Rocky (or "Tomato Rocky" as we call it) is my own family heirloom! I received the seed from my father in 1983. He, in turn received the seed from Rocky Mastro, a family friend, in 1973. Rocky heard about an Italian friend, who had brought this tomato back from a visit to family in Italy. He and some of his friends drove up to see, only to find that the fellow wasn't home. But, as we liked to joke, in "true Italian tradition" Rocky didn't go away empty handed. He found a rotting fruit, on the ground and took it home, extracting seed, and growing the variety in his own garden.

Rocky passed away, at 83 years of age, in 2003. I did his memorial service, as I was a pastor in our church, at the time. Marge, his wife, asked me to plant some of these plants on church grounds, in 2004, as a memorial. I did too! Rocky was a WWII veteran, landing on the beach of Normandy among other battles. He LOVES the Lord. Our families are close. Back in 2002, I remember visiting him one day and commenting to him that he was like a father to me. He looked me in the eye and exclaimed, "No! You are my son!" Rocky's wife, Marge, is now in her 90s and still sharp as a tack.

This tomato isn't actually a paste tomato, and it's taken me until this year to recognize, that it often its more of an oxheart than a plum! This explains why it is not so dependable in our Oklahoma heat. Still, I have bee growing it here, since 2005, and it the last two years it has actually come through with an acceptable crop.

A distinctive of this tomato is its very rich flavor. Back in the 80s my wife and I dehydrated tomatoes and found that when Rocky dries its flavor is so sweet and sharp that it is actually fruit like.

The vines are rather wispy and really need a good cage. I can usually pick out these seedlings without even looking at a tag.

Also, this year I grew Little Bells, from Double Helix Farms. In Green Country Seed Saver Meetings we had heard good reviews of this Russian bred tomato. I gave it a try. I produces small/medium (egg sized) round red tomatoes, in abundance, on restrained indeterminate vines. Try to the reports we had heard, it just keeps cranking out the fruit until frost. I found the flavor to be okay. It tastes like a tomato, with nothing distinctive about it. So, I prefer my regular favorites for flavor. However, I did find, in the early morning, when I made an omelet, before work, that I regularly grabbed these from the counter, as they are the perfect size for a single omelet.

I have seed of this tomato for anyone interested. Will probably bring some to our upcoming GCSS meeting.

George

Dawn,

If you wanted to grow tomatoes, in a heavy clay soil, using the fence post and weave support method, which variety would you plant?

Thanks,

Johnny

I want at least one early producer and some of the more prolific growers peppered with the flavor of my favorite tomato:

Black Mauri (Moor)

So, I might try:

Gary'O Sena for early producer

I need to try another paste tomato. I haven't had much luck with paste tomatoes. Perhaps it's because I don't like to baby them. Reducing the other tomatoes doesn't really bother me, but I'd like to have a bit of paste in the freezer.

I thoroughly enjoyed

Ace55

It was a good tasting variety of 'regular tomato taste' but it was extremely prolific. One of those I could pick regularly before supper.

2 -Gary'O Sena for early production [6 starts] Heir.

4 - Black Mauri [Moor] as flavor enhancer [12 starts] Heir. Plum

2 Heinz Hybrids for steady mass production [6 starts each] F1

1 - Ace 55 tasty slicer and salader [3 starts] Heir.

2 - Sungold flavor enhancer [6 starts] F1 Cherry

2 - Other to be selected

George,

Thanks for the seed offer. I do have seeds but I appreciate your kindness in offering to share yours. I think I first grew Rocky 6 or 7 years ago in a very wet year when none of my plants performed as well as I'd hoped because it was so incredibly wet. Hmmm. That means it might have been in 2007 or 2010 because those are our recent wet years. I'm hoping it will do well in 2016 no matter what sort of year we have. I am pretty fond of a handful of oxheart varieties as they all did well for me this year. Of course, we may never have a year again that is wet and cool as late into the growing season as this year was. The weather might be the reason the oxhearts did so well. I as still harvesting oxhearts in the August heat, which is a far longer productive period than I've ever had with an oxheart before. Also, thanks for sharing Rocky's history with us. I love the stories that accompany heirloom, O-P varieties.

Johnny,

Because productivity is going to be very important, given that you are producing tomatoes for food banks, I'd go with old, proven, reliable tried and true, disease-tolerant hybrids that produce heavily. For what it is worth, even in my very first year here when my clay soil was barely improved at all, tomatoes performed really well in clay. I believe it is because clay is high in nutrients and also because it holds moisture well. As a bonus, while root knot nematodes are a huge issue in sandy soil, they generally do not become a problem in clay.....so love your clay soil and it will love you back. Here's the varieties I'd grow: Big Beef, Beefmaster, Better Boy, Supersonic, Jet Star or Brandy Boy (pinkish fruit on the last one, and some folks won't eat any tomato that is not red, just an FYI). Also, though I love Brandy Boy and it has been very productive in the years Ive grown it, it is a Burpee exclusive and that makes its' seeds very pricey. If I could only grow one, it would be a toss-up between Big Beef and Jet Star, both of which are highly productive plants that produce beautiful and tasty fruit.

I also am really fond of any of the Heinz varieties because they produce huge loads of fruit, but their flavor isn't quite as good for fresh eating as the ones I listed previously. They are great for cooking and canning. If you want a heat-setting type that would continue to set fruit somewhat later in the season, you can't go wrong with Phoenix. For really early fruit? Either Early Girl or Bush Early Girl, both of which produce very well. Early Girl sometimes is slow to set fruit in my garden, but she is one of the few varieties that will flower and set fruit in May and June, and also in July, August and September. I think the last fruit I harvested this year was from Early Girl, Homestead and Champion II.

I don't know how many seeds you will need to grow enough plants, but Tomato Grower's Supply and Willhite Seed both sell in larger sizes for people who need a lot of plants. Also, please note that I stuck with hybrids in the varieties I suggested because they tend to show better disease tolerance and also to produce more heavily than most open-pollinated, heirloom types do in our difficult climate where we often go from 'too cold' for tomatoes to survive to 'too hot' for them to set fruit in a shockingly brief time frame.

Bon, Either Heidi or Speckled Roman produce lots of fruit and I don't pamper them at all. I plant them and cage them the same day, and ignore them after that until there's so much ripe fruit that the tomatoes are starting to drop off the plants. Then I wake up, get a clue that it is canning time and harvest/can buckets and buckets of tomatoes. The same can be said about both the Heinz varieties on my list. The last time I grew them, I couldn't even keep up with harvesting and canning them. They just made so many tomatoes at one time that staying caught up was impossible. I like varieties like that. I should emphasize that I don't pamper any tomato variety. They have to be able to grow and produce with minimal input from me or I don't bother with them. Gardening season is very busy and there's always lots of berries and tree fruit ripening at the same time the tomatoes are, so the tomato plants need to be independent and able to survive on literally no care because there is no time to pamper them. I am a most neglectful tomato grower.

Regarding the black tomatoes: pretty much all the black varieties have that same complex, rich flavor so don't be afraid to branch out and try other black ones each year. Every single time I try a new black variety I am convinced it is the best ever. The truth, though, is that they all have exactly the flavor I love, so to me, all of them are worth growing. I've grown at least 30 kinds of black tomatoes and most were very, very similar in flavor. Only Black Plum is different, and it has a very unique flavor that is different from that of other black types. People either love it or hate it. I don't grow many of the small black ones like Black Plum any more because harvesting and processing all those small tomatoes is exhausting. I'd rather deal with fewer large black tomatoes than with tons of small ones. It saves me a lot of time over the course of the summer. That's why Black Plum isn't on my grow list much any more.

I'd glad the Grow List is encouraging discussion. This forum has been kind of quiet lately as we've all been (a) busy with holiday preparations, (b) sick with the evil stomach bug that's going around, (c) gone to visit family for TGiving, (d) without power due to ice, or some combination of all the above. It is almost December, catalogs are arriving, seed websites are updating, and it is time to make grow lists, check seed inventories, order any needed seeds, and dream of planting time, which will be here before we know it. I'm always shocked at how I just wake up one day in the middle of winter and realize it is time to start seeds. December and January seem to fly by every year!

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn. I'll try the Heidi. I recall other conversations about these which I had forgotten until this discussion. I really enjoyed the abundance this year. And it was very wet and very chaotic and neglectful. Aced it!

I'm totally thrilled to be able to try some hybrids next year and get some serious processing going on.

Dawn,

Thanks again. I hope to be of assistance to you some day.

If I can find a green house, when should I start those seeds?

Johnny

Johnny, When's your average last frost date OR the date you feel it is safe to plant warm-season plants that freeze at 32 degrees? That's how I determine when to start seeds. I more or less start my seeds 6-8 weeks before my intended date to plant out, though I might start a little earlier if we're having a warm winter or a little later if we're having a really cold one. What I try to do is to start them by Super Bowl Sunday, which tends to fall about 7 weeks before my average last frost date.

My personal preference is to put the tomato plants in the ground once my soil temperatures are staying at or above 50-55 degrees and my nights are staying above freezing. The earlier I get the plants in the ground, the earlier my harvest most years and I like to push the limits and plant as early as possible in order to allow the plants to grow and set as much fruit as possible before the temperatures arrive that shut down blossom pollination/fertilization. In an average year, I get those sort of temperatures around the 3rd week in June. In a bad year when it gets hot early, like in 2011, I can get those temperatures here as early as early May. (My weather is much more like the weather in Dallas-Fort Worth than in OKC, so I do seem like I plant really early compared to many other people in OK, but when you're as far south as I am, you do what you have to do in order to succeed with the weather you have.)

For safety's sake, OSU advises transplanting tomato plants into the ground April 10-30, and for most people in OK, those dates work as long as Mother Nature doesn't send the hot temperatures too early. I know people here in my county who planted their tomato plants in 2011 at the end of April, and then a week or two later our air temperatures were getting too high for good fruit set, and they literally did not get a single fruit that summer. Most of them just yanked out their plants at midsummer and considered it a wasted garden year (not that anyone could blame them).

I hope you can find someone close to your city to start tomato plants for you in their greenhouse. If you can't, I'll be happy to do it here in my humble little greenhouse. Tim and I could drive up and deliver the plants when planting time was approaching. Let me know....and the offer stands, so don't forget that I'm ready, willing and able to be your back-up plan for starting tomato plants. I know it would work better for you to have someone in your part of the state, but with I-35 running down the middle of the state, Marietta isn't as far from Guthrie as it looks on a map. : )

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks once again. You are on record as plan B. I have copied your advice to a file that contains other notable notes.

Your help with tomatoes is better because we are both in Oklahoma and you are very experienced at growing them.

I can appreciate your help more now than earlier because of my potato education. A lot of what I read about growing potatoes only applies to the northern tier of states. I have learned some painful lessons on my path to potato nirvana.

Gardening, like politics, is always local.

Based on your timing recommendations, we should start our tomato seeds the first week of February, right before potato planting.

I hope to use the greenhouse at St. Francis of the Woods. Do you suppose planting into cow pots would minimize transplant shock? I like how you can just plant the whole pot. Just a thought...

Johnny

Dawn,

Yes, that helped. I have added this to my notable notes on tomatoes. I'm guessing it will be part of our training manual for future Vision Farms growers.

We think we have found our first employee. We hope to bring him on mid March.

Johnny

I totally agree with Dawn on the peat pot issue. I find them to be pretty worthless. I am in far northeastern OK and I don't start my tomatoes and peppers until around the 20th of February. I start looking at the weather around the 7th of April for planting out tomato plants and a couple of weeks later for peppers. I start in tiny soil blocks, move once to a larger block, then into the final transplant pot until time to go to the garden. That sounds like a lot of work, but really isn't because the tiny block drops into the larger block. I don't have a greenhouse so I move them back and forth way too much. I will probably set up a small hoop house this year to try and avoid some of that.

I can tell you that I have planted plenty of Dawn's tomato starts and they are large healthy plants. She is a master grower with lots of experience and I usually add a few of her plants to my garden after the Spring Fling around the end of April if I still have room. One year I brought home a cantaloupe plant that she had grown hoping it would produce an early crop for me. She was eating melons at least a month before mine produced so a lot still depends on the available heat and sunshine. I grew the plant in a container and it was very productive, but not really any earlier than normal.

I look forward to Dawn's tomato list every year and have planted many of her recommended varieties. Although I live in a much wetter climate, I still value her advice, but will never be the great gardener that she is. She rocks. - Carol

Johnny, I am so excited y'all are getting your first employee. I hope you found someone who will be as wonderful of an employee as your project deserves to have. It is a good thing I'm a couple hundred miles away or I'd be at Vision Farms every day of the week wearing out my welcome in short order.

Carol, You are too kind and are making me blush a bright shade of pink. Kind words are much appreciated, but you give me too much credit. I just sow the seeds and transplant the plants and God gets the credit for all the rest.

Dawn

Good stuff.

Johnny, first week of feb is when I start rolling it all out though I'm still pretty new. By the time I get the last of the tomato seeds into their starting pots, it's officially time to start seeds. Last year I started 150 tomato plants. They're pretty tough once they get going.

Seems easier to finagle the pots/transplants in iffy weather in April than to get them started too late (tomatoes). I had that problem with my peppers last year which can take much longer because I didn't have needed temp control over the little darlings. You're right. It is local, isn't it? I suppose if I had more temperature control I wouldn't think that way!

I got started late on my potatoes that spring you came and plowed. They did well, but could have used a couple more weeks.
bon

Bon,

Your message just struck a chord. I have a large glass area (20' x 7') on the South side of my house. I wonder if it admits enough light to use as a green house. Maybe I could build some shelves there.
Would I need a light meter to find out if there is enough light there? That area is not heated currently but it would not take much heat to prevent freezing there from Feb. to Apr.

I always have more questions than answers.

Johnny

Johnny, I bet a plant would tell you all you need to know. Warm it up and start a few squash seedlings and see if they get leggy. Also count the hours the sun hits it. Come to think of it. I've started mine with a whole lot less light! This cottage is buttoned up tight. I hate it.

Bon,

Yup, I'll start some this evening.

Thanks!

Johnny, I start all my tomato plants upstairs in a spare bedroom that is on the southeast corner of the house. It has two large east-facing windows that get sun in the morning, and a south-facing window that gets nice winter sun throughout the day. It probably would be just about bright enough to raise plants in there in winter without any supplemental lights, but I do use a lighted plant shelf to raise the young seedlings. We made our own lighted plant shelf using a plastic shelving unit that has five shelves. Suspended from each shelf we have 2 shop light fixtures that light up the shelf beneath them, and each shop light has two fluorescent tube lights. We don't buy fancy plant light tubes----just plain old tubes used in shop lights in shop buildings or garages or whatever. For the very top shelf, the lights are suspended from hooks in the ceiling. Each shelf easily holds 3 72-cell flats, or with some creative wedging in/cramming in of flats, I can get 4 on each shelf. I put a sheet of plastic on the floor beneath the entire shelving unit when I set it up every February. The plastic sheet catches dirt and any accidental of overflow from watering (rare, but it happens, so I am careful to protect the floor).

This is where all the seedlings I raise are started. The broccoli and other cool-season starts can go out to the greenhouse soon after they sprout, and I grow them on out in the unheated greenhouse. The tomato and pepper transplants stay indoors until they are 3 or 4 weeks old, depending on the weather. Eventually they go out to the greenhouse too. The thing about a greenhouse is that it heats up really hot (up to 145 degrees in an hour or two of sun on a sunny morning) really fast if you have all the doors and vents closed, so my main job in winter, and this is especially important once young seedlings are out in the greenhouse, is just to make sure I open up the doors and windows to keep the greenhouse from heating up too much, and then to close them at the right time in the afternoon to hold in the heat to keep it warm all night. I don't heat it. I suppose I could, but I like the challenge of keeping everything alive with natural heat from the sun. I do have a heater I can put in the greenhouse if needed, but I've never had to use it. On a really cold night, I might drape the frost blanket weight row cover (mine is rated to give 10 degrees of protection) over the plants, and that row cover plus the heat held in from the daytime heating always has kept my plants happy.

Before I had a greenhouse, I found the screened-in porch pretty handy to use in a way similar to a greenhouse although I did have to carry flats of plants indoors on very cold nights since window screening doesn't hold in heat like real windows do. We did cover the screening for a few winters with 6 mm plastic and that helped keep the plants in there warm enough most of the time. About three years ago, we converted the screened-in porch to a sunroom with actual working windows and well-insulated walls maybe 3 years after we built the greenhouse so I could use it as a supplemental greenhouse (it has 9 windows) but our son currently has his tropical birds in there (it is perfect for them) and I suspect his birds would eat my plants when he lets them out of their cages to fly around. When he finishes building his house with his own two hands (it progresses slowly in a year when it rains 3-5 days a week, lol) and moves his tropical birds into his house, we'll get our sunroom back again.

What I have found is that there are many ways to raise your own seedlings if you want to do it. My first light shelf, built probably our second year here, was small with three 3-foot-long shelves that each held one flat and one half-flat. I had it sitting in the master bedroom where it took up very little space. As soon as one flat of seedlings was large enough to move to the screened porch, I started more seeds in another flat. When we outgrew that small light shelf, we built the larger one and moved it to the spare bedroom. Over the years I have raised seedlings on the house's outdoor porches,or inside the screened-in porch, the sunroom, the garage, the potting shed and the greenhouse. Each location has its own advantages and disadvantages. At each point in time, I just did whatever I had to do to make it work.

When our clay soil was so horrible and not yet well-improved, I raised virtually everything as seedlings and transplanted them. Back then, our clay was so dense that seeds were often more likely to rot than to sprout, particularly during rainy spells. Or, since our entire garden slopes, seeds would just wash away as rain runoff ran downhill through the garden. Now that the soil is much, much improved and most of the front garden is raised beds, I can direct sow a lot of things---almost all herbs and flowers and most veggies, but I still raise my tomato and pepper seedlings inside under lights, and I like to raise my broccoli and other cole crop seedlings indoors too because they need to be a certain size at transplanting time and, when direct-sown, they get off to a much slower start. With time being of the essence here in terms of cool-season crops needing to make a crop before it gets too hot, I like to get the cool-season plants in the ground at exactly the right time and just the right size, so starting them indoors and transplanting them early helps ensure a good crop.

Growing from seed indoors under lights sounds harder than it really is!

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks again. Ill start some seeds in my bay window tonight. It faces the South. I may be able to grow all of my tomato plants there. Well see.

Johnny

Dawn,

Please describe the perfect soil properties for growing tomatoes. I will amend the soil to agree.

Johnny

Johnny, Tomatoes thrive in soil that is not too sandy (since sand encourages root knot nematodes which will destroy the plants). I have grown them both in amended clay and amended sand and found those in amended clay grew faster and better, had better drought-tolerance and produced more heavily, so I feel like starting with clay is an advantage.

Tomato plants need well-drained soil, whether it is naturally well drained, or whether you plant atop mounded-up soil or raised beds. They like rich garden soil that has adequate (but not excessive) levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Craig LeHoullier says the ideal ratio of the N-P-K in the soil is 1:4:2 and I agree with him because that is what I aim for in my beds, though I don't know if I always achieve it. Too many people focus too much on nitrogen and end up with tons of foliage and too little fruit. Tomatoes do best in soil that is just slightly acidic---roughly 6.2 to 6.8 in pH. My soil started out at a pH around 8 and our local water is high pH as well, so I have had to work really hard to amend the soil with enough organic matter just to keep my soil pH near 7. I doubt I'll ever achieve 6.8. In the beginning, I amended the soil with everything but the kitchen sink. I used compost, composted manure, old, rotted hay, leaf mold, shredded/chopped autumn leaves, and tons of purchased amendments including lava sand, green sand, dry molasses, composted cottonseed meal, peat moss, mushroom compost, pine bark fines (to improve drainage and also moisture retention), etc. I have found it mostly didn't matter what sort of organic matter I added to the garden as long as I added plenty of it. It all breaks down into compost and humus in the long run anyway. I'll add this---if you are starting out with alkaline soil, then sulphur is your friend. Of course, the opposite is true if you start out with soil that is too acidic (which interferes in nutrient uptake) and you then add limestone to make the overly-acidic soil more alkaline.

Because amending soil can take a few years, I used pelleted slow-release fertilizers in the early years. I don't have to use them now, but they were a lifesaver when the soil wasn't yet in as nice of a state as it is now. Nowadays, I do not rototill organic matter deeply into the ground as I once did. I just layer on tons of mulch year-round and let it decompose on top of the raised beds. The actions of digging, earthworms, rain, etc., carry the humus and compost down into the soil as the mulch decomposes. I try to add more mulch (mostly in the form of grass clippings) to my tomato beds almost weekly in summer because the mulch breaks down so fast in the heat. The good thing, though, is that the decomposing mulch feeds the garden for me all summer long.

Nowadays, if I was starting out, I'd probably build hugelkultur beds, except I'd have to find a way to deal with the snakes since they come right out of the woods and into any hugelkultur beds I do build. Still, that's the fastest way to improve soil that I know of, and I've used them since the 1980s, even before I knew the word "hugelkultur". I just figured it was better to bury wood trimmings in the ground and let them decompose and feed the soil instead of hauling them to the curb for the trash men to carry them away.

Hope this helps,

Dawn

Dawn since you are scaling back this year will you have time to write a book?

That made me smile

After I wrote that I checked my email and deleted 5 from someone wanting to sell me gardening videos. First of all, I'm a reader, I don't like videos. But mostly I thought I don't need that, I have Dawn, George and the rest of this group. But I bet you could make money with a book.

Dawn,

Thanks, that is the path we are on. I have a plan to amend only the center of our rows, then mound with our row hipper. I plan to create a 4 inch by 8 inch ditch in the middle of each row, layer alternating sand and compost, then mound over that ditch with the row hipper. I will be able to use the row hipper a couple of times, when the plants are short, for weed control. The pH in that garden is roughly 6.8 already.

Again, thanks!

We will be modifying our fence this Spring to keep the deer out. Our current fence keeps out all but the one or two of the most determined devils.

Johnny

lol

I'll never have time to write a book. In gardening/canning season, I barely have time to sleep. Scaling back just means (hopefully) that I won't be up until midnight canning every night for two months without taking a night off. I like canning but don't enjoy doing it endlessly.

Johnny, You're welcome and I already knew you were on that path, so I think your chances of having a great tomato crop are superb if only Ma Nature cooperates a bit weather-wise.

The most determined deer devils can be quite determined. I had one a couple of summers ago who would stand outside the garden fence for hours while I was in the garden in broad daylight and would try (mostly by snorting and pawing the ground) to scare me out of the garden. It was amusing at first, but also a little scary. I had to be sure to firmly latch the garden gate behind me when I was in the garden to make sure I didn't suddenly find a deer in there with me. While I've often had them circling the fence and trying to find a way under, over or through it, that sort of behavior usually is confined to the nighttime hours. Having a deer wanting me to go away i the daylight hours so he could get into the garden was odd. He must have tried to jump the fence a few times that summer as it was common to come out in the morning and find "dents" in the fence, and sometimes poles leaning a little sideways, but he never made it over the fence. When we redo the fence this winter, we are going to use stronger poles.

Dawn,

The deer did not touch the corn we grew this year. It is a very old heirloom corn from the SW and Mexico. I am curious what would happen if you grew some outside your fence.

Johnny

That is an impressive list, Dawn. But, I wouldn't expect anything less from you, lol!! I have missed this group so much being out of the gardening loop and not having anywhere to put a garden but times are changing. We are moving next week and I am so excited to have room to do raised beds again. Tomatoes are at the top of my list. I had a list of tomatoes that I grew previously but I lost that in the last move. I want something that is meaty and hardy. I am also thinking about planting some type of roma tomatoes that I can can. Definitely planting some cherry tomatoes! I know it's just December, but I am so excited.....gardening is my muse!!!!! It's my "zen" place. I need to start stocking back up on seeds too since I love starting my plants from seed. I can't wait to get back into reading from you all more seasoned gardeners!! :)

I just came back and looked over my 2016 grow list to be sure I remembered everything on it, so I can pull the seed packets out of my seed box today.

Don't worry, I am not so foolish as to start the seeds now, but I am going to put all of the packets of varieties on my Grow List in a big ziplock today and label it "2016" so that when the seed-starting day arrives, I can open the seed box and grab the ziplock bag.

I am horrified at how short my Grow List is and wonder what I was thinking. So many favorites were left off of it, and that's a shame. Oh, what I was thinking is that Tim's work group now is roughly 50 people and not 150 so I can make tons less salsa. That's right. I remember now. Still, looking at that list and realizing how few varieties are on it (only 23!) is about to send me into a full-fledged anxiety attack. How will we survive with only 23 varieties of tomatoes? I need a tomato psychotherapist.

Johnny, When we grew our entire garden inside a short fence, the corn was about the last thing the deer ate, but it varied a great deal depending on the drought. The real danger with deer is that they trample it as they walk through it, and broken stalks won't do well. In our garden, the deer always preferred hollyhocks, okra, and sunflowers (they eat the whole plant right down to the ground with all 3 of those) above all else. Then, next on their list? Swiss chard, pumpkins (also eat these down to the ground despite those big rough pumpkin leaves), tomatoes, peppers (entire plants of these two, though slowly over a period of days), green beans, sugar snap peas, and most flowers. They rarely ate the cole crops once they were a decent size, but devoured them while the plants were small. And, all those lists of plants that deer "won't eat"? It depends. The worse the drought and the hungrier the deer, the more things they'll eat, and that includes all the things on those lists. Deer also love winter greens, especially turnip greens, and clover.

However, if you try to outsmart the deer by planting one of those deer feed plots outside a fenced area....maybe for some winter feed for them or to distract them from your garden....they won't touch it at all. At least, our deer didn't. However, the cottontail bunnies loved everything in the deer plot and ate it all winter long, which led to a huge explosion in the cottontail rabbit population. I know that most people have big rabbit issues, but I love the rabbits and don't get wound up when they manage to infiltrate the garden. A baby rabbit, and even an adult rabbit, can squeeze through a tiny hole in the fence....all they ever eat when they get into my garden are small, sprouting bean, pea and nasturtium plants and they don't get into the garden often enough to make much of a dent in it.

Melissa, If you come back to this thread and see this, where are y'all moving to? Aren't you in central OK now instead of southcentral OK?

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks again. You have confirmed some of my observations. We have two hunters trying for deer at out 12th Street garden. Fingers crossed!

We have just made an exciting agreement with a local farmer. We will be share cropping for half and half. Vision Farms will provide the seed, prepare and fertilize the soil, plant the seed and cultivate for weed control. The farmer will harvest the crop.

We will be planting Dia De San Juan corn, crookneck milo and ??? Maybe we will receive some of the meat chickens in return for the milo crop. Our food bank and various free lunch counters would really like the chicken.

YES!

Johnny

Johnny, That sounds really cool! Every week it seems like you have a new part of the plan in motion. It is amazing how the Vision keeps expanding and growing. I'm so proud of you and your organization and all the people who work with you.

Dawn

Dawn,

I have already taken a soil sample from that farm. See attached...

The soil is completely black and friable to at least 8 inches. I was surprised at the low nutrient levels. I did not have the % organic matter checked.

Johnny, is it on a slope? What was growing there?

bon

Bon,

For a very long time, just Bermuda grass. it was an orchard. The area I tested was on a very gentle slope with no signs of new or old erosion.

I was VERY impressed the day I took the samples. It was so black and easily crumbled in my hand. Then I got the test report and my little bubble burst.

I guess I'll look for good prices on hairy vetch. I'm gonna need some.

Johnny

Johnny,

The areas where I've killed my dark soil: When I plant annual nitrogen-fixers the environment gobbles them up quickly. The soil is starved as well as the above ground critters. It needs more permanent solutions planted throughout like Russian Olive trees, Mimosa Trees, Redbud and others nitrogen-fixing perennials to give my annual nitrogen fixers a chance.

If that soil is not too heavy, I'd suggest tillage radishes among the vetch to add organic material. Not certain if they agree with each other, tho.

Of course, it's dependent upon the land itself. Hate to have your waste your time like I did planting annual legumes, but this might not be true for you.

Watch closely in the spring for native wild vetch. It seems to grow well in wet years (like last spring, I think it was). If it comes in - let it run as it is tougher than anything I could plant. I try to pay attention to its growth habits, when and where.

Just thinking out loud.

bon

The pH is nice for potatoes...much better than what I have here.

You can do your own test for tilth that at least would help you determine your approximately ratio of sand/clay/silt. Just do the jar test I have linked below. It is the most useful test I've ever done in my garden because it isn't hard to get the nutrients right but it can be hard in the beginning to figure out how much of the soil is sand vs. silt vs, clay without a test like the one linked below. It taught me that what I originally believed was compacted sand at the west end of the garden was more silt than sand, but then at least I knew what I was starting out with. With the clay part of the garden, I already knew we had claycrete (clay compacted so it is as hard as concrete), but the jar soil test showed just how pitifully clayey it really was. Mine was almost entirely clay in most areas and I wanted to cry, but I didn't. I just set to work improving it, which is sort of a job that never ends.

Fine Gardening Magazine article: How's Your Soil Texture

As for organic matter, based on your nutrient levels, I think it probably is low, and I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out.

At least you started out with nice crumbly soil. Even if it is low in nutrients, at least it has decent tilth and adding organic matter will only make it better. Sometimes I think that with root crops, tilth is a lot more important than nutrients as long as there are some nutrients.

Do you know how long ago it was an orchard and how the trees were removed? Yanked out? Ground up and plowed under? Burned?

I personally love black soil. It always looks lovely and rich even when it isn't, so its appearance really can be deceiving. Our county is fairly lacking in black soil, but I had black gumbo clay soil in Texas and I loved, loved, loved it. Once you added organic matter to it, it was the best stuff on earth and anything/everything grew in it. Our red Oklahoma soil also is rich in minerals and highly fertile, but I don't think it is nearly as fertile as the black clay I had in Texas.

There's a challenge with every soil---some are rich in nutrients but really need the tilth improved, and others are low in nutrients but have great tilth. Most fall somewhere in between. I don't know many people who start out with perfect soil unless they buy a working organic farm whose previous owner spent years improving the soil.

Bon,

I will be forced to add chemical fertilizer (10-20-10) this year. I will use banding and side dressing techniques to minimize the amount used. This Fall I will plant cereal rye, tillage radish and hairy vetch (inoculated). I will plant it at double the rate I would normally. I'll plow, broadcast all three seeds mixed together then lightly till it under (shallow). I will make a smooth roller from a cylinder I already own. After rolling, I will get a much better seed germination rate.

Dawn,

The field in question was an orchard about thirty years ago. The trees died and were not replaced. I think they just came to the natural end of their lives.

I have been a fan of the jar test for some time and have shown it to some farmers. Most had never seen it before. It amazes me how much more some gardeners know than many farmers know. I would guess that mono-cropping with chemical fertilizer and toxic chemicals has been all they have ever known.

I just finished reading a book written in 1909 about dry land farming.

http://soilandhealth.org/wp-content/uploads/01aglibrary/010172.dry.farming.pdf

Now, because water is in short supply, some are trying it again.

http://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/3483782-151/researchers-give-dry-farming-a-try

It was a large part of the reason we had the great dust bowl!

Naked fallow land and dust mulch was an absolute disaster the last time. What are they thinking?

Johnny

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

-George Santayana

Johnny,

I know you will hate having to use a chemical fertilizer this year, but sometimes it is a necesary evil and growing crops for the food banks is more important that staying 100% organic in every instance. Then, next spring, after your green manure crops have grown and have been incorporated in the soil, it will be in much better shape.

I was hoping the orchard had been there more recently so you had a chance of having more organic matter in the soil.

I love the jar soil test too. I recommend it here about 2 times a month probably, and even more as planting season approaches and new gardeners join the forum.

My dad's family dry-land farmed as sharecroppers in Montague County, TX, just catty-corner from the western end of Love County, OK, in the 19-teens through the start of World War II, including the Dust Bowl years. They nearly starved to death in the Dust Bowl years and my dad and his brothers often said that WWII saved their lives by getting them off the farm. At least once they joined the military, they got 3 good meals a day and put some meat on their bones.

If you've never read the outstanding book, "The Worst Hard Time", by Timothy Egan, I highly recommend it. It is about the Dust Bowl years, including the role that land speculators and wheat prices paid in the whole plowing-up-the-Great-Plains and leaving it fallow debacle, as well as the unproven-but-highly-touted-at-the-time belief that dust mulch would hold moisture and prevent erosion (we see how that theory failed). I read this book at least once a year, usually during the worst of the hot, dry, summer months, to help me keep our hot, droughty summers in perspective because, no matter how hot and dry a summer, nothing we endure here comes close to what the folks in this part of the country endured during the Dust Bowl years. While Timothy Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting done on another topic, I certainly thought "The Worst Hard TIme" was also worth of a Pulitzer. He did receive a well-deserved National Book Award for "The Worst Hard Time".

A friend of mine who grew up on land adjacent to ours was not born until after The Dust Bowl Years, but her mother remembered those years and she has shared with me her mother's memories of what the Dust Bowl was like for those who lived here in our part of OK, a bit east of the true Dust Bowl region, and those memories are of a very harsh time. I cannot imagine living through all of that. Just the amount of effort it took to try to keep all the dust out of their homes is staggering to think about, as is the number of lives taken by Dust pneumonia.

After reading this book shortly after it was published, I became much more diligent about both mulching and cover cropping. There is not a bare inch of soil in either my front or back garden right now---the front garden is mulched and the back garden has a cover crop sown/sprouted in the fall by Mother Nature. I would have planted a cover crop back there this fall if she hadn't. It may be a weedy cover crop, but it covers every inch of the back garden except for the thickly mulched pathway that cuts through the center of the garden.

And, I have no idea what "they" are thinking, but they need to read "The Worst Hard Time" before they make some errors that lead to another Dust Bowl. You know, we had some mini Dust Bowl like flare-ups here in OK during the drought of 2011, and we don't need any more of that!

When we first moved here and broke ground for the garden, our neighborhood crowd of old farmers and ranchers told me about how lovely the soil used to be at our place, back before the Dust Bowl carried it all away. Our wicked red clay is, of course, the subsoil that was left after all the topsoil blew away. All those guys, except for Fred, are gone now and I miss them. There's nothing like hearing the history of your own place from the folks who grew up here, even if parts of the history are hard to bear. When I discovered cotton root rot in our soil during our first or second year here, it was the old farmer crowd who told me about how our land once was used to grow cotton. I don't know who was more surprised---they were shocked I figured out the cotton root rot on my own (but we had it in Texas, so I knew it from plant symptoms as soon as the plants began dying) and I was shocked to learn our grassland pastures once grew cotton.

Those guys also regaled me with fun stories of how they'd come over here to swim in our pond after working hard all day and other stories of floods that would bring water from our creek up over the roadway, effectively giving them a day off from school because the school bus wouldn't cross the bridge when water was running over it. They also were the ones who didn't laugh and tell me I was imagining things when I told them I was hearing cougars from a distance and assumed the cougars were down in the river bottom lands. Instead, they shared their cougar stories with me and, once they knew I was hearing cougars, they cautioned me pretty much daily to be careful and to never go into the woodland unarmed. I didn't heed that advice as well as I should have until I encountered a cougar near my garden. Since then, I am better about keeping a gun nearby at all times, though occasionally I still forget to carry it with me.

One of those guys, who came here in 1903 and who grew up on land very close to where we now live, would tell me how they had to take the horse and wagon down to the Red River to cut wood to haul home for firewood when he was a child because there were no trees anywhere else. Standing with him in my garden right beside a woodland of mature trees that were easily 50, 60 or 70 years old, it amazed me to hear about the time when this place was treeless. I kept asking him if he was sure there were no trees, and I think that made him mad, but it just was almost impossible for me to imagine a time when our huge woodland trees were not here. Everyone told me our first year here that I should hire someone to clear an acre of woodland for me so I could plant a garden there and have great garden soil from the start, but I'd never sacrifice decades of woodland growth for a garden plot. Tim and I have such a great appreciation for all our trees that to this day we won't hardly cut down a tree unless it is dying and is a threat to fall on a building or on the garden or something similar. Our only exception is cedar trees and we have cut down hundreds of them since moving here and have to relentlessly fight them still or they'd take over every square inch of our land. I spend part of every winter going into the woodland and cutting down all the cedar trees that sprout nonstop.

Dawn

Dawn,

I read a story once that talked about a kid growing up near a forest. Her Father taught her to identify every tree in the forest. What an interesting body of knowledge to carry through life.

Like you, I am loathe to cut any tree.

I hope to get Vision Farms in a strong financial position so it will out last me. We will focus on potatoes, carrots, beets, kale, greens, green beans, okra, tomatoes, cow peas, field corn and crook neck milo. The last two for chicken feed and cornbread. Grain sorghum is gaining favor as a gluten free flour. I might grind some to experiment with.

Thank you again for all of your help. You are a blessing.

Johnny

PS We will be assembling a medium size green house next week.

Johnny, One of those old farmers/ranchers, who everyone called "Bunch", though that wasn't his real given name (I think it wasn't), taught me how to identify most all the trees we have here. He could stand and point into the woodland at a tree and ID it from a great distance based on its branching structure and leaf shape and size. It was amazing and I am forever grateful.

By the time he was teaching me to ID trees, he was in his late 80s and, to the amazement of our teenaged son and our niece and nephew, he'd back up the whole 3/4s of a mile from our driveway to his road and at a fairly high rate of speed......instead of just turning around and driving back to his place. At that time, the bridge north of us was out as it was being replaced and I guess he was taking a calculated risk because there weren't many of us on this side of the bridge so the likelihood he'd crash into anyone was slim. It makes me laugh to think about it now, but it horrified me at the time, and he only backed into our gate one time in all those years of driving, um, probably long after he should have stopped driving, if you know what I mean. Or, at least long after he should have stopped driving backwards at a high rate of speed on a dirt country road. He also ran over my pumpkins and corn occasionally back when I grew them outside the garden fence and alongside the driveway, but I couldn't really get mad at him because he was just aging and didn't intend to run off the driveway and drive through the edge of the garden.

Sorghum was a big crop for my dad's family. They would grind it and boil it down to make sorghm syrup, which was as good as money in the bank because you could barter it for things you couldn't afford to buy. Their little country store would barter with you if you had eggs, cream, butter, milk, syrup or honey to trade and that helped a lot back then because they weren't making a cash crop...just barely raising enough to survive.

I'm excited to hear about the greenhouse! As for Vision Farms living on beyond you, I hope that it does, but you are ageless in my mind and I think and hope you'll live for many, many more years yet.

Dawn

Okiedawn,

Which variety of Brandywine, besides Black Brandywine, do you like best or do you only like the Black Brandywine? I grew a Brandywine many years ago but it wasn't very productive and the fruit it did make was all freaky with big knob like bubbles on it. I tried to grow it a couple of years but moved on to a better tomato.

Auther, I like all Brandywines but I have to say that most Brandywines do not like our climate. They produce a lot heavier in areas that stay significantly cooler than us in the summer time...like Pennsylvania or New York or wherever.

I have had years when Brandywine produced early and often and never stopped bearing fruit and we had so many Brandywine tomatoes that I gave some away. We have had other years (usually when the heat arrives extra early) when the plants just sat there and didn't bloom at all until we already were so hot that the blooms then dropped without setting any fruit at all, and that went on all summer long until we cooled off in the autumn. So, growing any Brandywine is a risk because if we have a hot year, it likely will produce poorly and may not produce at all.

Why bother growing Brandywine then? Because, in a good year with adequate but not heavy rainfall, the flavor of a Brandywine is incredibly good----every single person to whom I've given a Brandywine in a good year will say repeatedly that it is the best tomato they've ever tasted. Then they want to know why, in all these years, I've never given them a Brandywine before and can get quite testy about it. It is hard to get a non-gardener to understand that some varieties, like Brandywine, behave irregularly and do not consistently produce good yields so there's often nothing to share.

I agree with them, by the way, about Brandywine's flavor. Nothing else matches it. It is just that such good years are few and far between. In a really rainy year, both the flavor and texture of Brandywine suffer and they are a waste of garden space. For that reason, I don't have Brandywine on my Grow List every year. I hate wasting space on a variety that might not give me a single tomato that year, and with Brandywine in our climate, there's always a risk of that happening.

As for the irregular shape, that is just part of Brandywine and you mostly just have to deal with it. Some of the "other" Brandywines have a more regular shape, and I think that the Red Brandywine offered by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange has a more regular shape, but to me, its flavor is not as good as Sudduth's. Don't get me wrong---the flavor isn't bad at all and is, in fact, very good. It just isn't as good as Sudduth's.

Some of the best Brandywines that I grow and eat are not exactly Brandywines, but they were bred by Keith Mueller, using Brandywine (the original one, I think) as one of their parents. These children of Brandywine include Gary O Sena and Liz Birt. Gary 'O Sena produces very early in my garden compared to Brandywine and produces steadily in all but the hottest summers. Liz Birt has a tangier flavor, but it is a very good flavor. I also like the OTV Brandywine/Brandywine OTV sold by S.E.S.E., though I haven't grown it in a few years.

Hope this helps,
Dawn

Dawn, I keep waiting for the January day when you amend your tomato growing lists. LOL

Non productivity is the reason I quit trying to grow Brandywine years ago. Thank you for your thoughtful information. That is the reason that I started growing the Traveler (Arkansas Traveler) & Bradley type tomato's because even in the hottest & driest summers I manage to make a pretty fair crop of tomato's, in a very wet summer some say they lose their flavor but I think that is true of all tomato's.

Carol, I struggle every single winter day with the desire to add to that tomato grow list. You know, it probably is inevitable that I will cave in and add to it. I made it shorter than I wanted on purpose, so I could come back and add a few more like I did last winter. I haven't added any yet, but that doesn't mean I'm not toying with the idea. The first one I'm likely to add back will be Greek Rose.

Arthureray, I don't grow Brandywine every year for the same reason. I wish we could know it would be productive enough to grow every year, but I feel like it is so hit and miss that it often isn't worth growing. That's why I grow Gary 'O Sena every year, and it is why I sometimes grow Brandy Boy. Both are enough like Brandywine to keep me happy. I like Bradley and Arkansas Traveler for the same reasons you do, and I've grow several different AT's, including Arkansas Traveler, Traveler 76 and Burgundy Traveler. They are later than most of the tomatoes in my garden to produce ripe tomatoes, but that works out because they are coming on strong in mid- to late-summer when some of the other varieties are slowing down, so that is nice. Really, I love all the tomato varieties that produce big pink fruit. One year I may shock everyone by growing only big pinks. On the other hand, I'm not sure I could survive a summer without some of the black and purple tomatoes too.

Sometimes I will add a Brandywine plant to my garden just because I see one in a store, leading me to ask myself in a tortured conversation "why, oh why, didn't I sow seeds of Brandywine?". After losing an internal argument with myself, I impulsively buy a Brandywine and stick it in the ground. Sometimes I get a lot of fruit from that impulse buy and sometimes I get none. It just depends on how early we get hot.

We've been talking about tomatoes so much lately that I've been cooking with either canned, frozen or sun-dried tomatoes almost non-stop and I kinda think that the non-tomato maniacs in my family are getting a little tired of having tomatoes daily. (grin) I'm not, though, so as long as I'm cooking, they should expect to keep eating tomatoes all winter long.

Dawn

Super Fantastic was very productive for me this past summer, it was the first time to try it.