Marinara, Salsa, and Ketchup

THE GREAT WALLS OF WATER: The walls of water keep the tomato plants from being stressed by the cold at night, as the water absorbs the change of temperature in the environment. By encouraging them to grow faster, they will mature faster and put on ideally more fruit sooner so that they will have more time to ripen. While not as celebrated as China’s, the tomatoes think their walls are pretty great, especially during those cold, lonely nights.

PESTS WE’VE SEEN LATELY: Flea beetles are on the hunt for our tomato plants these days. They tend to attack newly transplanted seedlings but spraying Rotenone or Red Arrow every couple days will protect them until they recuperate after an attack. Using Reemay, or row cover, is another method: the flies will scatter in fear when you approach and then an application of Reemay will keep them off. Once they have settled, hardened, and regained their strength, the plants will be much less susceptible.

PRUNING: for more savory fruit and less disease!

Tomato Pruning Video

This video is extremely helpful for the delicate but necessary pruning. Just to sum up what he says in the video:

- Pruning is meant to increase yield and avoid disease

- By encouraging growth into the “leaders”, more fruit is produced

- Leaders are the first main stem and the second branch that grows below it; everything else is a “sucker”… because they suck the energy away from where it should be! (or maybe for some other reason)

- Some tomatoes don’t need pruning: called “Determinate”, and they are bushy rather than climbers

- Indeterminate plants are those that need to be trellised and pruned

(they need more TLC, but they produce higher quality fruit… worth it? I think so.)

- When should you stop the growth? 30 days before the first frost, remove the ends of the leaders to force energy to the fruit and inhibit new growth… get the most out of the plants for the last harvest!

Where a "sucker" once was... 

HOWEVER, let’s be sure to not go overboard with the pruning, as it could shock the plant and make it more susceptible to disease, possibly killing it before it even produces any fruit at all! Tragic.

CITY TOMATOES: As mentioned before, determinate tomatoes are bushier and compact which would be best for containers, which is often the limit in an urban setting (I’m experiencing that limit now!). They are actually quite suitable to hanging upside down (with the roots inside the container and the stem going through a hole in the bottom). Here’s a couple step-by-step links:

Instructables: How to plant hanging upside-down tomatoes

How Did I Do It?: How to grow hanging tomatoes

Harvest won't be until late August/early September (this is true in Seattle but it of course depends on the climate) but we can enjoy watching the magic as they turn from flowers to fruit, green to red, red indicating when you need to stop what you're doing and pick that ripe one and take the first bite of juicy bliss.

By the way, there are some great classes on how to PRESERVE TOMATOES going on this summer if you’re preparing for a tomato overload. I’ve taken a class on general canning with Ms. Phelps and I would definitely recommend them. So, if anyone is interested:

How to can tomato products including sauces, salsas, and ketchup! Last Sunday of each month: Seattle Can Can: Canning 104- Tomatoes

How to make homemade ketchup! Email Vic.Phelps@gmail.com if interested:

Seattle Can Can: Ketchup Classes Forming Up

So many colorful varieties! 

Backyard Beauties!

Here are a few examples of the beautiful things I get to see as an intern and the urban farmers get to see just looking outside their window!

One of the backyard gardens where we harvested a whole lotta lettuce and some scrumptious spinach.

Snap Peas reaching for the sky.

A little baby asparagus in it's first year (it'll be harvested next year).

Newly transplanted broccoli with sawdust to keep away root maggots. 

Another lovely, thriving garden.

Vigorously flourishing Snow Peas! 

Some glorious Snow Pea blossoms.

Fresh, crunchy snacks... yum. 

Putting the Seeds to Bed

Day three of the internship and I finally remember to bring my camera and snap some photos to better explain things. When I arrived around 8am this morning, my first duty was to seed several flats according to the seeding schedule, which is maintained to ensure that there is a sufficient number of plants to distribute to the gardens at the right times. Seeding is done every week as plants need to be replaced, replanted, or when the optimal time arises for new plants to start their growing season.

Here are the steps to seeding the lettuce. Quite tedious as I mentioned, but pretty simple. This efficient method is not something I would have known intuitively. 

1.    Fill seed bed with moist soil: SUFCo uses germination mix, which is a blend of peat moss, perlite, and dolomite lime. Balanced fertilizer is also added along with some water before filling the trays, making a welcomingly nutritious and moist bed for the seeds to germinate in.







2.  Push another similar tray down on top of that one to push the soil down, making a cozy niche for the seed to lay in

3.  Place one of the teeny-tiny seeds in each cup (aim for one, it’s not easy), keeping track of which varieties are in which row using tags. By limiting the number of seeds in each, we limit competition for light and nutrients between them. If too many seeds grow close together, the plants get "leggy", meaning they grow up instead of flourishing out as they should. 

4.   Cover with a thick, fluffy layer of soil

5.   Press the fluff down to compact the soil to hold the seeds in place (it's like tucking them into their little beds!)

6.  Brush excess off, careful not to remove the soil in the cup

7.   Water the bed. Usually after watering, the beds would go straight to the comfy greenhouse, but since it's now above 50 degrees at night, we can leave them outside to germinate! Hooray for warm weather! 

After two flats of that, we had 256 lettuces all set to grow! I seeded five different varieties of lettuce, meaning that while all part of the same species, they have qualities that set them apart from one another. They are diversified even just by the color of their seeds.

So it begins! In a few weeks, these little fellers will be ready to move to their new urban farm homes to mature to their full, healthy, leafy potential, perhaps eventually ending up in a refreshing summer salad... maybe with some juicy tomatoes!? More on those succulent red spheres soon.

"The word "miracle" aptly describes a seed."
-  Jack Kramer

"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.  Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
-  Henry David Thoreau

Dirt that's good for the soul...

I'm currently a junior at Cornell, studying Agricultural Sciences, which has propelled me to embark on this blogging adventure to fill an internship requirement. I’m very excited to be spending my summer in the voluptuous city of Seattle, reading, drinking coffee, knitting, blogging, cooking, and gaining all kinds of urban agricultural enlightenment. My hope for this blog is for it to not only be an internship update provider, but also a cozy place to share insights, ideas, and excitement about urban farming and all that goes with it.

After visiting for three weeks, I found Seattle to be a place of immense passion, brewing tons of fresh ideas, and nearly bubbling over with proactivity. An agricultural enthusiast will never be bored in this city: with Pike Place Market as one of the main tourist attractions (I challenge you to name another city with a farmers market that attracts 10 million visitors each year and is open 7 days a week [pikeplacemarket.org]), district farmers markets every weekend all year round, P-Patch community gardens scattered about, frequent work parties with organizations that adore volunteers, and tons of classes on a wide range of topics from planting to preserving, it’s difficult to miss out on the movement.

This all of course enticed me to buy another plane ticket about a week after returning home.

Volunteering during my visit helped me to network a bit and meet many enthusiastic community members. The one volunteer experience that helped me most was a trial day with the Seattle Urban Farm Company, a growing enterprise that builds and maintains edible landscapes in the backyards of Seattle residents. Throughout the season, the company grows whatever the clients’ hearts (or stomachs) desire about as close to home as you can get, making fresh produce literally a hop, skip, and maybe a jump away, depending on the size of the yard.

My trial day was spent maintaining some of these backyard farmyards with the lovely farmer Hilary, and some of the customers who wanted to take part. We also visited a rooftop garden on top of the Bastille restaurant in Ballard that the company installed and maintains as well. Now that I have returned, hungry for more urban ag action, I am interning with the Seattle Urban Farm Company for the rest of the summer. What better way to get to know the city and learn all the dirt on urban agriculture? Not to mention crop seasonality, business management and organization, social media, plant varieties, and much more….

So, here I am, starting a blog, ready to share a great summer with whoever cares to take part. The positive energy and excitement are aflowin’! Time to dig in.