in front of it to block the wind.

Tomato Fort

During the initial downpour, the garbage bag tarp wasn't attached to the center support, so it collapsed in on itself, so I ran out into the rain and used one of the large binder clips to tent the tarp so that the water would run off.

The Mighty Binder Clip

We've lost one flower far, but I guess we should've been pinching off those flowers anyways on the SG, since there are some tomato clusters that are collapsing under their own weight on that plant.

The Tomato Street Players: Striped German

photo source: http://www.johnnyseeds.com

Description from http://www.johnnyseeds.com:
Bicolor red and yellow fruit.
The flat, medium to large, variably ribbed-shoulder tomatoes are shaded yellow and red. The marbled interior looks beautiful sliced. Complex, fruity flavor and smooth texture. Medium-tall vines. Indeterminate.
Days to Maturity or Bloom: 78 days.

Tomatoburg says:
Where purchased: Sprout Home, Brooklyn

Apparently, these tomatoes can grow up to a pound. A nice blog entry is here: Rickrack Rag Striped German post.

I love the color! Hopefully we'll be able to grow 'em 1 pounders.

The Tomato Street Players: Sweet 100

photo source: http://www.tomatogrowers.com

"A well grown (Super) Sweet 100 will produce 1000 or more fruit and will get to be about 15 feet tall. That is for a well grown plant. Being a newbie your actual mileage may vary." Posted by wvtomatoman at forums.gardenweb.com

Description
Very vigorous, indeterminate plant is a prolific producer of crack-prone fruit with good tomato flavor. 65 to 70 days.

Tomatoburg Says:
Where purchased: Khan's Market, Brooklyn

I was inspired to grow cherry tomatoes this year when my friend Evan said that they got "hundreds" of tomatoes from their plant.

First Crush

Scrub a dub

Last night, I noticed that some of the ripening tomatoes though not very big, had split. Maybe this was due to over-watering, compensating for when the tomatoes nearly died during our road trip. We should've heeded the words of our waitress at Fornino this week ... beware the bursting tomatoes.

Extreme Tomato Close-up

Regardless, we had to triage the situation, stat! We picked 'em (3 sweet 100s and 1 rutgers), harvested a few stalks of fresh basil and dug out the fresh mozzerella that we picked up from Fairway Redhook (which by the way, is awesome and yes, we did have the lobster roll).

Farm to Table

One of the cherry tomatoes was very sweet and the rutgers was tasty as well. Great texture. The home grown basil was amazing, so flavorful. I want to say that the tomatoes were the star, but the mozzerella out shone them. I didn't think much of the mozzerella when I tasted it at Fairway, but whoa it really tasted good. Leaving it in the car for a few hours while at IKEA must've helped the flavor.

Sweat and tears were shed over these tomatoes, so tasting the bounty of our efforts for the first time was pretty darn cool.

Neighborhood Garden Supplies

Crest True Value Hardware
558 Metropolitan @ Lorimer, Brooklyn (map)(website)

From A Tomato Grows in Brooklyn?

Crest is a great neighborhood hardware store. The prices are good and the people working there are friendly and helpful. I went on a weekday and one of the employees took the time to answer all of my novice gardening questions and I learned that potted plants require potting soil and not garden soil.

Crest has an excellent selection of gardening supplies, pretty much everything that you would need to setup a patio or even outdoor garden and they also carry organic gardening supplies. Plus, they've got real, honest to goodness plants, including herbs! In addition to the display in front, there is a garden patio in the rear of the store.

Sprout Home
44 Grand Street, Brooklyn (map)(website)



Check out some unaffiliated to me photos of Sprout on Flickr:
Sprout Home Flickr Set

Stores like Sprout Home are why I live in Williamsburg. It is so frickin' cute. Sprout is what I imagine when I think of "Urban Gardening", selective, small, creative and beautiful. If you want your plants to be hip, eclectic and dressed in the coolest, well pots, Sprout is your place. If you want to look as good as your plants, while tending to your plants, Sprout has got you covered. Also, Sprout carries a small, precious selection of housewares and furnitues. We got our shower curtain from Sprout (though we had to order it online, since the Brooklyn store was out of stock).

Sprout is well-stocked and only walking distance from our apartment in Northside Williamsburg. Between Sprout and Crest Hardware our neighborhood is well covered. We got our two heirloom tomato plants, organic potting soil, organic tomato food, and some of our bamboo stakes from Sprout. The prices are reasonable (ok, you pay a tiny bit more for the cute-o-sity).

The only downside ... mosquitoes. Got got by them critters. Skeeters are especially bad this year.

An extra bonus, Sprout is right next to the A.P.C outlet, Two Jakes and Moon River Chattel. The Williamsburg version of the IKEA / Expo Design / Home Depot run in Emeryville.

Khim's Market
280 Bedford @ N. 1st St (map)(site)


Small selection of plants, including tomato, chiles and pepper and a few herbs. They had non-organic potting soil, but only a few pots.

Khim's is mostly a small grocery that also sells plants during the summer.

Unnamed place next to Om Sweet Om
(edit: walked by there on Sept 13, 2008 and the place now has signage and is called "Jungle")
57 Kent Avenue-ish, Brooklyn (map)(website)
Helen's friend, Jane, had a car and she was nice enough to take us drive us around Williamsburg and Greenpoint last month. It was really cool zipping around in a car and seeing more of North Brooklyn in 15 minutes than in our first 2 months here (some would say that I am kind of a shut-in). During our car tour, we saw a huge garden center just a couple of blocks away from where we live on Kent and N. 10th St.

We tried to check it out after the MGMT @ McCarren Pool thingy, but it was already closed. It is right next to Om Sweet Om, but I don't actually think they are related. About a week later we got there when it was still open.

This place was part garden lounge and nursery with an eclectic selection of plants. It kinda reminded me of Flora Grubb in SF, but w/o an indoor space and unfortunately no Ritual Coffee. They mostly carry really big plants and pots and maybe don't have all the garden supplies that you would need, but has cool stuff.

We were trying to buy some organic fertilizer for our tomatoes, but they only had a 30 lb bag. The price seemed good considering the fertilizer seemed like good stuff.

Home Depot, Chelsea
One of the things about Williamsburg is that without a car, it can be easier to get to Manhattan than other parts of Brooklyn that are not off the L.

This is one of the urban Home Depots, but they had a pretty decent urban gardening section as far as supplies go. I found medium sized planters and organic potting soil and plant food (along with the non-organic kind). There was a run on organic potting soil b/c both the Home Depot Chelsea and Crest True Value were out at one point when I went to buy. The plant selection is geared towards apartment plants and there were no tomato plants or herbs.

The location of this Home Depot is excellent, within a couple of blocks of the Container Store and Bed, Bath and Beyond ... Home improving is the new sexy.

Also, if you want to wait an hour for a burger, the Shake Shack is half a block away.

Home Depot, Bed-Stuy
Have not been, but apparently has a garden center.

Hardware Store on Bedford
Limited selection of pots (a few window boxes), but they did have a small bag of organic potting soil.

Nice tomatoes...

Our tomatoes have finally become more photogenic, so here's a bunch of photos that I just took of them.

Rutgers


Cherokee Purple


Sweet 100


Sweet 100


Large Red Cherry


Striped German

Tomato Tomato

We were watching Sarrita's one-and-a-half year old niece, Sophie, yesterday and the genius that I am, I read through all of Sophie's books, including Little Miss Twins. The Miss Twins live in Twoville and say the ends of their sentences twice, say as in "Hello Hello". This reminded me of our own double tomato:

Tomato on Tomato Action


Cannot wait to eat some of our "ugly", yummy tomatoes!