OG's Test Gardeners

March 23

Planting Day!
Test seeds arrived while I was in San Francisco and today is planting day!  I am using Rootrainers (www.rootrainers.org) seed trays that I picked up at the Chelsea Flower Show last year. They are modular trays of corrugated plastic that lie flat when not in use. Each tray is creased along the bottom, so they fold up and hook together to form cells about 1.5 inches across, some 4 inches deep, others 6 inches deep. I fill each one with seed starting mix and set in the seeds. The beauty is, when the seedlings are ready for planting out, I just unhook the trays to lift out each seedling with its associated soil intact. No pulling seedlings apart, no digging them out of their six packs or cutting them out of trays. And, no apparent transplant shock.  It is a great system for small seeds. 
Here’s what I have to plant:
2 kinds of cucumbers
4 kinds of melons
4 kinds of eggplant
6 kinds of tomatoes
5 kinds of peppers
2 kinds of cabbage
2 kinds of squash
1 kind of potato
Lots of flowers
Wish I could tell you which varieties I am testing, but I am sworn to secrecy! You’ll read about the results in the January ‘09 issue of Organic Gardening Magazine.

March 14

Just back from the San Francisco Flower Show where I spoke on low water gardening (very important here in the arid west) and on wonderful garden plants from Mexico and the Southwest deserts. The flower show had about 20 interesting and innovative display gardens.

Two other highlights of my trip: A visit to Western Hills Nursery in Occidental, California (www.westerhillsnursery.com, a nursery/botanic garden was planted in the 1950s and 60s. The current owners toured a gaggle of garden writers (five of us) through the 3-acre garden, a landscape where the Pacific Northwest meets California Mediterranean. There were dogwoods and forsythia in bloom along with enormous old Australian Grevillea and Echium, also known as “pride of Madeira” (both very low water Mediterranean climate plants). I of course brought home some gems from the nursery.

The other highlight was an early morning garden tour of Alcatraz Island. “The Rock” sits in the San Francisco Bay. It’s as difficult to garden there as it was to escape—there’s a constant, cold wind, no fresh water, and thin soil.  Still, it has a long and colorful history.  Prisoners and employees created gardens on the island’s sloping hillsides and terraces. The entire island is just 12 acres, and the gardens were (and are) extensive.
The prison and its gardens were abandoned in 1963. Today, it is part of the National Park Service and the Garden Conservancy (www.gardenconservancy.org) has stepped in to reclaim the gardens. Head gardener Shelagh Fritz and a crew of volunteers are recreating the look and feel of Alcatraz gardens in the mid 1900s. I was amazed to see what has survived with no care and no irrigation. The island is covered in feral bear’s breech (Acanthus mollis), calla, geraniums, fuchsias, Chasmanthe, aeoniums, a giant New Zealand Christmas Tree (Metrosideros) and more.

March 8

The Seed Testers are all abuzz as we wait for our spring seeds to arrive in the mail. OG’s Pam Ruch let us know last week that she was divvying them up to send out. Michelle Zettel in Challis, Idaho can hardly contain her enthusiasm, “HOORAY!” she wrote, “I am so looking forward to getting in the dirt!”

While we wait, several of us have been involved in garden construction projects. The new patio that replaces half of my old lawn is nearly done. It is made of broken concrete and matches all the other hardscape in our garden. Broken concrete is cost-free and nearly limitless. Our supply came from a neighbor who replaced her patio. She’d seen our garden walkways and retaining walls made of concrete so she knocked on the door one day, asking if we wanted hers.That was the impetus for the patio project we had been putting off for so long!

I’m not the only OG test gardener with construction plans. Leslie (“The Tomato Lady”) Doyle in Las Vegas (who, by the way, starts Meyer lemon trees from seed!) has been working on a new “social and workshop area” of decomposed granite, all surrounded by new planting beds.

January 8th, 2008

Happy New Year!

Would you believe that the Osteospermum ‘Asti White’ that we tested last summer started blooming in my San Diego area garden on New Year’s day?  Everyone else reported blooms through late summer and fall, but mine just didn’t get there.  Granted, most osteos are short-day bloomers, which means that they bloom in the spring/winter/fall rather than in the long days of summer. ‘Asti White,’ though, is supposedly day neutral, so they should bloom regardless of day length.  In fact, the literature says they bloom 21 to 28 days from seed.  I started mine in June!

That’s the thing about gardening in California.  Plants just behave differently! Its something that takes new gardeners and gardeners new to the area some time to understand.  Fall is our best planting season, plants go dormant in late summer to escape the heat, and summer veggies such as tomatoes and peppers take weeks longer to ripen. 

Most of Southern California and the majority of coastal gardeners have year-round growing climates.  That’s the up side.  The down side is, we never get a break.  There’s never a time to rest and contemplate, let alone plan and re-think the garden. 

As I write this, it’s raining outside – a rare occurrence and the only time Californians stay out of the garden.  Bill Nunes is a fellow seed tester who farms and gardens about 400 miles north of me in California’s Central Valley, where it is also raining. “I'm actually enjoying some time off,” Bill wrote me in an email, “but I do need to get the greenhouse up and running while the ground is wet so I can get back at it when the ground dries a bit.”  See what I mean?  It’s raining and Bill doesn’t feel he can even take time for a snooze!

A few days ago, I asked the other seed testers what their gardening resolutions were for the New Year.  My four big resolutions are 1) write blog entries more often, so we can keep you all up on what is happening in the seed tester gardens; 2) to stop feeling bad about not planting a winter vegetable garden.  I vow to accept the fact that fall and winter are when I focus on the ornamentals, since that is our best planting time; 3) to finish the new patio and meadow I started two summers ago to replace a big lawn.  And 4) to finish covering my more cold-sensitive plants with floating row cover - just in case this month’s temperatures dip down into the high teens like they did last January.  I was born and raised in Southern California and I’d never seen winter temperatures that low.  It set the garden back several years and I hate to see it happen again.

What were everyone else’s plans?  Here is a sampling:

Carla Jeanne Gilmore (Cabool, MO. Zone 6/7):
To have the pruning and weeding and mulching done before we start planting garden the 2nd week of March. We are starting our transplants of cole crops, celery, and peppers about January 12.

Don Boekelheide (Charlotte, NC, Zone 7b):
•    Devote more time to my homescape, as opposed to spending most of my time and creative energy on my community/food gardens.

•    Try ‘Mahon’ sweet potatoes.

•    Do more crazy garden art (bottle trees, etc) everywhere I can get away with it.

•    Be mindful and open as I garden, strive less and breathe more. Garden the way Thich Nhat Hahn walks.

•    Take more pics of “real life/true grit” stuff as well as “pretty” stuff.

•    Really listen to the homeless folks at the Center [where Don runs a community garden] and try to help make gardening accessible for them.
•   
•    Do more with garden seating and benches, even right in the midst of the food.

•    Keep trying to entice my kids to join me in gardening.

•    Laugh a lot in the garden. Rejoice in the bounty, and learn from the setbacks, bugs, weeds and mistakes with more wry humor and less angst. Try to be as open to other people's ways of gardening as I strive to be to their religious beliefs and traditions. Garden with joy.
•    Oh, and pray for rain.

Pamela Ruch (Emmaus, PA.  Zone 6)
I bought one of those BIG calendars, with BIG spaces, which I will hang on my porch wall. The plan is: every time I come in from the garden I will pass it and write a few words about what I did. Having tried computer journaling, in-the-garden notes, passing on the record-keeping to interns -- all with incomplete success -- I'm hoping this system will work for me.
Another plan is the mulching bed: I'm going to devote one bed (6x20) to alfalfa for cutting to use as mulch--just to see how it works.
As for varieties, I want to grow more heirloom onions. They're so much better in salads than store-bought onions -- even the sweet Vidalias and Walla Wallas.”

I’ll share more of the group’s resolutions in my next installment.

September 23rd

Nan Sterman, Olivenhain, CA (zone 10)

The air feels different this week.  We had a brief (very brief) rainfall, the first in San Diego County since last April.  My garden got all of  .02,” not even enough to dampen the soil surface.  But, the cooler air and cloud cover sharpened the colors in my garden and gave us all – plants and people – a measure of relief.
Fall is the best planting time in California.  While folks across the country are preparing to put their gardens to bed, we are just gearing up.  The combination of cooler air, still warm soil and rains (hopefully) on their way are ideal conditions for plants to establish strong root systems to support next spring’s branches, leaves, and flowers.

My vegetable and annual flower garden is about to transition from summer crops to the kales, legumes, and greens of winter.  Before I tear out tomatoes, eggplants, zinnias, and the like, I did a short inventory.  What worked well this summer in my zone 10 garden?  What will I grow in the future?  What goes into the “never again” pile? 

My top favorites were all veggies, including a small, boxy red pepper called ‘Pritavit,’ a funny looking tomato called ‘Ananas Noir,’ and some tiny plum ‘Una Hartsock’ tomatoes.  ‘Pritavit’ pepper fruits had a richest flavor of any sweet pepper I’ve ever eaten.  Not only were they great fresh, they were equally good roasted. You know how some peppers get slimy when you roast them?  Not these.  Their fleshy walls that held up extremely well to the heat.  For years, I’ve struggled with peppers.  Finally, I’ve found a keeper.
“Ananas Noir” (which I believe is French for “black pineapple”) tomato plants weren’t particularly prolific, but their lobed, green/red fruits (typical of a “black” tomato) were quite large and very sweet.  Their odd shape and thin skin would never hold up to shipping, but they traveled quite well from my garden to my kitchen.  And sliced with a layer of buffalo mozzarella, a basil leaf, a spritz of balsamic vinegar and some good olive oil – they were heaven!
“Una Hartsock’ tomatoes were sweet and just the right size to pop into my mouth as I pinched and tied tomato branches to their supports, or snipped eggplants off their stems.  They were prolific and wonderful.  I even cut them in half (long ways), stuffed them with herbed cheeses and roasted them on the barbecue for a neighborhood potluck.  They were a hit!

I asked my fellow seed testers for their top picks and to share their greatest gardening challenge this season.  Here is what they had to say:

John Gutkowski, Chicago, IL (zone 5):
Tomato – ‘Aunt Gertie’s Gold’: Very sweet and meaty, when ripen a medium to dark gold color. ...this was a slow developing plant but worth the wait and I will definitely plant it again. Unfortunately my plant suffered from not being in the best position for sunlight in the garden.  This was my favorite OG tomato for this year.  I like the fruit as much as Brandywine.

Viola – ‘Skippy XL Plum Gold’:  This flower is still going as I have trimmed out some of the portions that died out from the summer heat.  However, I grew it in a pot and kept it in semi shade all year.  This plant bloomed quite quickly and produced a great pot from about two seedlings.  These were my favorite flowers from this year's test group.

Michelle Zettel, Challis, ID (zone 3):
My favorite was the ‘Peacock’ broccoli.   What a wonderful plant.  It was beautiful (edible landscaping) and the taste was good, both the leaves and the actual head.
My biggest challenge this year was the awful hailstorm.  There is not much I could do about this time as the damage was done.  However I am actually planning on getting some kind screen that I can roll out from the fences across the garden if we have something like that again.  I don't think it would take much to do this so I can let you know if it happens again, but I sure hope it doesn't.

Don Boekelheide, Charlotte, NC (zone 7b)
My top two are ... both of the zinnias, ‘Apricot  Blush’ and ‘Polar Bear,’ and ‘Orange Peach’ celosia.  Veggies this year were good, but none really caught my attention compared to past years - my tops would be  ‘Tomenta’ tomato and ‘Emir Beit Alpha’ cuke, with the ‘Orange Chiffon’ Swiss chard a contender.

My biggest challenges were a late frost (Easter Sunday), outbreak of potato and bean beetles early on,  and the long drought and hot conditions of summer.  the big lesson is that you're better  off _waiting_ until after the frost-free date here, no  matter how nice early spring appears to be.
The beetles were largely controlled by scouting and  hand-picking, especially egg clusters. Also, don't  freak out if you have a few holes in your leaves.
The key to weathering the drought is good soil prep, not overly tight planting distances (at least for  veggies), weed management, and mulch, mulch, mulch.  Drip systems would be good too for large gardens, but  hand watering is the most precise and allows you to  scout - and to just to enjoy your garden, standing  around being "in" it.

Pam Ruch, Emmaus, PA (zone 6)
Here are my top picks: 
'Flavorburst' pepper, an amazing producer. A hefty plant, big peppers, thick walls. They're a nice yellow-green color turning to gold. Not as sweet as 'Saigon', the orange pepper we tested, but mild and nice tasting.
'Japanese Trifele' tomato. A funky shape and a smoky flavor, juicy but meaty, and it NEVER cracks or splits. It's still producing. 'Tomenta' and 'Polbig' (tomatoes) are runner-ups. Both small plants and BIG producers. Both done, now.
Our challenge was squash bugs this year. We went after the nymphs with cedar oil, and tried to squish the eggs, but they kept on coming. The oil did work (that is, the nymphs died on contact) but there were so many it hardly made a difference. Next year I will try to take a hiatus from squash. The good thing about this sort of problem is that you can discover varieties are the least bothered by the bugs ... this year it was 'Sunbeam'! The bugs did not engulf it (like they did 'Tristin') and it was so vigorous that they weren't a problem.

Leslie Doyle, Las Vegas, NV (zone 8)
The greatest challenge in my desert garden this year, more than other years, was the extreme high heat, without relief, that lasted for a couple of months.  Vining plants grown up, instead of near the cooler ground, suffered the most from hot winds.

Linda Crago, Wellandport, Ontario, Canada (zone 6a)
My absolute favourite plant of the test varieties was the ‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli...a stunning , tasty plant that blew me away when it headed.  Here in mid- September I am stilling harvesting some lovely side shoots. I also am partial to the Osteospermum ‘Asto White’....it did very well for me here in our drought, and is still flowering with multiple flowers per plant.   It is very pretty and people definitely comment on it.

Debbie Leung, Olympia WA (zone 8)
...among the test varieties, I think the prize will go to ‘Paydon’ acorn squash  for its flavor and texture because I don't usually like acorn squash and I  like this one! The hard part was that my overall favorites were not test varieties – ‘Kamo’ eggplant and ‘Momotaro’ tomato!

  My greatest challenge this year was not having the time to thoroughly harvest the garden on a regular basis. Even with a friend coming over weekly to help and take goodies home, I have been inundated by oversized zucchini  and lumpy beans.

I am, however, reaping the rewards from dealing with last year's challenge  -- deer. A sturdy fence that will outlast me was built during the winter/early spring. The result included beans galore and with the first heavily laden pole bean vines in years, the realization that I had forgotten how to efficiently trellis them!

Stephanie Van Parys, Decatur, GA (zone 7)
My faves from trial:
Flavorburst Pepper: gorgeous peppers
Una Hartsock Tomato: perfect pasty sweet cherries that almost melt in your mouth
Hansel Eggplant: love eggplant and love the “prolificness” of this variety
My challenge was no rain for a month and record breaking heat for three weeks straight at the same time.  The best way to handle that was to hunker down like the plants growing in the garden and wait for relief.  However, I knew that I had prepared them all for the coming drought of summer.  Each bed received an inch of compost, after coming out of cover crops in the spring.  On top of the compost, I laid down 12 sheets of newspaper to keep the weeds down and moisture where it needed to stay.  Planted my plants in holes I poked in the newspaper.  Spread straw or partially broken down leaves on top of this. When the rain stopped in August, I lost a few plants, but the majority had the root protection they needed to get to the next rain.  I also saved sink water and gave it to the lucky plant of the day.

Bill Nunes, Gustine, California, (zone 9)
First off, I agree that ‘Hansel’ (eggplant) is a winner. Much more prolific than ‘Black Beauty’ or ‘Rosa Bianca’ though not nearly as pretty. ‘Snowy’ is out producing all of them, but, maybe because it is white, ‘Snowy’ has a lot more cosmetic problems and also more insect damage on the fruits (at least in my garden).

Andrea Ray Chandler, Olathe, KS, (zone 5)
My favorite flower was ‘Cameo Elegance’ morning glory. I seeded this in a large clay pot that had an inverted 3-ring wire “tomato cage” (spray-painted black) as a tuteur.  The variegated foliage filled in very nicely and looked great even before the flowers began in early July.   
Tops in vegetables was ‘Honeybee F1’ tomato.  I'll grow this cultivar again for sure, because the trusses of golden fruits ripen evenly, great flavor with an excellent sweet-tart balance, and NO cracking unlike most cherry tomato cultivars.

Weather-wise, a major challenge was during the first week of April, when we had several nights with temperatures well below the frost point.  These killed all the tree fruit blossoms, damaged emerging perennials, and stressed most woody plants.  My only saving grace was that I hadn't gotten around to seeding much outdoors yet.  An unexpected issue this year was my reduced ability to do gardening for extended stretches of time, due to arthritis.  I got some enabling hand tools, and will be mulching more heavily next year!

Ann Caffey, Walsenburg, Colorado, (zone 4)
My 2 favs were the ‘Monnopa’ Spinach and the Calendula ‘Solar Flashback.’  Both kept going for a long time.  The Osteospermum ‘Asto White’ and the Viola ‘Skippy XL Plum Gold’ get my vote as well.  None of the tomatoes, cuke, eggplant or pepper performed in my garden, but I had an unusual year weather wise.... I like the Tatsoi and the Pakchoi and this was my first experience with those.

August 20th

We’ve reached the point of the summer when in my San Diego area garden, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant have kicked into high gear. Squash and zucchinis are still producing, but the cukes have pooped out. My cucumbers are often short lived, which always makes me wonder whether I’ve used enough fertilizer, or the right fertilizer.

I put the question to my seed testing colleagues: What do you do about summer fertilizing?

Their answers covered the entire range. Some folks, like Bill Nunes in California’s Central Valley, do a thorough job of preparing the soil, adding compost and nutrients, and leave it at that. Others rely on the nutrient input from cover crops they grow in between producing crops. Yet another group applies generous helpings of organic-based micro and macro nutrient fertilizers, and some of our numbers use compost tea.

Here are some details:

Like me, Stephanie Van Parys (who gardens in Georgia) fertilizes with whatever she has on hand. “My friend has goats,” she writes, “so three or more months before planting, I put down 4-6 inches of goat manure on the bed and cover with straw. When planting, I drop a trowel full of compost into the hole and set the plant on top of it. The goat manure beds grow amazing tomatoes!” An inch of good compost tops Stephanie’s soil and she’s done with fertilizing for the season.
I tend to rely more on worm compost that comes from our kitchen scraps. A handful in the bottom of a planting hole, combined with a scoop of Dr. Earth Tomato, Vegetable, And Herb Food, keeps most plants (other than cucumbers) going strong all season.

Stephanie and I are in good company. Pam Ruch, the seed testers’ fearless leader in Emmaus, PA rarely fertilizes. Instead, she keeps beds actively growing, either with crops or cover crops, which, she finds makes her plants “grow so lustily” that it rarely occurs to her to fertilize.

In Pam’s home garden, (can you imagine overseeing a huge garden all day, then going home to garden again?), she prepares the beds with compost. This year, she is also testing a fertilizer called “Cockadoodle DOO.” With a name like that, I just had to call the Pure Barnyard, the company that makes Cockadoodle DOO for details.  This fertilizer, the company’s customer service person told me, is an organic, pasteurized chicken manure that looks like oversized coffee granules. The manure is composted, dehydrated, pelletized, heated to kill pathogens and weed seeds, and finally granulated. I can’t wait to hear how it works!

Don Boekelheide grows veggies in North Carolina’s red clay soil. His big challenges are his soil’s tilth (its heavy texture), slight acidity (pH 5.5), and low phosphate content (the “P” in NPK). Unfortunately, Don’s urban garden is far from livestock which makes, in his words, “poop hard to transport.” Instead, he relies on lots of compost mixed into garden beds before planting and added afterwards as mulch.
Don is our resident nitrogen expert, which was the subject of his thesis. He tells us that as important as it is to prepare planting beds, it is also important to supply nitrogen to plants during development.
He grows philosophical as he explains what he is trying to accomplish in his garden – other than growing vegetables:

“If you look at highly productive ecosystems (estuaries, for instance), you see how they rely on large natural inputs of mineral nutrients. So, I'm trying to balance a scientific view strongly influenced by ecology with a sense of wonder and acceptance. Anyway, I make all these charts and spreadsheets tracing nutrient amounts, uptake and probable outputs. I try to account both for what goes in and what comes out, and I'm now trying to go beyond the crop to consider the whole soil/garden system ecologically (we're not just fertilizing the tomatoes, we're fertilizing ‘everything’)...Beats Sudoku, I guess...”

From a practical standpoint, Don says, some crops, like corn, are especially “nitrogen hungry.” He plants seed into nitrogen-enriched soil. Then, as the stalks stretch skyward, he sidedresses them with high nitrogen sources (he favors soy meal and fish meal which I remember from my days in North Carolina is very easy to come by). He uses other organic materials with macro and micro nutrients in the form of compost, bone meal, feather meal, seed meal and a product called Espoma Plant-tone. When the tassels appear (that’s the silk at the top of each ear of corn), Don feeds with yet more nitrogen.

Leslie Doyle in Las Vegas favors home-made fertilizer mixes for her desert soils. Her favorite recipe is 4 cups cottonseed meal to 1/2 cup of bone meal and 1/4 cup of kelp meal. “We have enough potassium in our desert soil that I really shouldn't need the kelp,” she says, “but I use it because of all its trace elements/micronutrients. And, I have read reports that kelp makes an antibiotic in soil that can eliminate some pathogens. Which pathogens? I don't know. I mix a handful of this into the soil for each plant where I plant.”
Does kelp really act like an antibiotic? If you have reliable research data on this point, please send it to us at seedtester@plantsoup.com.

This year, Leslie is testing a new product made from the unused parts of chickens. “It looks like it might be dried and ground up parts; bones, feet, heads, sinew, feathers, etc. And this is kind of peculiar,” she continues, “the NPK is 6-6-6, but the packages are going to be printed with NPK 6-6-5 and some with 6-5-6 because they think people won't buy it at 6-6-6 . . . the sign of the DEVIL. Spooky to some people, huh? I never would have made the connection.”

Once her plants start filling garden beds, adding fertilizer to the soil becomes more difficult, Leslie says, so she turns to foliar sprays. “Foliar feeding with kelp works great,” she writes, “I also think it is necessary in our harsh climate.” Once or twice during the growing season, Leslie sprays with tea from worm compost and castings. In May/June, she foliar feeds with liquid kelp and repeats the process around the end of July “to get plants through the rest of the heat,” and then again in late September.

Speaking of foliar sprays, Coloradoan Ann Caffey’s years of experience and experimenting with fertilizers has made her a believer in biodynamic gardening conceived of and promoted by Rudolf Steiner back in 1924. Ann uses SoilSoup compost tea applied as a foliar spray three to four through the growing season.  Ann admits to having no particular schedule for spraying, but instead watches for when her plants “look like they need it” which is to say when they look “stressed” when she sees evidence of hungry critters feeding on the leaves or stems. Ann says that compost tea “seems to ‘relax’ my plants and they quit sending out those nasty vibes that attract insects.” Hmmm.... 

Have any questions or comments for the seed testers? Send them to SeedTester@PlantSoup.com.

Wishing you a healthy green garden!

Nan Sterman

August 3rd

Its the heat of summer and we seed testers are busy watering, pruning, harvesting and tasting our vegetables.  In our discussions over the last few weeks there are two standouts: 'Purple Peacock' broccoli and 'Polbig' (I keep wanting to call it 'Poliwog') tomato.
'Purple Peacock' is an unusual kale/broccoli hybrid with edible heads and leaves, or so said the literature that accompanied seed to testers in Ontario Canada, Colorado, Washington, and Pennsylvania.  Testers Pam Ruch (PA), Linda Crago (Canada), Debbie Leung (WA) and Ann Caffe (CO) planted out their seed and waited.
Early on, Linda and the others were convinced that the supplier had sent them seed for red Russian kale.  "It is a pretty, frilly, purple kale," she wrote, "(but) I can't imagine where a broccoli head would appear on this plant." 
By mid-June Pam Ruch, our fearless leader in Emmaus, reported the first harvest of tiny purple heads from what she referred to as a "broccoli/kale monster," adding, "I hope it tastes better than it looks..."
The next day, Pam reported back, "The 'Purple Peacock' heads are small, with big buds ... kind of broccoli raab-y ... but in my opinion, much better tasting than raab. I tossed some in olive oil with salt and pepper and used it in an omelet. It was so tasty and tender, I tossed in the rest of it to eat alone! Or maybe I was just super hungry.... The foliage is curly and papery -- some of it popped as it cooked and got a little crisped, which added a unique texture."
By late June, Pam's 'Purple Peacocks' had reached about 8" across, though some heads maxed out around 2-3."  Still, they retained their odd appearance. "They are funky," she wrote, "with pieces of leaf sticking out of them."
In the Pacific Northwest, a mid-June heat wave caused Debbie's 'Purple Peacock' to start bolting (flowering).  She cut off flower stems to delay their inevitable decline.  Once the heat wave passed and the weather cooled, Debbie's plants started leafing out again, just in time to be hit by flea beetles.   Next crop, she says, she'll grow under row covers to keep flea beetles out.
As of mid July, Ann in Colorado reported that her peacocks were 2 feet tall but hadn't yet formed heads.  In Linda's Ontario garden, the plants finally started heading.  By the end of the month, Linda was raving, "I absolutely love the Peacock Broccoli," she wrote, "It is a stunner in the garden, the head size was good and good side shoot production.  I would definitely want to grow this again.  I had a chef touring my garden yesterday and he loved the look of it and the taste raw."
Pam, gushed too, "the taste is terrific...So far it is my favorite new discovery -- a broccoli-like veg that isn't bothered (much) by cabbage worms! ... I am cutting side shoots now, which are small but tasty. I chopped it leaves and all, and sautéed with garlic in olive oil." 
Debbie in Washington had the final word: "The 'Purple Peacock' is an attention getter and would be great in an edible landscape. The plant is strong -- overcoming aphids when young. I'd give it lots of space so that the central head is larger, giving the plant more food value. The leaves are beautiful throughout the life of the plant, but I wouldn't eat them -- too chewy and scratchy. If you want a similarly beautiful plant for leaves, I suggest growing Red Russian kale or one of that type which are selected for tasty, tender leaves"
While Peacock is garnering raves, the jury is still out on "Polbig' tomato.  This early season, semi-determinate tomato was bred in Poland for cool climate gardens.  Its fruit, we were told, is good for roasting.  I've seen tomatoes described as being good for sauces, canning or eating fresh, but never before have I heard of a roasting tomato!
True to its description, 'Polbig' plants in Emmaus and Canada formed fruits by the end of June, with the Emmaus plants reaching at least 3 feet tall.  "They are absolutely LOADED with fruit," Pam reported. 
In Washington, Debbie lost a 'Polbig' in early July to what she thinks was verticillium wilt, though it is supposed to be resistant.
Linda (in Canada) was the first to harvest 'Polbig.'   That was in late July.  How were they?  "Good size, and plants are loaded," wrote Linda, "Very impressive."  By this week, however, she wrote "The taste is lacking.  They cannot compare taste-wise with my earliest favorite, 'Stupice,' which is just pouring out with fruit.... I don't think I would feel any great compelling reason to plant 'Polbig' again."
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Pam was also harvesting 'Polbig' this week. Her observations largely echoed Linda's, "I'm not convinced that it is a winner taste-wise," she said. "It is somewhat hard and meaty, like a 'Roma,' so might be a good roaster. The early fruits are not super-sweet, but might improve as the summer goes on. What I like about it is that the foliage is very clean and healthy, and the fruit load impressive, despite it being a compact (no taller than 3') plant."  Maybe Pam will roast some and report back in the near future.
While Linda, Pam, Debbie, and Ann talked broc and tomatoes, the rest of us discussed ways to support cucumbers and tomatoes.  My personal favorite is made from concrete reinforcing mesh, which is essentially a wire grid.  I bend mesh rectangles into cylinders and secure the ends with zip ties.  Each cylinder is wide enough for two tomato plants or six cucumbers to climb.  Branches are easy to wind in and out of the 6" x 6" holes, which are plenty large enough for me to reach in to prune or harvest.
Leslie Doyle who gardens in hot, hot Las Vegas, grows cucumbers, melons and vining squashes up lengths of green plastic construction fencing she bought at a builders' supply store.  When it comes to tomatoes, Leslies says, "We don't use, or recommend, tomato cages in our hot climate. We can keep the plants cooler when they are grown in a heap near the ground, and the result is that we get more fruit set this way.  The hot desert air and frequent winds are devastating to tomatoes growing up in the air.  Except for cherry tomatoes . . . isn't there always an exception?” 
Leslie has also experimented with growing tomatoes on colored mulches.  "Those heaped on red mulch produced some bigger fruit, but many of the plants had acquired a virus and had to be removed.  White flies, aphids and many other insects stay away from the silver – they can't navigate over it so they go somewhere else.  I think it's neat and it works.  There are other benefits to colored mulches, but the elimination of disease from insects makes the silver my best choice."
Leslie foliar feeds tomatoes at least three times during the growing season with water-soluble kelp.  "A solution made to the color of weak tea using my water-soluble kelp power, or you can use liquid kelp than comes in a concentrate.  Among other things, it makes the plants more heat tolerant (stronger) and makes them look really good, too.  I spray all my plants, trees too, with it and everyone can see the difference in my garden compared to their garden. That's important to me because I teach gardening here and we have lots of visitors who come to compare."
Andrea Ray Chandler in Olathe, Kansas added her favorite method for supporting cucumbers. "I like flat panels with plastic netting to grow my cukes vertically.  Saves space, reduces fungus problems, and keeps me from missing the fruits!"  Andrea uses electrical conduit pipe pushed a few feet into the ground.  She hangs plastic trellis mesh from the top bar - weaving top bar in and out of the mesh squares before adding the vertical bars.
Do you have questions or comments for the test gardeners?  Send me an email at SeedTester@PlantSoup.Com
Thanks!

Nan

Seed Tester Profile

Ann Caffey

Walsenberg, Colorado, Zone 4

We are Zone 4, at 6300 foot elevation at the base of the San Juan and San Isabel mountains in the Rockies.  There is no "typical" weather - every year is different but there are some similarities.  Our average first frost is Sept. 15th.  Our average last frost date is May 15th, but I had 37 degrees this year in June.

Summers are hot, around 85 - 95 degrees daytime and 45-50 at night. We almost always have some wind and quite often, severe gusts up to 70 MPH or more.  We are solar - completely off the grid - so having a wind turbine works well.  Rainfall is very sporadic (except this year) and not something to rely on. 
In the winter we have snow (if we're lucky) and sometimes that is severe as well.  Last January and February, we had snow every weekend for eight weeks in a row.  At one point we received more than 5 feet of snow in two weeks.  Temperatures can range from 0 degrees (or below) to 70 degrees, sometimes in the same week.  Average daytime temps are around 40 degrees with nights around the 20's.

I have a garden of 4 smaller beds (4'X8'), 2 larger beds (12'X8') and about 80 or more feet of fenceline.  One bed is dedicated to herbs, one to raspberries, strawberries and asparagus, and the others rotate and sometimes change size. I need a large bed for corn, for example, so each year I enlarge a bed.  When I rotate crops the next year, I divide one of the larger beds into 2 smaller ones. 

I use a “waffle design” meaning my pathways and beds are approximately the same level and a wall is built around the bed.  I plant each variety onto its own little bed-within-a-bed, but after everything germinates, I let water flow between the "mini" beds. 

The perimeter of the garden is beans, peas, cukes, pickles and tomatoes.  I lean hog panels against the fence creating a kind of triangle.  As plants grow up the panels, harvesting is a snap.

The fencing around the garden creates a microclimate with less wind, snow lasting a little longer and smaller temperature fluctuations. This was an old mining town though, so I find alot of trash everywhere I dig.  I have no water well (or city water either!) and haul all my water with a truck tank that holds 200 gallons.  It takes three hauls per week for household use, two per week for the sheep, and one or two each week for the garden. 
I flood irrigate, filling the beds with water by a 1" hose and a soft spray nozzle jammed onto the end.  Of course, the frequency and quantity of water depends on weather conditions.  I've only watered maybe five times so far this season because of all the rain.  And as follows, this is by far the very best garden I've ever had in all my years of gardening. 
I'm completely besotted by my bounty!  It's so green here that it hurts my eyes and my sheep are so fat they don't even graze much anymore.  They go out in the morning and gorge on yucca flowers and then lie around and moan for the rest of the day!

Leslie Doyle, zone 8

6/29

Last night was the first zucchini bread baking night of the summer.  And you know what that means – my garden is overflowing with zucchinis.  There are so many that I struggle to harvest them all before they reach gargantuan sizes.  Last night’s bounty – two loaves and 18 muffins – came from a single oversized ‘Portofino’ zuke.

It is full blown summer here in Southern California.  The tomatoes are covered in bright yellow flowers, the eggplant in purple flowers, and the peppers in white.  Cukes are ready and the basil is coming along nicely.

Across the country, my fellow test gardeners are also hard at work.
Don Boekelheide who gardens both at home and in a community garden in Charlotte, North Carolina, is rejoicing at the recent arrival of rain.  Nature’s irrigation no doubt helped his ‘Apricot Blush’ zinnias, which he says were the first summer blooms in his front garden.   

Don is a man who enjoys his beans.  He likes ‘Garrafal Oro,’ a “mangetout” type bean (meaning that the entire bean is edible), but broader, and with what Don describes as more tender, better tasting beans. This pole bean recently outgrew its six-foot tall trellis, leaving Don to figure out how to attach yet another trellis on top.

Bush beans, on the other hand, stay compact, and Don’s ‘Magirus’ is producing so well that one night a few weeks ago, he harvested a bucketful from a 12’ long row.  They were great eaten fresh off the vine, a bit hairy cooked. 

Having survived attacks by Mexican bean beetles and Colorado potato beetles, both types of beans are now dealing with Japanese beetles (how do those tiny beetles travel those long distances to North Carolina?).  Don picks off adults and eggs off by hand.  Despite holey leaves, the beans continue to produce prolifically.

Ann Caffey in Walsenberg, Colorado reports that unseasonably cool weather seems to have slowed the development of her summer crops.  Tomato plants are still less than a foot tall, while eggplants and pepper plants, cukes and zukes have grown only about six inches. 

Ann’s cosmos have, in her words, “just fizzled out,” while Calendula ‘Solar Flashback Mix’ are going strong and “absolutely beautiful.”  The half dollar sized flowers bloom in shades of cream and burgundy to yellow and red.  They are prolific and long-lasting. That comes as no surprise to us “seasoned” testers.  We found other ‘Flashbacks’ to do extremely well in our 2004 tests.  Mine have reseeded every year since.

With summer crops still to come, Ann is knee deep (so to speak) in greens, especially ‘Monnopa’ and ‘Renegade’ spinach.  “Both have done very well,” she writes, “though I do prefer the ‘Monnopa.’  It has been more prolific, darker in color and the older leaves are more crinkly, which I like.  Both germinated quickly and I had no bugs or dampening off.  Also, both recovered quickly from drought stress.”

Speaking of greens, Debbie Leung who tests seeds in Olympia Washington recently shared her perspective on Asian greens:

"My theory is that the great diversity of mustards has lead to many varieties used by various Asian cultures. There are the very dark green cupped leaves of tatsoi that grow flat on the ground in cool weather, to the tall upright bok choys with the fat juicy white stems and every variation in between.
Then, there are what I call the hot mustards with very spicy flavors that are usually cooked. Take a look at a catalog specializing in Asian vegetables like Evergreen Y.H. Enterprises and you’ll see what I mean. The West has been opening up to these varieties but doesn’t really know how to deal with the huge variation, so they get called mustard or various renditions of bok choy (pak choi etc, which in Chinese all mean “white vegetable”). So this thing I’m testing is called tatsoi, but it’s really part of that continuum of bok choys.
I grew up with some of these choys. For the farmers market, I once grew a variant with large tatsoi-like leaves on tall, upright skinny stems ...it was unfamiliar to me but customers from a different part of Asia were excited to see something they had grown up with."

Happy Gardening!

Nan Sterman