Tag: tomato

Posted on in Garden Myths, Veggies

Pennies—Good for Thoughts, but Not Tomato Blight

Tomatoes - cherry Sunsweet @home LAH-001I recently ran across an article claiming that a penny can help your tomato plants fight off blight. Apparently, the reasoning goes like this:

  • Copper is known to kill molds, algae, fungi, and microbes.
  • Pennies are made out of copper.
  • Therefore, inserting a penny into a tomato stem (or burying it at the roots) will keep your plant from succumbing to diseases caused by molds, algae, fungi, or microbes.

Since I’ve lost tomato plants to Early Blight, a common problem in Colorado, I’d love for this idea to work. I have some pennies lying around; let’s put them to good use, right?

Well, not really.

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Posted on in Botany for Gardeners, Plant Profiles

Deadly? Or Delicious?

Devil’s Trumpet (Datura sp.)
Devil’s Trumpet (Datura sp.)

Eating just a few leaves or berries will leave you writhing on the ground. Your mouth dries, your pupils enlarge, and you run a fever. Within minutes, you gasp as painful cramps turn into vomiting and diarrhea.  First your pulse races, then it slows, as does your breathing. Your head pounds, and then the hallucinations start. You’ve become paralyzed.

But soon, none of that matters any more—because you’ll be dead.

Happily, if you do manage to get to a hospital in time, there’s a good chance you’ll recover, although the symptoms can last up to three days. Eating an unidentified plant is never a good idea, but if it happens to be one of the more dangerous members of the nightshade family, it could be fatal. (more…)

Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Extending the Harvest

Tomato_DBG_20090915_LAH_0507As fall finally arrives, it’s time to think about early frosts and the end of the growing season. At our house, we are happily celebrating the end of the summer squash glut, and I have no plans to prolong that harvest. Our pole beans are looking a bit peaked, and production has stalled. We enjoyed a bountiful crop, so again, I’m happy to let them succumb to frost.

On the other hand, our tomatoes have just started ripening. (They wilted severely while we were evacuated for the Black Forest fire, and I think it set them back at least a month.) The huge plants are loaded with promising yellow, orange, and pale red fruit, and I’m unwilling to give up so close to our goal.

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Posted on in Veggies

My Favorite Varieties: Tomatoes

tomatoes-greenhouse-2008sept08-lah-296When it comes to the perfect tomato, we gardeners have sky-high expectations! We all have our own concept of tomato heaven—healthy plants bearing tons of huge fruit with exactly the right sugar-to-acid balance, thin skin (but one that doesn’t crack), early, full of flavor, and resistant to whatever Mother Nature can throw at it.

Here in my high altitude garden, I can’t afford to be so picky. Forget long-season heirlooms and humongous beefsteaks. I just want a tomato that will ripen before it freezes to death! It does, however, have to taste better than store-bought. Isn’t flavor the whole reason to grow tomatoes in the first place?

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

Saying Good-by to Tomatoes

tomatoes-greenhouse-2008sept08-lah-296

It seems that only yesterday I was picking my first ripe tomato of the season. Now I’m looking at the vigorous vines still full of green fruit and wondering… how long will the warm weather last this year? Is there will time for these to ripen? If not, when should I pick them? How should I store them? Is it OK if they freeze?

It’s early October, with warm, golden days and crisp nights, and frost could come at any time. In fact, October 10 is the average first frost date in Colorado Springs. (Where I am, 1,000 feet higher in elevation than downtown, I have to subtract 10 days (one day per hundred feet), which means that in any given year, my garden has a 50% chance of seeing a frost by October 1.)

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Posted on in Gardening, Veggies

When Is the Last Frost?

frosty-tree-home-2009-02-14-lah-253

This last week of gorgeous spring weather has certainly brought out the crowds at the garden centers and home improvement stores. When I visited last weekend, carts full of geraniums, tomatoes, and other tender annuals were lined up at the checkout.

Today, the forecast is for snow. It was 30 degrees when I got up this morning. There was frost on the parked cars. As I type, big flakes are softly landing on the freshly turned soil out my window. I wondered how many of the people I’d seen at the store had gone home and planted their flowers, only to find them blackened after the sub-freezing night.

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Posted on in Gardening, Insects & Other Critters, Landscaping, Seed Starting, Veggies

Upside-Down Tomatoes?

tomatoes-greenhouse-2008sept08-lah-296We’ve probably all seen the ads for growing upside-down tomatoes, with the plants protruding from the bottom of a hanging plastic bag full of potting mix. They’re the Big New Idea in gardening. The question everyone’s asking is, does this work here in Colorado? After all, this isn’t exactly prime tomato-growing country.

Carol O’Meara is the horticultural extension agent for Boulder county. She has decided to find out for herself if growing tomatoes upside-down works in our climate, and is sharing the ongoing results of her experiment on her blog, Gardening After Five. Carol brings up a number of important issues; if you want to try this too, reading her article is a good place to start.

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