3 week garden update

           Quick update.  Last Saturday we planted the tomatoes, peppers, first crop of green beans, and the summer squash and zucchini.  We planted two major kinds of tomato varieties (22 plants!)--determinate and indeterminate.  Our major crop of tomatoes consists determinate tomatoes.  Determinate means that the plants grow up to a defined size.  They set all their fruit at one time and ripen all at once.  These are the varieties that canners use (e.g. Heinz) uses.  Canners need to have the tomatoes ripen all at once so that when they go through the fields with mechanical harvesters and harvest all the ripened fruit at once.  The two determinate varieties we planted were Road Runner III and Castlerock.  We intend to can as many tomatoes, so this allows us to can in large batches.  The other type of tomatoes we have are of the indeterminate variety.  Indeterminate means that their growth is not defined and will grow all the way until the first frost setting fruit and growing.  These can get quite large plants that can spill out of their cages.  We made double sized cages by staking and putting two cages on top of each other.  Examples of indeterminate tomatoes that we are growing are the Black Russians, Green Zebras (which is my favorite tasting tomato), and others.  These are for fresh eating in salads and sandwiches.  We will still preserve as many as these as we are able to. 

 

  

Our cauliflower and broccoli is growing by leaps and bounds.  The floating row cover has been the secret in getting blemish-free plants while going 100% organic.  Here is a pic of the cauliflower and broccoli when we planted it 3 weeks ago:

 

 Three weeks later:

They have tripled in size.  We also interplanted lettuce so that the broccoli will give some shade to the lettuce and keep it cool in the summer. 



Canning experiment.  Our big canner came in this past week.  This brings our canning capacity to 11 quarts or 17 pints at at time.  We intend to can both green beans and tomatoes and freeze the rest of our vegetables.  We are planning to get a small chest freezer and a vacuum sealer later in the summer when the vegetables come in.