Need heirloom tomato seedlings?-Tomato Days 2012

This year my annual heirloom tomato seedling sale, Tomato Days, falls a bit earlier than usual.

It's an annual rite of spring for lots of people and I hope you'll join the heirloom tomato madness on May 19, 20 and 21, the Victoria Day long weekend, 8 am until 2 pm daily.

On each day I'll be here, with friends and family helping out, finding what I hope will be the most delicious plants for your home vegetable garden.

I'm really not quite sure how many tomato varieties I've grown this year. There are oodles, perhaps 600 or so. But to me it isn't a numbers game, it is all about great tomatoes, and when you grow heirlooms it is really easy to get a bit carried away. There are so many really, really good ones.

With 9 acres here on my little farm, I can grow quite a few different kinds. It is really impossible for me to neglect interesting ones that I find out about when I know I have the room. Do you have the "just one more plant" syndrome too?

I have super sweet cherries, and smaller, in all colours. Black, purple, orange, yellow, brown, black and striped. Fuzzy tomatoes, huge tomatoes, misshapen tomatoes, long tomatoes and more. Tomatoes for canning, paste, slicers and just pop 'em in your mouth sweeties.

I love it when people walk up my drive and ask "what's good?"

My stock answer? "They all are!"

Along with tomato seedlings , you'll find all kinds of other cool heirloom vegetable seedlings too. I have even more peppers this year. Super sweet to sizzling hot, they are all here.

Ultra cool eggplants, tomatillos, ground cherries, cukes, zukes, squash, melons, brassicas, lettuces, herbs and a pretty big selection of basils. Quite a bit more too.

If you come on Saturday morning, expect lots of people to be here. To avoid crowds, please come at another time on the weekend.  I promise, there are lots of plant-I won't run out!

It is more like a treasure hunt than plants for sale at a garden centre. The plants are all set up in my drive, categorized alphabetically  and by colour.  I don't have colour pictures of every varieties, nor descriptions beside each.

I have no staff helping..it is friends and family, and they don't know the plants the way I do. But they are all wonderful people and will do their best to help you.

As will I. If you have a bit of patience with me, I'll be there to help you.  Trust me, I want to talk to you about heirlooms, as you will know if you know me!

Over the next few weeks on my blog, I will attempt to highlight some of the tomatoes you'll find here. So check back in.

Saturday will have a few special guests available to speak with and make purchases from too.

Bring your box, bring the sun and welcome to Wainfleet!

Guest post-New Beginnings

Hello everybody. I’ve never written a blog before so bare with me until I get a hang of this.  I’m Maris Ozols and I’ve landed the opportunity of being a farming intern with Linda throughout the summer. My dad, step-mom, step-brother and I want to create our own sustainable small farm business on our property in Mount Hope (just outside of Hamilton), and Linda is going to be showing me the ropes. I’m actually staying at Tree and Twig from Monday to Friday and working alongside Linda to better understand what I’m getting into, and then it’s back to our place where there’s never a shortage of work to be done.

I had intended to write a blog every week, but this is my third week here and only my first posting (whoops). So, what have I been up to since I started my internship? Well first off, I’m learning a ton of cool stuff about growing vegetables from books, actually planting and picking, and obviously from Linda. Up until this internship, I had absolutely no idea which vegetables could be planted at what time, and now I’m already getting a general grasp of the planting and harvest times of so many of the vegetables present at the dinner table. We’ve put together some CSA baskets, planted micro-greens, harvested salad greens, started incubating a few duck eggs, and transplanted a few seedlings to larger pots in the greenhouse. Okay, more than a few seedlings. Our four combined hands (mine and Linda’s) have transplanted over ten thousand little guys in one  hoop-house. There were eggplants, a whole whack of hot/sweet peppers,   and what seemed like a million tomatoes with tastes, names, and colours from all over every spectrum. Linda keeps reassuring me that we’re almost done with transplanting and I keep reassuring her that I believe her. Anyways, I’m enjoying every moment here and I’m pretty positive I’m sticking to this line of work instead of one involving constant fluorescent lighting or a white collar.

On a side-note/end-note, besides drastically changing my work life towards the farming direction, I’ve also gone through a bunch of other personal changes in lifestyle that I’m quickly getting used to. Before moving back to Hamilton (and part-time in Wellandport), I was living and working in Ottawa as a cook in a scotch bar. There I ate meat, deep-fried meat, and more meat. I also smoked every two hours as was permitted (and almost reinforced by the environment). But here, I’m eating all vegetarian as long as I’m staying at Tree and Twig, and I’ve managed to quit smoking after having one cigarette on my first day. Linda told me that tobacco smoke (even on your fingers) can seriously harm vegetable plants, and so the next day I came to stay for the week and brought zero cigarettes with me. I figured that this whole new way of life is my chance to break free from yet another ridiculous vice I should never have harboured in the first place. Anyways, I’ll keep the next blog more concise. Thanks for reading and I’ll try and be a little more prompt next time with the whole ‘weekly’ part of the blog.

The Wacky Weather Continues

Still the salad days

I think the weather is confusing everyone.
Plants, animals and definitely people too.  I consider myself to be in one of those categories, and confused too.

Last year's plants 

Lots of people are inquiring about picking up their tomato plants now...but I've only just finished the transplanting. The plants are still quite small. Besides, with a good 4 weeks to go until they should actually be put in the ground wouldn't it be better I take the risks with the plants and this crazy weather before you plunk your hard earned cash down?

I am growing these plants in an unheated hoop house, so the past few weeks have been most interesting. The fans have been whirring smoothly in an effort to pull the hot air through the hoop house, but over the weekend, with three hard frosts in a row,  I didn't want to take too many chances.

Over top of my greenhouse tables are hoops, on top of which I layered agricultural fabric and plastic to protect my plants. There was a bit of plant loss along the edges sadly where the plastic was touching on some of the plants, but I suspect it was less than 1% and I always plant lots.
Still I slept very little over the weekend, being the worrier that I am. I knew logically that it all was fine, but...well, they are my babies.

On the bright side, it does look like this week's more overcast and warmer conditions will be absolutely the best for hardening off the plants, that is, getting them used to the outside conditions.

It was so nice this morning to read the weather report and realize that-hallelujiah- I don't have to cover up the plants tonight. It may sound easy, but it's not.

As it pours outside, I wonder. Is this the next phase of wacky weather we have in store? Maybe. We've had too warm, too dry, too cold and now too wet?

I hope not. I can do too dry, cold or warm. But too wet? No can do.  There are no answers to that one.

But regardless, I'll sleep tonight on this first night of pounding rain.  A week of it though may be a different story.

But please-no rain on Tomato Days!

Transplantin' time!

Lemon Catnip

It has been an interesting week.

Last week concluded in a sweaty haze, while this week I stood huddled and shivering in the hoop house while the snow whipped around outside. Transplanting tomatoes. Ha, ha.

Funny. What can you do?

I really don't let the weather get me down too much. It's impact is huge on what I do; it can make or break a season.  And has.

But I'm not in control, and I relax with that knowledge. I just carry on.

This week is 7 in my spring CSA, for some week 8. I liked the baskets and hope those receiving them did too. There were some tasty buds-spigiarello, non heading cabbage florets, some zesty red and Indian mustards, arugula, salad greens and more milder varieties of mustards. And whoa. A hint of summer-basil! Tasty green garlic too, which I just love with my greens.

Of course this cold weather has slowed down the rate of growth of my radishes, spinach, turnips, beets, carrots, and other crops outside. Eating seasonally means eating with the weather. And the weather says slow down.

When not harvesting veggies, I'm working hard at getting the transplanting done with my intern Maris.
This week he felt a bit under the weather, but carried on bravely. (I sure hope it wasn't my cooking!)

We've done thousands of plants. He fills the pots with the soil less mix, while I pop the tiny peppers, eggplants and tomatoes in the pots, pressing them in gently and watering them with my kelp solution.

Last week the door to the hoop house was wide open, fan purring at full throttle, while this week it has been locked up tightly with my ag fabric covering the plants for protection. It's always a tremendous juggling act, this season we call spring. Warm up, cool down, apply shade, remove shade.

I keep telling Maris that this is not the way the "big guys" do it. We are the technology. We don't have it- we are it!

Milk Thistle

But the plants look very good.

I get excited when I see certain plants. Today I took a walk on the dark side- Hell Frucht, Bloody Butcher, Jersey Devil, Egyptian Tomb.  Love, love, love the names.

Tomorrow we are at it again, Friday too. But after that it is smaller bit of things- basils, more brassicas, ground cherries and huckleberries. Then on to other things. The season rolls along!