Category Archives: gardening

Tomato Wine: Gold Nugget tomato’s first flower

I noticed the first flower among my gold nugget tomatoes a few days ago, and that marks another milestone on the path toward tomato wine.


A single five pointed yellow flower, the only one of its cluster that is blooming, stands out from the green foliage of this Gold Nugget tomato - 6/21/07


I took this photo on 6/21/07, and since then one or two other flowers have bloomed. These tomatoes are a lot more patient than I am. I’ve done my part. I tended them as seedlings, I transplanted them, and now its up to them. They’ve got flowers to open. They’ve got fruit to ripen! What are they waiting for?



Rhubarb Wine: Another dissapointing harvest

A Small Harvest

I pulled in just under 9 oz (250 g) of rhubarb today, which is about the same as this time last year (9 oz on 6/2206). My running total of just under 19 oz (525 g) is significantly behind last year’s 30 oz (850 g). Since I was hoping/expecting a bigger harvest this year than last, it’s pretty disappointing. And it’s my own fault. I wrote here about how I neglected the rhubarb patch early in the year. Well, I got the weeds under control and started fertilizing, but I ran out of my homebrew organic fertilizer. I didn’t get around to making more for a while, and other things came up, and – Ok, I was lazy and I got a small harvest so far. Today I fertilized the rest of the patch, and I expect a more normal harvest over the rest of the summer.

A Delayed Experiment

Last year, my July and August harvests totaled two pounds, so if I do as well this year I’ll still have over three pounds at the end of the summer. That’s enough to make a 1-gallon batch of rhubarb wine, but I had plans for two batches so that I could experiment. Normally I make the wine without doing anything to neutralize the oxalic acid in the rhubarb. In fact, I think of it as an important part of rhubarb wine’s character. Others add precipitated chalk to do away with the oxalic acid, then add other organic acids like tartaric, citric, and/or malic. They claim that oxalic acid contributes an objectionable flavor, and I wanted to test that by making to nearly identical batches – one made like all my other batches, and one treated with chalk and tartaric acid. Just to be clear, the only issue is how the oxalic acid affects the wine’s flavor. While it can be toxic in high doses, most of it is in the rhubarb leaves, which you should never use in any food or beverage. The stalks contain much less and are safe to eat (or ferment). Anyway, the experiment will have to wait until next year. I’ll just have to make do with a batch of great wine, this year 🙂



Surefire Cherry

Surefire is one of four cherry trees growing in my bonsai orchard, and the only one that will produce fruit, if just a handful, this year. It’s a tart cherry with red skin, flesh, and juice; I can’t wait to make red cherry wine and liqueur from it.


Surefire cherry fruiting on 5/30/07. The young cherry is green with some dried flower petals still visible.

I bought the tree this year, so I wasn’t expecting fruit. That little tree gave me a terrific surprise though! I took the above photo at the end of May, and it shows the young cherries, still green, with some of the flower petals visible. By June 12, the fruit began to change color. I never imagined that I’d be so excited about five or six cherries!


Surefire cherry fruit changing color on 6/12/07


You can see the color change in the above photo, and that will get the birds just as excited as I am. I think I should have first crack at them, so I’ll be putting up bird netting soon.

Why I Picked The Surefire Cherry Tree

I wanted both sweet and tart cherries because wanted to see how different cherry wine, made from sweet cherries, is from tart cherry wine. Of the tart cherries, I wanted both morello (red flesh and red juice) and amorelle (yellow flesh and clear juice) types. I plan to make white cherry wine from the amorelles and red wine from the morellos. Surefire is a morello type of tart cherry that is productive and bears at a young age. It also has some resistance to cracking and bacterial canker, two of the three problems cherries face in western Washington. There’s only one solution for the third problem, birds, and that’s netting.

Tomato Wine: Transplanted some more last night

I transplanted more Gold Nugget tomatoes last night, six more to what I’m calling the “east block.” That’s to distinguish them from the four in the “north block” that I transplanted on the 29th. I did it the same way: deep planting hole, pinched out the lower leaves, added a ground up antacid tablet and some homebrew organic fertilizer. So far so good. The north block tomatoes showed no signs of transplant shock at all.

Gold Nugget tomatoes transplanted to the east block

In the photo, it’s hard to see all six Gold Nugget tomatoes, but the stem of the sixth one is just visible on the left side. The row of plants in the front of the tomatoes, the ones that look like onions, are onions (a man’s gotta eat too). So my tomato vineyard is a reality, with 10 vines in the ground! I’ve still got two in pots that I’m not sure what to do with.

Tomato Wine: Transplanted yesterday

I’ve been reading up on blossom end rot, and it turns out that there may be something to the old (I would have called it a “wive’s tale”) practice of putting some powdered antacid in the planting hole of each tomato. The rot is caused by a calcium deficiency in the fruit, and the calcium chloride in antacid tablets might be just the thing my tomatoes need.

Antacid tablet in a bowl ready to be ground up and added to the tomato's planting hole

So each tomato got one ground up antacid tablet. I mixed it, and a handful of my homebrew organic fertilizer, into the soil in the bottom of the planting hole.

Antacid tablet ground, homebrew organic fertilizer scooped, planting hole dug, we're go for transplant!

I ground up the antacid tablet, scooped out a bit of fertilizer, and dug the planting hole. I made the hole deeper than you’d expect just by looking at the plant or the pot it was in. That’s because I planted each tomato deeper in the soil than it was in the pot. I’m taking advantage of the tomato’s ability to easily grow new roots from the stem. Doing this puts the existing roots deep into the soil and stimulates new root growth from the just-buried stem.

Pulling the bottom leaves off the tomato to bury part of the stem

In the above photo, I’m pinching out some of the bottom leaves because that part of the stem will be underground. When all was said and done, I had four tomato plants tucked into their new bed.

Four just transplanted tomato plants and two foreground pepper plants

The two small plants, in the foreground of the photo that don’t look like tomato plants, aren’t tomato plants. They’re peppers, and I know that has nothing to do with tomato wine, or any other kind of wine. I do grow some things to eat, though, and they’ve got to go somewhere. So four pepper plants, I cropped the other two out of the photo, will be sharing some real estate with the “North Block” of my tomato vineyard.

Tomato Wine: Transplant day

Today’s the Day! Ok, I know I said that yesterday was also the day, but that was for racking the mead. Today’s the day for transplanting tomatoes. I’ve been anticipating and delaying for quite a while, but there’s some hot days (upper 70s Fahrenheit – about 25 or 26 Celsius) and warm nights (50F – 10C or higher) coming our way. Cooler weather arrives on or about June 4, and that worries me. By June 5, the overnight low sinks to 45F (about 7C), but I just cant see keeping my tomatoes in pots during June! I plan to transplant in the evening, transplant shock would be amplified during the afternoon, so pictures and details tomorrow!

Cluster Thinning For Better Tomatoes?

When I wrote about cluster thinning to improve wine grapes, it got me thinking about tomatoes. Could the same technique improve the quality of tomatoes (and wine made from them)? I always have a problem with blossom end rot on my Romas, and I think that may be clue.

This rot occurs because the plant can’t fully ripen it’s fruit, and it can be caused by improper watering, nutrient imbalance, or over cropping. I’ve tried to correct this problem by more careful watering and closer attention to the proportion of nutrients in my fertilizer, but with no success at all. Maybe I’m just not doing it right, or maybe those weren’t really my problems. Thinning has worked for me every time, and this makes me think that it might improve the fruit on other tomatoes, like the Gold Nuggets that I’m going to make wine from, that aren’t hit by blossom end rot.

Tomatoes aren’t grapes, of course, so there’s a limit to how much knowledge of one I can apply to the other. I’m not even going to try limiting fertilizer or water to my tomatoes, for example. I’ll probably try thinning, though, and maybe some other grape pruning ideas. I’ll keep you posted.

Tomato Wine: Transplanting delayed

I used to write software for a living, and one thorny issue never far form anyone’s mind was the release date. This was the result of changes, unexpected problems, negotiation, compromise, tests of will, overtime, threats of violence, and – ok maybe not threats of violence. Not explicit ones anyway. The point is that the actual date on which software gets delivered is often different from the date on which it was promised. So it is with my tomatoes (I never imagined those two sentences going together!).

Gold Nugget tomatoes are still in their pots on 5/24/07, and getting crowded

I had planned on transplanting them on the 22nd, but more recent forecasts tell of cold nights ahead. I want nice warm 50+ Fahrenheit (10+ Celsius) nights before I transplant them, and it looks like the 27th will see lows of 44F (a bit less than 7C). So I’ve slipped the release date, um delayed transplanting I mean, to the 29th. Once a software guy, always a software guy …

In the meantime, my tomatoes and other transplants (I do actually eat some of my vegetables) will commute to the patio every morning. And it’s getting to be quite a traffic jam in those pots.

Homebrew Organic Fertilizer

An important part in rejuvenating the rhubarb patch and preparing the tomato vineyard, is to fertilize them. Steve Solomon is my favorite gardening author, and this organic fertilizer recipe is from his Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades: The Complete Guide to Natural Gardening:

4 parts (by volume) seed meal (I use cottonseed meal)
1 part kelp meal
1 part lime
1 part rock phosphate or 1/2 part bone meal

I used to buy the ingredients in cute little boxes at a local nursery, but it makes much more sense to buy in quantity.

50 lb sack of cottonseed meal, 50 lb sack kelp meal, 40 lb sack dolomite lime, and a bucket of bone meal - my fertilizer ingredients

I get cottonseed meal and kelp meal by the 50 lb sack at a nearby feed store. The lime is readily available almost anywhere gardening supplies are sold. I follow Mr Solomon’s advice again and use a mix of agricultural lime and dolomite lime for a good balance of calcium and magnesium.

Fertilizer ingredients measured out into the wheelbarrow for mixing

Once I’ve measured the ingredients in the correct proportions, I mix them together until the color and texture is uniform.


Rhubarb Wine: Rhubarb needs love too

The short thin stalks on this rhubarb plant are from neglect


It’s easy to grow. It’s hardy. You don’t have to do much for it. Well, that’s all true of rhubarb, unless you want to harvest a good crop. My first harvest of the year was pretty good, and better than last year. That made me feel pretty good about how the rhubarb patch was doing, and I neglected it for other things. I didn’t weed, fertilize, or water (it’s easy to grow, after all), and it looks like I won’t be harvesting this month. I didn’t take a “before” picture, because I was too embarrassed. Here’s what it looks like now.