Small Tomatoes with Large Taste and Free Seed Offer

I just love small tomatoes!  They are perfect for sneaking a taste when working out in the gardens.  You can be hot and sweaty but that burst of juice in your mouth and the combination of sweet and acid on your tongue can be mighty refreshing.  Even when it comes in a very small package.

I read one time that there are about 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.  They fall into two categories:  determinate and indeterminate.  The determinate plants are a bush variety and grow until they set fruit (yes a tomato is a botanical fruit) on the terminal bud.  Then all fruit ripens over a 1 to 2 week period.

I like to grow indeterminate tomatoes.  For most of the country, this means that they will grow until killed by frost.  Since I live where we never have frost, we plant in the fall and our tomatoes grow until they are killed by the heat and moisture from our rainy season (sometime in May).

Most varieties of the smaller tomatoes are of the indeterminate variety.  This means you can enjoy their goodness all season long. 

Right now I am crazy for Yellow Pear and Everglades tomatoes.  Let's face it, who wouldn't be crazy about a tomato that has a waist? 

 

Just look at these little gems from the garden. Scarlett O'Hara herself would be green with envy of that small yellow waist!  And no corset was needed.  No pear has ever been as adorable as my yellow pear tomatoes.  They originated in Europe in the 1700's and fell out of fashion for a bit but have come back in a big way for such a small tomato.  While considered a "sweet" tomato, I think they are on the acidic side and taste tart.  They are yummy when tossed in salads, as a topping for frittatas, or simply enjoyed with a few leaves of basil, a pinch of salt, and a dash of oil and balsamic vinegar.

The other tomato that I am crazy for this year is the native Everglades tomato.  This is the only tomato that is native to South Florida.  Not only is it indeterminate but it can stand up to the heat and torrential downpours of our rainy season.  I have Everglades tomato plants in an aquaponics flood and drain bed that are almost a year old!  They grow on sprawling vines and produce in clusters of 8 or 9 like a cherry tomato.  I don't think you can kill an Everglades tomato.

If you look at this photo, I set one Everglades tomato on a quarter so you would have perspective on the size of this mighty tasting tomato.  It might be a small tomato but it has more sweet taste than any large beefsteak

These are addictive when eaten in the garden. It really is hard for me to get them to the house.  But if they make it, they are perfect in a salad.  Or eaten out of hand.  Good thing I have them everywhere...which leads me to the free offer.

I want to see the Everglades tomato get the attention it deserves.  If you will email me at allergycheryl@gmail.com and in the email subject put "Free Seeds" I will email you back with my address.  You can send a self addressed stamped envelope and I will send you some free Florida Everglades tomato seeds.  Then you can enjoy this awesome small tomato with a very very large taste

Natural Pest Control

If you have ever gardened in any way you know that munching insects and caterpillars are inevitable.  In the case of butterfly gardens, those caterpillars aren't pests but butterflies to be.  But you don't want caterpillars in your vegetable garden. You don't want aphids and white flies in any garden. Squash bugs are a problem as well. Pests can be pesky

I've written before about the challenges of the tomato horn worm in my aquaponic gardens.  If you missed it, you can read it here There Will Be Pests.   Aquaponics gardening presents pest control challenges similar to that faced by organic gardeners.  You can't use conventional or toxic pest control because you will kill your fish.  Without the fish, your aquaponics garden is merely hydroponic.  So like any gardener first I asked around other gardeners I knew were growing with success (that is to say I've actually see their gardens) and then I hit the interwebs to see what I could see.

In both instances I found one common ingredient to an all natural pest control spray.....hot peppers!  I just love hot peppers and hot any spicy food.  I guess I would make a terrible insect because it turns out many insects don't care for the oils in peppers.  So, I decided to cook up my very own all natural pest spray.  I started with hot peppers and then I figured if garlic would keep vampires away maybe it would work on common garden pests as well.  In my thinking it couldn't hurt and at the least I would not be infested with vampires. After a little more digging around, I discovered that garlic is also used to repel mosquitoesand fleas.  I don't have a problem with fleas.  Because I live in South Florida where the mosquito is the state bird, I figured this was just a bonus.  I took some ideas from both Dr. Dirt and a local master gardener to come up with my all natural pest spray.

First, I tossed some jalepeno peppers in my little food processor along with a few cloves of garlic, thusly:

After I alternately used the chop and grind features I had a fairly coarse puree with an extremely pungent aroma.  It is a good thing I like the smell of peppers and garlic because this lingered for days. 

Next I put the puree in a clean glass quart jar that had a tight fitting lid.  I added enough water to bring it up to the top and then placed it outside in the sun to make "tea".

Because we have such mild weather in February, the temperature was 84°F the day I put the jar out.  I set it out in the morning and left it until the afternoon of the following day.  The water was a bit cloudy.  When I opened the jar you could absolutely smell the garlic and peppers.  I wish I could give you a link to the smell because it was certainly strong.

I brought the "tea" back inside and strained it using my tea strainer.  Because I didn't have any more clean quart bottles I strained it into some smaller bottles for storage.  I applied it undiluted to the collards that had the worst aphid infestation.  I just poured the "tea" into a clean spray bottle, added a drop of soap (as a surfactant and additional anti-insecticidal) and sprayed away.  As a preventative measure, I sprayed the beds next to the bed that was already infested with a diluted solution of the tea. I emptied the small bottle into a quart spray bottle, added two drops of soap, and topped it off with water. 

I used this with success on tomatoes for white fly, collards and broccoli for aphids, and kale seedlings and cilantro seedlings as a preventative measure.  I applied early in the day to avoid any risk of leaf burn.  I felt pretty confident that the pepper/garlic mixture wouldn't burn the leaves but I was concerned about the soap I had added as a surfactant.

The good news is that the pests were controlled and the fish in the aquaponic systems were not harmed.  I am thinking that I will use this tea alternately with neem as a preventative.

What do you use for all natural pest control?  I'd love to hear if anyone else uses peppers and garlic or neem.

Octopus Slayer - Part 2

If you remember from a prior post last year, we made some changes to the large A-Frame NFT system that was being used over at the Together We Stand Aquaponic Gardens.  It had been designed with a manifold at the top to feed water individually at each tube and to drain each tube individually. It had so many hoses going so many directions we called it the "octopus".  Classic exacmple of over-engineering to solve a problem that didn't exist.

When I wrote about how we changed the water flow I mentioned that instead of black tubing, my hubby cut a garden hose to make the jumper from one tube to the next. It was easy, quick, and most importantly cheap!

After I posted this, several folks commented on this blog and other places about the wisdom of using a garden hose. There was quite a bit of concern about the safety of the water flowing through the garden hose and the possibility of leaching toxic chemicals.

Quite honestly, for as "smart" and evolved as we are supposed to be, it never occurred to us that the hose might taint the water.  Hubby and I  both grew up in a very hot and dry area of South Texas and drank lots of water from the hose as youngsters and teens. While it did have a funny taste, I just always guessed it was from the metal bib of the hose.  That and the fact that all the water in that town tasted like crud, no matter the source.  But when you are hot and thirsty you will drink what is available.  Of course, this was back in the 60's and 70's so we didn't know about things like bottled water back then

But this is a new century and we are evolved and enlightened!  So a few days ago, hubby decided that the garden hose should be replaced.  You spoke and he listened!

 This did require a trip to Home Depot, but it was only a few dollars and the result looks clean and works well.  I think fighting the crowd of Canadians in the parking lot and through the store on a Saturday (remember this is Hollywood Florida and it is January and in the mid-80's so all the snowbirds have landed) took longer and was more effort than making the actual change.  Here is the new set-up. 

Here is another view.

Nice huh?

But this gets me to thinking about all the things we did as kids that people never do now....or they don't allow their kids to do now.  Maybe it was because we were from a small-ish town, but we rode our bikes everywhere and got into everything. I don't know how we survived.

How about you?

Protein + Veggies = Ultimate Survival Garden

Aquaponics is a method of growing plants without soil and added fertilizers.  If you are familiar with hydroponics, then think of aquaponics as taking it to the next level.  Add in a tank of water with fish and you have aquaponics.  The fish contain bacteria in their digestive tract that is excreted in their urine and feces.  These bacteria break down the ammonia into nitrites and nitrates, providing nutrition for the plants.

Systems can be as complex as you want

Or as simple as you want