Science in Action

I spent a lot of time on this blog chronicling the perils of growing tomatoes in pots. Like when I was sure they had wilt, even though I knew I planted a wilt-resistant variety. Or when I was sure the curled leaves were evidence of early life stress, even though I babied those seeds . And while I've known that other people successfully grow tomatoes in pots, I've generally preferred to chalk it up to "Mother Nature Does It Better."

Well those crappy tomato plants finally stopped making small, crappy tasting tomatoes, and I dumped them rather happily. There's nothing like having pots at the entrance to the Farm mocking your budding Farming Skillz. Well imagine my surprise when I found the following inside the pots:


The red and yellow circles are the two tomatoes plants, and for context, let me tell you it had rained for three days straight.
Curious scientific observation #1: The soil was bone dry.
Curious scientific observation #2: The pots were basically solid roots at the bottom, which suggests that Observation #1 was not a fluke.

The blue circle shows the soil from the cilantro/coriander pot, which has been sitting empty since I cut the plant for the coriander drying project.
Curious scientific observation #3: That soils was DRIPPING wet. As in, water poured out with soil, even though the bottom of the pot of course had holes.
Curious scientific observation #4: The soil was way darker and more dense in this pot than the other two.

Taking these Curious Scientific Observations and using my powers of deduction and formal operations, I have drawn the following Scientific Conclusions:
Scientific Conclusion #1: Soils are different, and when you accidentally buy top soil instead of potting soil you should get your rear back in the car and return it. Should you think to yourself, "well, I'll just pot the seedlings in the top soil and fix it when I transplant rather than get the car dirty again," then you better REMEMBER that detail before planting cilantro in it.

Scientific Conclusion #2: Potting soil dries out REALLY quickly, especially when the pot is FULL of roots. I can only conclude that starting about a month after those tomato plants moved to the Farm, I was already under-watering them. Amazingly, that was about the time I started Worrying about wilt and other tomato diseases...

Scientific Conclusion #2a: Watering requirements are different for farms vs. pots with potting soil vs. pots with top soil (Don't Do It!). It's almost like you have to find the right match between the plants, their soil, the growing context, the weather, and the amount of water you add. Whoever heard of such a thing?!

Scientific Conclusion #3: I gave growing things in pots short shrift. LUCKILY, Guatemala K (who has been back in the frozen tundra for a while now, but will forever be known on the blog as Guatemala K) gave me the coolest present ever last week! It's a tomato growing kit! In a bag!


This winter, I'm going to try to tip science on its head by: a) growing tomatoes b) in a bag c) in my apartment d) in the winter. Guess that means the blog will not completely hibernate this winter! Intrigued? Go here to get one for yourself and we can have a winter farming version of a book club--you know, all try to grow them and compare results! I already know Dr. Corncobb and her green thumb want to participate. ;)

(Actually, that just links to the Amazon site--you can google it to buy it from a smaller, more independent kind of place. Or if you live in the Twin Cities, get it at Twin Cities Green.)

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 82F
Yesterday's low: 52F
Warnings: Real rain arriving soon.
Mood of the farm: Hopefully primping itself for the arrival of the Farmer's mother this weekend. The Farm is not exempt from the pre-parental cleaning spree.
Reason to consider a new career: Still happy with real career.

Green Thumb Sunday: Farming is a Tough Business Edition

Green Thumb Sunday: Farming is a Tough Business Edition

As you regular readers of the blog know well by now, Farming involves a regular helping of Tough Decisions. Specifically, Tough Decisions that have to be made with few concrete facts on which to base them, which, in the grand scheme of things, is probably why they're called tough decisions in the first place. In any event, today this farmer had to be The Decider about a number of things, which are illustrated here since it is, after all, a Green Thumb Sunday.

1.) The tomatoes.
As you may have noticed by the tree leaves starting to turn, fall is rapidly approaching. Unfortunately, many of the tomatoes are green green green, thanks especially to cool nights that have slowed the ripening process to a crawl. The days have been hot lately, which is what made this decision so tough, but an honest, unemotional look at the calendar (late September already?!), made this decision the easiest one to make. All of the new flowers and branches about to grow new flowers (that I could find in that jumble of tomato plants) had to be unceremoniously chopped off so that the plants' resources could be directed to ripening all those green tomatoes. Behold what would have been enough cherry tomatoes to last H for a whole summer, if only they would have had time to ripen:


2.) The watermelons.
Those miniMelons have been a Trial since the beginning, and just the other day, the birds started pecking them to death. I covered them with plastic pots, which for the record looked ridiculous, and they've been growing like that for a while. But today, I gave them a thump, which to my best guess seemed to sound hollow-ish, so I picked them. I have no idea if they're ripe or not, but I'm sure H & N will report on the quality. Here they are with some of the tomatoes that managed to get ripe.

So with the zucchini plant completely succumbing to the squash vine borers (with 4 miniZucchini growing on it still!), and now the watermelon plants gone, the only thing left on the Farm are the tomato plants. I think that means MiniChuck's Eye View will be going on hiatus until the next time I have a Farm...

Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 77F
Yesterday's low: 55F
Warnings: Farmer on the Farm with Pruning Shears Alert
Mood of the farm: Fearful of pruning shears
Reason to consider a new career: I probably had more distress about that tomato pruning than any real Farmer should...

Drive-by MiniChuck View

It's a busy day around here, between meetings, visits from talking troll academics, Maisy getting herself into some mysterious kind of situation that will likely require vet care (cross your fingers for no x-rays, please!), etc. However, I didn't want to leave you hanging on a view of the new emptiness of the farm. Which, for the record, is somewhat disguised by my attempts to get the other watermelon growing in the sunshine (as opposed to hiding in the tomato plants) this week...


Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 81F
Yesterday's low: 49F
Warnings: Last warm sunshine of the summer this week...
Mood of the farm: Better be ripening or else it's in trouble.

Hello There, Strangers!

Hi, folks. Seems like it has been 6.4 years since I last updated you on the progress of the Farm. Many important Milestones have occurred since then in my other life as a grad student, but if you know me in person, I've already bored you with all the details. And if you don't know me in real life, now would be a good time to be glad about that.

But! Even while I've been busy with school, many many things have happened on the farm. I think we'll need a list here, there are so many...
1.) The only things still growing on the farm are tomatoes, watermelon, and a few mini zucchinis on one sad, sorry plant. That's it, folks!
2.) I harvested the bounty (or what I thought would be the bounty) of the carrots. The big plan, as I think I mentioned before, was to freeze the carrots so that I could enjoy the exciting flavors of the farm in the winter, instead of boring old grocery store carrots. Well look what the whole, entire harvest entailed:

Here, dirty, with the basil (see #3)

Here, cleaned up, but not any more bounty.

Sad. Very very sad. And an amazing waste of farm space, it turns out. Luckily, I had a million farm box carrots, and I grabbed a bunch for $1 at the farmers' market. Also luckily, during the wash/peel/cut/blanche marathon Farmer Sis entertained me with stories of school and her farm (pictures may be coming soon!) so the time flew by. Anyway, the carrots are in the freezer and ready for a taste of summer in the middle of the winter. But lesson learned: next time I have a farm, I will not be planting carrots!

3.) As you can see in the picture above, I also harvested two of our five basil plants. Those got processed with some olive oil (and an extra bunch of farmers' market basil) and then put in a ziploc bag for freezing. I usually use ice cube trays to freeze that stuff in small portions, but Farmer Sand suggested that if you spread it as thin as possible in a freezer bag, you can just break off pieces when you're ready. Genius. Thanks!

4.) All the beans have been pulled, I've finally given up hope on the "fall lettuce," and two, count them two, of the nine tomato plants have moved on to greener pastures. Look for a post soon about the science-in-action learning project that resulted from those plants...

5.) Here's what the harvests look like these days. The yellow tomatoes are a bit cracked from our drought and my attempts at compensating with the hose. But they still taste pretty good; that's the good news.



Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 61F
Yesterday's low: 51F
Warnings: weather.com is misleading. I could see my breath this morning. Also, there's a heat wave coming.
Mood of the farm: It better have something to do with ripening as fast as possible during the heat wave this week.
Reason to consider a new career: Still happy with what I have going on over here...

MiniChuck's Surprise Eye View of the Farm

In case you were wondering just how much this Farmer loves routines, I was halfway through eating my Honey Bunches of Oats with farmers' market raspberries and writing this Farm update before I realized I told you yesterday MiniChuck didn't have any new views of the Farm. Well, what can I say? I love a good routine.

So here's the Farm. See what I mean about how empty it's getting? The zucchini will probably get pulled this weekend. And, because I realized yesterday just how sad I'm going to be when I have to go back to buying boring, tasteless, winter produce from the grocery store (really sad!), I think I'm going to pull all the carrots this weekend, and then blanch and freeze them. I'm also reading up on ways to save cherry tomatoes. I mean, not that we have very many or anything, but you know... I have too many Farmer Worries about canning to go that route, so only freezer-related preserving methods are on the table. Also, the basil is getting pulled and preserved in some yet to be determined ratio of drying and freezing (after being processed with olive oil) this weekend. Did I mention how cold it's getting here (look at the low below)??

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 69F
Yesterday's low: 39F
Warnings: Um, did you see that 39F ????
Mood of the farm: Freezing, almost literally.
Reason to consider a new career: Nope. Still ecstatic about my real career.

A Slight Change to the Growing Schedule

So I fessed up here recently that I planted lettuce seeds in an attempt at a "fall crop." It was kind of late, since the frost comes early here in the tundra, but I thought the Farm was looking a little empty (no, really. It's almost completely empty except for the tomatoes and watermelons) so why not give it a shot. I planted the salad mix lettuce seeds from the spring--a good variety with at least some types that thrived in the important temperature range. Well, bad news, folks. That dirt isn't growing a single thing. Actually, it is growing a number of weeds in the vicinity of where I planted the seeds, but not actually where I planted them... A little google searching suggests that lettuce seeds don't last too long (see--I wasn't completely wrong about the "bad seed packet" thing...), so maybe that's the deal. Should you have any additional suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments!

Luckily, however, I seem to be growing something new of the Farm that I didn't plant. It seems to be some kind of cross/hybrid thing, but I can't really tell fully what kind of cross...


Okay, actually, it's a Maisy plant. But she was so proud of herself for getting all wrapped up in there (that I didn't manage to capture on camera, sadly), that I had to post the pic.


I think maybe she was using the sick tomato plants as camouflage while spying on Rosa... Anyway, since there's not really much new on the farm since last week for a MiniChuck's Eye View, I thought I'd at least give you this.

Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 63F
Yesterday's low: 49F
Warnings: It's really cold, folks...
Mood of the farm: Gearing up to grow fast during possibly the last warm spell at the end of this week.
Reason to consider a new career: None. I'm ecstatic with my career today!

Who Needs GTS When You're on Cakewrecks??

And now an interruption to our regularly scheduled Green Thumb Sunday!

Dr. Corncobb, Dr. J., Dr. Amanda (who doesn't yet have a blog nickname), and I made it onto the cakewrecks blog! If you've never seen this blog, have a look. It's hilarious--full of all kinds of professional cakes decorated in the most unfortunate (wreckish) ways. And, the cakewrecks lady hates on bad grammar. What could be better? Here's the link to our entry.


Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 70F
Yesterday's low: 47F
Warnings: Maybe a little sun afterall...
Mood of the farm: Getting really concerned, now that I pulled the watermelon plant that produced yesterday's bounty...
Reason to consider a new career: Hey, maybe I should be a cake decorator!

It's a Baby Watermelon!

Folks, growing watermelons has given this Farmer more than one grey hair. First, there was the time when Maisy practically killed all the plants while defending her farm, then there was the time I stepped on a little growing watermelon and crushed it, then there was the time I spent almost an hour on hold with Linder's trying to find out just what kind of watermelons I was growing (to no avail), and then there was the time that I asked Archie his opinion and he looked momentarily stumped. But once again, my bff Archie was right! After thinking for a minute, he guessed I was probably just growing little mini watermelons. Today, I thought maybe one of those miniMelons was getting close to ready, so I called on N, who has a legendary ability to thump watermelons and know if they're ripe or not, to check into the situation. She hopped into the farm, gave the watermelon a thump, and professed it ready for eating.

I was so overcome with excitement that I forgot to take a picture of it before we cut into it, but you can see it in the picture below, bottom left. Luckily, I got my wits back about me once N made the first cut, which was quite eventful. It kind of exploded open after she barely touched it with the knife.

Here's what it looked like, perfectly ripe as N divined:

And I can tell you it tasted delicious!


Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 71F
Yesterday's low: 47F
Warnings: Cold and crappy weather tomorrow.
Mood of the farm: Getting lonely as one by one the bounty gets removed.
Reason to consider a new career: If only I could farm in the summer and research in the winter...

MiniChuck's Eye View Is Exempt, Of Course.

Hey! Where are the beans? And the cukes? And the rest of the zucchini? It's crazy. I know. In case the beginning of the school year and the new episodes of Gossip Girl, America's Next Top Model, and Bones didn't clue you in, fall has reached Minnesnota, folks. Today, I could only go out without a sweatshirt for about two hours. Rest of the day required a hoodie. The viability of my "fall lettuce seeds" is looking questionable at this point...



Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 79F
Yesterday's low: 56F
Warnings: Cold weather! Grow Grow Grow!
Mood of the farm: Snuggling up for warmth
Reason to consider a new career: Farmer misses her farm days.

A Return to Labor...

Family, Friends, Strangers, and Pioneers,

Happy Labor Day! This is going to be a long post, because many things are going on at the moment. I just came back from checking on the farm, and I have some things to catch you up on... First of all, over the last week or two, a number of things have either succumbed to squash vine borers or just run out of steam and needed to be pulled. This includes most of the zucchini, all of cucumbers, and most of the green beans.
Fear not, the tomatoes continue to grow and ripen at breakneck speed. The plants are even making new flowers. I know in the interest of ripening the tomatoes already on the vines that I should remove these flowers stat. But the bottom line is that I don't have the heart to do it, and the plants are already making more tomatoes than three humans could possibly eat in one summer. Here are a few yellow ones I picked this morning, alongside the last cucumber of the season.
About those yellow tomatoes... When I picked the first, gigantic one, I was so excited. And then I took a bite and almost cried. It tasted terrible, and I professed my hatred of yellow tomatoes to my closest friends, but not you people of the internets, because I had put so much energy into growing the things and Worrying my Farmer Worries about whether or not they were growing appropriately. Well, luckily I tried another one a few days later, and I am happy to report that it tasted DELICIOUS! This one was of the traditional size, instead of the first ginormous one, and this one was definitely ripe--I might have cut into the first one a little too early. In any event, I am proud to say that I love yellow tomatoes, and am once again delighted with the Bounty.

Also on the farm, the flowers have sensed they're running out of time and sped things up. Now I'm not generally a fan of flowers, and certainly not posting pictures of them, but I'm a little bit enamored by them this fall...

So here's the sunflower of Green Thumb Sunday fame, but close up:
Some kind of vining flower seed N is growing that we almost mistook for a weed until we figured out what was going on:
The garlic chives flowering away:

Now, we're at the sad part of this post. September has arrived (somewhat unbelievably), and the time has come for me to return to my real career as a graduate student. I never really left it, but I added this farmer gig on top, and as is no surprise to anyone who knows me well, I'm not very good at doing two things I love at once. So this Farmer schtick is getting downgraded to a part-time job, which luckily dovetails nicely with the fact that the farm requires almost no maintenance at the moment. And the Grad Student schtick is going back to it's all consuming ways. I have a giant paper to write, and then several hours of on-the-spot questioning to prepare for this fall, all in the service of showing the powers that be that I am a competent human being. And I'll be collecting my dissertation data. This weekend, I prepared my office for that task, and like the green-ish farmer that I am, I even recycled a little motivation.

What does that mean for you people of the internets? Well, this blog is going to be updated a lot less frequently. But I'm still going to air all my farming adventures, mistakes, and hijinx to the masses. I mean, threat of frost will soon loom over the farm around every turn, and you know I'm going to post all my antics of attempting to cover those wild tomato plants and all of my fretting about whether they are surviving as they should. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it but I planted lettuce seeds (!!) a week-ish ago to try my hand at a "fall crop" even though I'm not sure if Minnesota can handle it. People, you know I will be fretting about that too. But daily posts are a thing of the summer, not the fall. And you know how I like routine...

So until the next time the farm (or the farmer) does something remarkable, take care of yourselves, and each other.

When you don't have a sign off, I find it's best to use Jerry Springer's. ;)


Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 86F
Yesterday's low: 67F
Warnings: Last day of hot weather, possibly for the rest of the year, today.
Mood of the farm: Worried about all the plants the farmer is pulling...
Reason to consider a new career: Well, I'm a grad student. And I love it. So I'm sticking with that.