The Tomato Plan

Growing tomatoes is a significant part of the focus of the garden.   The objective is to have a plan that tells you what to do at every stage of tomato production, so that it doesn't crash somewhere along the way.

At each stage of the process, you have a plan and the tools for production, and an eventual outcome. What so often happens is that you don't have one step of the plan worked out, so that the whole effort is disrupted and all the work you've done up to that point is wasted. 

 

Pre-Production

So it's January and you are looking down the pathway of the long season ahead of you.  You need to decide at this point:

• Which types of Tomatoes you will grow:  Roma, Cherry, Slicers.
• How many plants of each type you will need.  
• Then, find the seed packets with the variety that grows best in your area.

I typically grown 3 -4 of each type and keep the seed packets in a ziplock in the refrigerator.

Propagation

Tomato seeds readily sprout in a propagator and can be grown out in 3-4" pots for several weeks indoors under lights.  I use the Aerogarden with the seed starter kit.

Tomatoes need to be planted in May.  I have a whole post on the timing of the tomato planting but the shorthand is 3 weeks in the propagator from seed, and three weeks growing out in pots.  That means I need to begin seeding 6 weeks before I want to transplant them.  Transplanting in mid-May means seeding in early April.  That gives me the timing and tools for this stage.

Transplanting

Tomatoes need to be transplanted in May.  Any earlier and they sulk and do nothing;  any later and you begin to lose the growing season.  Major disease can begin to be a problem in mid July.

Indeterminates like the Big Boy slicers and the cherry tomatoes need to be trained to poles.  I use two-piece poles of galvanized iron.  So these poles need to be put in place just as the transplants are put into the ground.

Determinates like Roma need sturdy tomato cages to keep the sprawling branches off the ground.   Again, these need to be installed when first transplanted.

Growing

Growing tomatoes need a steady rhythm of fertilizer/ kelp tea, trimming, and spraying of baking soda or hydrogen peroxide to help combat fungus.  In other posts, I've worked out what works best for me.  As we mentioned earlier, we have a limited growing season to establish the plants, put on the leaves and set fruit.  

Harvesting

At first, the harvest of tomatoes is a delight, but soon the major and ongoing production will overwhelm your palate for fresh tomatoes and you need to think about preserving.  The classic solution is to can your tomatoes as salsa, sauce and diced tomatoes.  If you don't have time to can them right away, you can freeze them in zipper bags, and bring them out in the fall to complete the processing.

Preserving

Tomatoes will eventually be canned.  One of the challenges of this step is to know how many cans of each item you will use during the year.  For me, this is 12-18 pints of salsa, sauce, and diced tomatoes. Anything more will not be eaten and will hang around until next year.

For the preserving process, I use all the canning equipment, the juicer attachment and all the rest.

Eating

The last step of this long process is actually enjoying the tomatoes.  We've been eating them fresh all along but now that they have been canned, we must continue to find ways of including them in our cooking.  That means that we need to find recipes that use diced tomatoes, or tomato sauce.  We need to use one per month to make sure we eat everything.

 

Processing Tomatoes

 Up to this point, we've been talking about growing tomatoes in the garden, but today we are going to look at what to do with the harvest.

Generally speaking, were going to look at the order in which we can various tomato products and what to do with them afterward.

So the moment has come that you have far more tomatoes coming in from the garden than you can eat fresh.  The counters are rapidly filling up and if you don't do something soon, they will start to go bad.  Before that point you need to think seriously about preserving them, either by canning or freezing.

The main products I make my tomatoes into are Salsa, Diced tomatoes, and Tomato sauce.  I like to target 16 pint jars of each.

 For each of the recipes, follow Steps One through Three listed below.

Tomato Sauce

Step one is sourcing your jars and lids.  The empty jars that you used last year are out in the garage on the shelf, gathering dust and cobwebs, so I bring them all in and run them through the dishwasher.  Lids and rings have been very hard to come by, recently, so I make sure to order them at whatever price the goblins require.

Step Two.  As the tomatoes come in from the garden, particularly the cherry tomatoes and Romas, we're going to process them into freezer bags. Simply cut the cherry tomatoes in half and cut both ends off the cylindrical romas. Then pack them into a zipper freezer bag, suck out all the air with a straw and lay them flat in the freezer.  Leave them in the freezer for at least 48 hours.

Step Three.  When the tomatoes come out of the freezer and are completely thawed, you will notice two things.  First, the skins will begin to peel easily away from the  tomatoes. Second, there will be a good amount of tomato juice gathered in the bottom of the bags.  Peel the tomatoes and save the tomato juice in quart jars.  Chop the romas in half.  (The cherry tomatoes are already chopped.)

 Step Four.  We are using the Kitchen Aid vegetable strainer attachment to the power hub of the mixer.  Whether the tomatoes are frozen and thawed or fresh and trimmed, we continue along the same path. Fresh vegetables should be chopped so that they can fit into the feed tube of the grinder.

Set Up:  The recipe calls for 15 lbs of tomatoes as well as several 15 oz cans of tomato paste, so have those ready. Run your intended tomato sauce jars through the dishwasher while you are working on the tomatoes.  Make sure you have new lids and clean rings for the number of jars you intend to fill.  Fifteen pounds of tomatoes produces four to six 25-oz jars of tomato sauce.

On the stove, you should have three stock pots.  One is for tomato juice, the other is for tomato sauce, and the third will be for tomato pulp.  At the juicing station, you need a tall container for the seeds and pulp, and a wider container for the sauce.  On top of the sauce container place a fine mesh strainer, to separate the sauce from the juice.

Feed the chopped tomatoes through the hopper and it will produce the pulp and sauce.  Work in batches, and when a container is full, transfer the contents to the relevant pot on the stove.  They should be heating on medium or lower to maintain a low simmer.

When you've juiced all 15 lbs of tomatoes, see how much they produced on the stove.  The three pots should be simmered for at least 1 hour, while you continue to work.

Process the Pulp.  Start with the pulp and roughly measure how much skins, seeds and pulp your batch produced.  Add roughly 1/3 of that amount in water to the pulp pot and bring to a boil.  (For example, if your 15 lbs of tomatoes produced 6 cups of pulp, add 2 cups of water to the pulp pot.)  Bring the pulp to a boil, stirring well, and let it gently boil for 45 minutes.  Stir occasionally.  After simmering, remove from heat and allow the pulp to cool for 15 minutes.  Then run the pulp back through the vegetable strainer.  Again, it will produce more pulp, juice, and sauce.  Discard this remaining pulp, and add the sauce and juice to their respective pots.

Process the Sauce.  The finished sauce is ready to can at this point.  Depending on how thick the sauce is, you may want to continue simmering for an additional hour, or you can consider adding tomato paste to thicken it to your desired consistency.  Adding some amount of paste helps keep the sauce from separating in the jar during storage.

Prepare the pressure canner and add the jars to the vented canner to start heating them. 

Mix up the Italian seasoning blend.  This should make 6 Tbsp.

• 2 Tbsp Oregano
• 2 Tbsp Basil
• 1 Tbsp Garlic powder
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper

Add 1 Tbsp salt, 1 Tbsp Sugar, and 1-1/2 tsp Citric Acid (or 1/3 cup lemon juice). 

You should also have a can of commercial tomato sauce on hand, if you need to top off one of the jars to the proper 1/2" headspace.

With the hot tomato sauce, fill the heated jars, and pressure can at 10 lbs for 15 minutes.  Be sure to pre-vent, and natural release the pressure.

Process the Juice.  At this point, the tomato juice will be very thin, but it will be full of flavor.  You have a few options at this point.  

1. If you haven't canned diced tomatoes, you can use this tomato juice in place of the boiling water to cover the tomatoes.  Save the juice in quart jars and store it in the refrigerator until you need it.
   
2. Pressure can this juice in pint jars to use during the winter as vegetable stock.
3. You could also fortify this juice with commercial tomato paste to make tomato sauce.  Add 2 cups tomato juice for every 1 cup of tomato paste.  Heat and stir until smooth. Note this is much different than simply diluting tomato paste with water.  The tomato juice is already much thicker and more flavorful, with all kinds of aromatics.   This fortified tomato sauce is best used for making seasoned pasta sauce, combining with roasted onions and garlic.

For Fortified Pasta sauce:

Mince 1 cup onion (1 med onion) and 6 cloves garlic.  Spread them on a baking sheet and roast them in the oven for 20 minutes.  Mix the tomato juice with tomato paste at a 2:1 ratio.  Add the Italian seasoning blend listed above to the sauce with 1 Tbsp Sugar.  To each 24 oz jar, add 1 tsp salt, 1.5 Tbsp lemon juice. Fill to 1/2" headspace and pressure can using the instructions listed above.

Step Four and a half (if you don't have a kitchen aid vegetable strainer.  Gather all your diced tomatoes in a slow cooker, set on high.  Let them cook 8-10 hours or overnight and the tomatoes will continue to release juice.  Ladle this juice into the quart jars you started before.  At the end of this process, you may end up with equal parts tomato meat and tomato juice.  Run your diced tomatoes through the blender.  At this point, consider the thickness of your sauce.  You may want to return the sauce to the slow cooker or a stock pot for an additional 2 hours to achieve a thicker sauce.

Complete this process until you have 16 pint jars of sauce.

 

Annie's Salsa

Next, assemble the vegetables necessary to make a batch of Annie's salsa. This requires 8 cups of diced tomatoes along with onions, green pepper and the rest.  As before, follow Steps One, Two, and Three listed above before proceeding.  You want to use diced tomatoes that have been previously frozen, then thawed, peeled, and had some of the tomato water naturally separated.  You won't cook this in a slow cooker as you did before, but it will benefit from having some of the water separated.  Save this juice in your quart jars.

 Chop the vegetables and combine in a stock pot following the recipe. Can and process as usual, resulting in 16 pint jars of salsa. 

 

Diced Tomatoes

The next step is to make diced tomatoes.  For this process, begin as usual, with steps one, two, and three.  This time, instead of slow cooking them, add the diced tomatoes directly to the canning jars.  When you get to step five, prepare your jars, add 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1/2 tsp salt.  Here, take out the tomato juice you saved in the quart jars and heat it on the stove until it just begins to simmer.  

Pack the jars with diced tomatoes.  Then, pour the simmering juice over the top until the tomatoes are covered and the juice reaches the bottom ring of the jar.  If you don't have enough tomato juice, you can use boiling water instead, but use  up the juice first. Then, add rings and lids and process with a water bath.1

This process should give you 16 pints of diced tomatoes.

 

 

Bermuda lawns, the definitive guide

So let me say this right at the beginning.  None of the ideas in this guide are original to me.  They are the result of reading and watching a multitude of articles and videos about this subject and gleaning the appropriate information for my area (transition zone 8) and grass type (warm season Bermuda grass).   This is a work in progress as more resources are consulted.  The title, "definitive guide" is intended as a small joke, but partly true in that it is definitive for my own style and experience of what works for me.

The primary audience for this guide is myself alone.  It is simply a place to organize my thoughts.

There are three components of this guide.

Yearly Maintenance Program.  The first section is the Yearly Maintenance program that is intended for as an ongoing program for a well established and well cared for lawn.  

Rescue Program.  The second section is a Rescue Program for what to do when you realize that things are getting out of control, and the weeds and neglect are beginning to overwhelm your once-beautiful lawn.

Deep Start Program.  The third section is a start-over Program for how to begin to work on a neglected lawn that is nothing but weeds.  

Bermuda Tools. This last section shows you all the materials, fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide and other things that are approved for use in a Bermuda grass lawn.

I'm going to begin by building up the program with each component.  Then in the second section, I put it all into a  yearly program that can be followed each month.  If I can outline the basics, then I will understand how these components fit into the calendar throughout the year.

 

Tomato Timeline

 I'm just trying to capture a timeline of how tomatoes have developed over the course of the summer.

These first two images were taken on June 5th, 2021.  They show Big Boy tomato plants that were planted in a new raised bed.  They have probably been in the ground 2 weeks at the time of this picture.

They are growing at the base of 5-foot galvanized 1/2" electrical conduit.

These were started in the Aerogarden seed starter tray, were then grown out for 3 weeks in transplant pots, and finally planted deep in the garden, with at least half of the plant under the soil.

In the back of the new bed, you can see a more mature raised bed which is now hosting the green peppers.

In this picture, from the upper bed, this cherry tomato is about 24" tall.  It has just started being trained on the wooden stake behind it. 

To either side, Roma tomatoes are being grown in tomato cages.  Again, the date of this picture is 06/05.

This dwarf cherry in the same bed is about 18" tall, showing plenty of flowers.

 

 

The next set of photos are from a month later, July 2nd, 2021.

In the foreground is a Roma tomato growing out the top of its 36" cage.  You can see quite a few roma fruits have developed, though none are ripe, at this point.

In the background, on the left, you can see that same dwarf tomato tied to the two stakes (the conduit and the wooden stake).  Even at this distance, you can see a large crop of cherry tomatoes that are starting to turn.  This dwarf is the same one in the picture above, taken a month earlier.

 

Below, you can see that same row of Slicer Tomatoes, one month later, July 3rd.  At this point, they are about a foot away from the top of the 5' conduit stakes.  (A foot of the conduit is buried, so these tomatoes are about 3' tall.)  In the front right, you can see a few fruits setting. 

This last tomato is an unpruned cherry tomato. It's been allowed to produce as many vines as it wants, and the three wooden stakes keep it from encroaching on other residents of the raised bed, while the front spills over the wall of the bed and out onto the lawn.

                                     

July 15, 2021

I'm posting an update around July 15th.  The slicing tomatoes that I am pruning to a single stem have grown to the top of their conduit stakes.  In the picture above, they were about a foot below the top of the stakes.  Two weeks later, they've reached the top.

At this point, I am applying the stake extensions, which are an additional 2 1/2 feet tall.  That means that my total stake length is about 7-1/2 feet tall.  As an aside, if they continue to grow 6" per week, that gives me an additional 5 weeks of growth space.

However, I know that going into August, the heat will climb even higher and the tomato growth will slow down for about a month.  If I can keep them alive, keep them hydrated, keep off the blight and the wilt and the bugs for the next four weeks, they will ripen the tomatoes that are on there right now.  

Come September, as the temperatures moderate slightly, healthy vines will put out another round of flowers.  These should then carry us through September and October when things finally finish up.  At that point, some of the tomatoes might have reached the top of the 7-1/2 foot stake. Actually, I'm fine with that.  Any higher and I wouldn't be able to harvest anything from the top.  Ten-foot tomato plants are a novelty, but anything that high isn't practical.  

Speaking of practicality, starting with a 5' conduit stake (one of the 10' lengths cut in half to give two base stakes) and adding an additional 2.5' stake on top of it (a 5' length cut in half) gives plenty of height but is easy to store and easy to handle.  It also avoids the ridiculous presentation of a 6" tomato transplant with 8' of stake towering above it.  And if they don't grow very high one year, they don't look like hopeful underachievers.

August 15, 2021

Three things have happened in the intervening month since I last reported.  

1.  Around the last weekend in July and the first week in August, the first major flush of tomatoes ripened and were harvested.  We have picked and eaten many tomatoes, and have harvested enough to can 16 pints of diced tomatoes and 16 pints of Salsa.  I still have three basins of picked tomatoes left over and sitting on the counter or in the refrigerator, such that I'm thinking about trying my hand at canning tomato sauce. Honestly, if the tomatoes stopped their production now, I would consider it a successful tomato harvest.

The cherry tomatoes have been abundant, as have the Italian Roma tomatoes.  The slicers have been slower to mature, but the big beefy fruits are delicious.  During the past weeks, the weather has been hot but with afternoon thunderstorms that keep the fruits well watered.  We've had several rainstorms that caused the big tomatoes to  swell up and develop splits along the top.  These are still free from disease and good to eat, so there's no real harm done.

2.  The tomatoes have grown during the last month.  Maybe not as fast as they have previously, but for all of the slicers that have been trained to a single stake, the vines have reached the tops of the 5-foot stake, I've added an additional 2.5 foot segment and many of the vines are an additional 6" up that extension.

The roma's and cherry tomatoes are also growing profusely, though it's been harder to keep them trained to a single stake, and the Roma's have maxed out their tomato cages.

3.  The other thing that has happened is that we've seen the first instances of lower leaf die-off.  This may have been because of the sustained heat, causing the plant to let go of unnecessary vegetation, or because there was a fungus or blight.  I'm convinced that at least some of the issues are fungal in nature. This is an important turning point to note on the calendar.  Sometime in the first two weeks of August is the critical period for onset of blight.  Any preparatory treatments, such as a baking soda, hydrogen peroxide or wettable sulfur sprays, should begin at this time.

During this period, I trimmed off any wilted or significantly yellowed leaves.  Plenty of healthy green leaves remain in the upper 2/3rds of the plant so that they are not in danger of overwhelming entire plants.  I suspect if I did nothing throughout the month of August, however, that several of these plants would succumb, as they have in the past.  So a regular schedule of treatments is definitely in order now.  If I can keep the darkness at bay for the next few weeks, I think the tomato harvest will continue through September and into October.  That is my goal for this year.

New Grow Late June

 So it is late June and I decided to replant my Bounty and my Farm12XL.  For some inscrutable reason, I decided to go with flowers, this time.  I've never planted flowers in my Aerogardens before, opting for herbs and edible transplants instead, but this time I had purchased a packet of Zinnia.  So I decided to see how they do in the Aerogarden.

In addition, I had an old packet of Nasturtium in the back of my refrigerator, and I said to myself, since I'm going for flowers, why not throw those into the mix as well. After that, I just started pulling seed packets at random.  I ended up with two pods of Basil, a single of Swiss Chard, two Nasturtiums, two Zinnia, and two of Little Caesar dwarf lettuce.  

After literally 4 days planted,

 

 

 

 here are the Zinnia and Little Caesar lettuce:

 

 

 

 

 

The Swiss chard has jumped out of the ground:
 and this is from a seed packet packed in 2014.

Both the Basil pods have already sprouted from a 2012 seed packet by Ferry Morse that I picked up in Wal-mart. 

And, of course, the kicker is that these random, out of date seed packets are all planted in Grow-Your-Own sponges with recycled baskets and domes and my home made labels.  And despite all these hacks, the Aerogarden has many of them germinating after only four days.  I would expect a week or more to germinate, based on the packet information.

Tomatoes: the Queen of the Garden Growing guide

 A guide for growing tomatoes.

Determinate vs Indeterminate:  Determinate tomatoes grow to a specific size, then sets all its fruit, which all matures at the same time.   Theses are typically Roma tomatoes, and commercial varieties like Celebrity.   Most of the popular tomatoes for home gardeners are indeterminate, which means that they grow and continue to set fruit as long as they live.

The best producers are indeterminates.  Cherry tomatoes will grow 10 ft tall.  Giant Beefsteaks will be shorter.

Staking: Tomatoes are trained to a single vine that is staked on a long pole. The pole traditionally is an 8 ft furring strip (1x2).   This is driven a foot into a ground. More recently, I've been using 1/2" electrical conduit, which is solid, easy to handle and drive, reusable.  I've cut it into 5 foot lengths for the base an an additional 2.5 foot length for the top, joined by a simple coupler.

This means that the plants are not bushy but you can plant several of them closely together.

Fertilizer:  Use a garden fertilizer that gives phosphorous and potassium, rather than a lot of nitrogen.  A typical vegetable fertilizer is 10-13-11, or 4-5-5

• Begin by incorporating an organic fertilizer such as alfalfa into the garden bed in late fall when you are putting the beds away for the winter.  Fertilize again in May when they are just starting the transplants.
  
• After you begin to see flower and fruit production, top dress with additional fertilizer to keep them producing.
• I found that adding a weekly liquid soluble fertilizer in a weekly drench was very effective.  I used a kelp/fish emulsion fertilizer mixed with water, and gave each plant 16 oz.  Miracle Gro also has a LiquaFeed Tomato-Fruit-Vegetable (9-4-9) plant food that I mix with kelp micronutrients.
  

 

Pruning:  The lower leaves must not touch the ground.  Leaves close to the ground can transport disease up to the lower parts of the plant, and from there upward.  Removing lower leaves can promote air circulation among the plants, reducing the moisture that facilitates disease growth. The commercial recommendation is to remove all lower leaves up to the first fruit set.  Alternatively, prune leaves from the lower 8-10" of the vine.

Single stem pruning will increase airflow, reduce diseases.  It will tell the plant to focus energy upwards rather than laterally, decreasing the shading of internal leaves. 

Remove all suckers growing out of lateral leaf nodes.  Remove leaves growing in deep shade, that might be growing into the interior of the bed or shaded by nearby plants.  These shaded leaves are susceptible to blight, aren't contributing much energy to the plant, and are restricting air flow.

Harvest:  Harvest early and harvest often.  Don't leave fully ripe tomatoes on the vine.  Pick the fruits when there are still orange areas on a red tomato.  Allowing the tomatoes to go to complete ripeness signals the plant the fruit production was successful and it will slow down flowering.

Blight:  All tomatoes are prone to disease.  A typical tomato planted in April/May will usually develop a debilitating case of "blight" by August and may die if the infestation is too bad.  Properly handled, that same tomato can continue in production through October.

Blight is a fungus.  Those mold spores need moisture to proliferate.  The key is keeping the leaves dry.  This is accomplished in three ways:

1. Water the root zone only, and do not water the leaves.
2. Remove the leaves from the lower 8" to 10" of the mature vine, so that mold spores in the soil do not have easy access to the leaves.
3. Maintain air circulation throughout the plant.  Prune back suckers that inhibit air flow, and train the plant to a single leader that is extended up a pole.  Prune leaves that are growing in shade, interior leaves, leaves crossed by other leaves.
   

 In addition to the planting structure:

Spray regularly with a baking soda solution.  In 1 Gal water, add 2 Tbsp baking soda, 3 Tbsp vegetable oil, 3 drops of dish soap to emulsify.  Shake well.  Apply with a spray bottle.  Once every two weeks.

Planting Calendar

Tomatoes are planted into the garden in May, on or before Memorial Day weekend.  Having said that, it can be useful to stagger your planting so that not all of your plants are at exactly the same stage.  Later transplants are certainly viable, but run into hot temperatures in July and become senescent just about the time they reach full production.

So if May is the pivotal month, our timeline extends in both directions from there.  Tomatoes in my propagator sprout in 10 to 14 days.  They can grow for 2-3 weeks until they are ready to be potted.  They grow out in pots for 1 week and harden off for 1 week with some flexibility built in here.   That gives 6-8 weeks from first seeding to transplant into the garden.    

For my timeline. 

March 15, seed in the propagator

March 28- 30th: sprouts and seedlings will emerge. 

April 1st to 20th: Grow in propagator.

April 21st to 28th:  Transplant into pots under lights, indoors.

April 28- May 6th: Begin hardening off process, setting outside for increasing daylight hours

May 7 -14th:  Transplant into the garden.   

May 15 - 21st:  Grow in garden to overcome transplant shock and get established.

 

May 28 - June 1st:  Stakes established.  Single leader chosen.  Organic fertilizer as a side dressing.  Add compost to hill the main stem.

June 7th:  Spray with baking soda.  Prune suckers from indeterminates. Tie up leader.  These last two, you will do every week.

June 14th:  Liquid fertilizer in the root zones.  Prune and Tie.  Begin harvest.

June 21st:  Prune suckers from indeterminates.  Spray with baking soda.  Prune, Tie, Harvest.

June 28th:  Organic fertilizer as a side dressing.  Prune, Tie, Harvest.

July 1st:  Spray with baking soda.  Prune, Tie, Harvest

 

 

 

Planting onions over Winter

 The thinking is changing on planting onions in the South.  The original thinking in the deep South was that onions are best planted in the Fall and grow slowly over the winter.  But the winter should not become so cold that the plant goes into dormancy, like it can in middle latitudes in Virginia and North Carolina.  The best idea in those locales is to start seeds indoors and transplant when the ground can be worked, typically March 1st.

The key to this process is selecting Short-Day varieties.  (Red Creole, Texas Early, White Bermuda).  These varieties will develop all winter, establishing extensive roots, and beginning to bulb. 

Long-day varieties require 14-16 hours of daylight.  Virginia gets about 14 hours of daylight starting in May and running through August. (The Vernal equinox on March 21 theoretically has 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness)  If you inadvertently plant long-day onions in September, you won't get much bulbing until May and they may be ready to harvest in June.  

You may have to harvest them before they are ready, if the temperatures climb quickly.  The heat may cause them to go to seed even before the bulb develops, and the stalks and leaves will begin to toughen.  If that happens, harvest the rest of the crop and use the white and light green lower parts as if they were green onions.

 Millenial Gardener:

1.  Grow onions from seeds.  (Not Sets).   

Onion sets are started from seed, but then when they reach about 1" they are harvested and dried.  Theoretically, when you plant the bulbs they resume growth.  But often that period of dormancy fools the onion into thinking that they are in their second year, and will proceed directly to flowering without producing any bulb to speak of. 

 2  Use short-day onion seeds.  This is not an area to experiment with. You have to carefully pair your variety to the latitude of where you live.  As usual for the Hampton Roads geography we are on the border of two growing types. Southeastern Virginia is exactly on the line between Short Day and Intermediate Day varieties.  But, because we live in the corner of the growing zone 8B that sticks up into Hampton Roads, we have warm enough temperatures in the winter to successfully start our seeds early.

Find the type that works in your area and always use it.  Yellow Granex.  Red Creole. Red amposta.

3.  Work out the timing of seeding, planting, and harvest.  Yellow Granex matures in 110 - 160 days, so we'll take an average of 140 days. 

Harvest will be in mid-July.  Lets take July 19th as the harvest day.  140 days before this date, will be March 1.  This is when we want to plant our onion transplants into the garden.  From seeding to transplant size is about 6 weeks, so we will start onion seeds indoors after January 15th.

4.  Initially plant with high nitrogen fertilizer.  Then, switch to a balanced fertilizer. You cut back on the nitrogen so that the plant will grow bulbs, not leaves.  The restriction of the nitrogen is critical to a beautiful bulb.

4.  Grow onions in loose and loamy soil.  Not dense or compact.  Mix in 2-3" of compost at the top of soil.  Mulch heavily after planting. 

5.  When you transplant your onions  Fertilize initially with a balanced fertilizer:  5-5-5, 10-10-10.  They should establish in a few days.  Once established, us a high-nitrogen fertilizer like Miracle-Gro to feed them.  When they get ready to bulb, stop the high-nitrogen, and switch to a balanced fertilizer like the 10-10-10.

 

 Onion Seed Schedule

January 15th.  Start onion seeds indoors.  Will need 6 weeks for germination and seedling growth. This will take us to March 1.

March 1st.  Transplant onion seedlings into garden under low tunnels.  Onion plants are hardy to 20 F, so planting out is safe.  Plant seedlings 3" apart.

May 1st.  Thin onions to 6" spacing.  This will give you an early harvest as well as giving the remaining onion bulbs space to grow.  Transplant pepper plants into the same bed to provide shade as the summer gets hotter.

June 1st.  Trim onion leaves to 8".  Spoon onions to give bulb room.  You want the bulbs to be exposed, but not the roots.

July 10th - 20th.  Plan to harvest your onions.  The bulbs won't grow much bigger than this and may start to shrink in preparation for winter.

 

 1870's Homestead

1.  Grow onions from seed and transplant.

2.  Top the onion leaves at 10 - 12 weeks to send growth down to the bulb.  Trim the leaves back to 8".  The trimmings are nutritious and should be used in the kitchen.

3.  Spooning the onions.  Lightly clear the soil away from the tops of the bulbs.  This includes a bit of soil so that the tops of the bulb is exposed.  Give that bulb room to expand. You want the bulb to be exposed, but not the roots.  This allows the bulb to expand unhindered. Thin any onions that are growing too close, so that you have 4" between plants.

4. Onions are heavy feeders.

5. Intercrop with peppers

6.  Shower watering to keep surface roots wet.

7.  Stay on top of weeding, since onions don't shade out the surface of the soil.

 

Onion Harvest:   In Virginia, we harvest alliums from late May through June, but harvest dates vary from year to year according to the weather, and also depend on if a crop is planted in the fall or spring. 

Prior to harvest, the neck region of multipliers weakens and the green tops begin to fall down. Do not water them during this period. When approximately 50% of the tops have fallen, the crop has sufficiently ripened and is ready for harvesting. There is no advantage to breaking over the tops of onions still standing (in fact this may shorten the storage life of certain varieties). Not all the tops fall over at the same time. Harvest the mature onions every few days. Those with tops still standing after 7–10 days should be harvested and kept separate from the rest. Eat them first because they will not keep as well.

 

Perennial Onions are also planted in the fall as bulbs.  This includes Walking onions, which are harvested for their greens, and Multiplier onions and shallots which produce multiple bulbs. 

Plant bulbs from mid October to mid December, with early to mid November being optimal. After sprouting, cover with a 2" layer of mulch to overwinter.

Egyptian Walking Onions can be harvested for their fresh greens and bulbs from fall through spring.  White multipliers are harvested in the spring.

 

Hydroponic Lettuce Farm

 I'm growing lettuce indoors hydroponically as an experiment of actual food production.

Materials:

• 48" LED shop light.  $19 at WalMart
• Electric timer.
  
• 12 32oz mason jars, regular mouth, with rings and lids. $30 at Amazon
• 2" net cups.  Pack of 50.  $10 Amazon
• Rock wool growing cubes
• Grow Big nutrient solution
  
• 2 one-gallon water jugs for mixing nutrient solution
• Paper sleeves to cover the mason jars
• Clear plastic storage container with lid, shoe box size.
• Lettuce seed, Basil seed
  

Week One:

1.  Begin by mixing up a 1/2 gal of nutrient solution at half strength.  Soak 12 rock wool cubes in this weak solution in the plastic storage container, which is now serving as your germination chamber.  When the starter cubes are fully saturated, leave the cubes standing with their feet in the water, just the lower 1/8th inch.  Make sure the solution does not come up higher and flood the seed.

2. Place 1-2 seeds in each cube. The last two cubes will have basil instead of lettuce.  (Keep your unused seeds in a zipper bag in the refrigerator).  Replace the lid of the container to maintain humidity around the seeds.  Lettuce seeds germinate at cooler temperatures so try to place your box in a cooler location out of direct sunlight until the seedlings emerge.  

Germination will take roughly 7 days. Check your germination chamber regularly to make sure there is adequate nutrient solution, so that your seeds and seedlings do not dry out.

Week Two

3.  Once the seedlings emerge, continue to grow them in the storage box until the first true leaves emerge.  This will usually take an additional week, leaving our timeline at 14 days.  During this time continue to add the weakened nutrient solution so that the cubes stay moist, but not flooded.

4.  During this week prepare the materials for the next stage:

• Suspend the 4' LED light over your growing area on its adjustable chain.  Set the electric timer for 18 hours on and 6 hours off.
  
• Arrange 12 mason jars with 12 net cup lids in the growing area
• Mix up additional full strength nutrient solution and fill each jar so that it barely touches the bottom of the net cup.
• Prepare the paper sleeves that will cover the jars and exclude the light, preventing algae from growing in the water below.  Fold the sleeve so that it has four distinct sides as it wraps around the jar.
  
• On each sleeve, Number each of the four sides (Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4)
• On the first side, write the date of transfer from the germination chamber to the jar.
• Then, determine what the date will be 3 months later and write that under the transplant date.  This is the expected productive life of this plant, after which we will need to replace it with a new one.
• The seedlings will remain in the plastic box until you see roots emerge from the cube.
  

Week Three

5. Transfer each young plant from the germination chamber to the net cup in the mason jar.  Pack a little filling material around each rockwool cube so that it fits securely into the net cup. (This could be additional rock wool, or hydroton balls, or glass pebbles or pool noodle bites.)  The tips of the emerging roots should reach into the nutrient solution.

Continue to grow in their new mason jars for an additional week.

Week Four

6.  The lettuce and basil plants are beginning to reach a mature size.  Let them grow an additional week undisturbed.

Week Five

7.  This marks the beginning of the harvest period.  Arrange all the jars so that "Week 1" is facing you.  To harvest, use scissors and snip off one leaf on the side facing you. Start with the bottom and outer-most leaves.  Initially, these first leaves will be on the small side, but the plant will continue to grow as the harvest continues.

Week Six through Eight

8.  At the start of the week, turn all the jars one quarter turn so that "Week 2" is now facing you. Then, harvest a leaf from each jar from this new side.  You will gather 10 or so lettuce leaves and 2 basil leaves for your salad.

Each subsequent week, you will turn the jar and harvest a new side.  This gives each trimmed side 4 weeks to recover and put out new leaves.

Remember that it took 4 weeks to bring a new lettuce plant into production.  We marked the end of production date on each jar.  So 4 weeks before that end date, you will need to get out the germination chamber and start a new set of seeds in rock wool

9. When the time comes, instead of snipping only one leaf, harvest the entire plant and clean out the net cup.  Replace the rock wool with a new transplant from the germination chamber.  Replace the nutrient solution with a fresh batch and update the sleeve with the new dates.

At that point, you will be able to continue the weekly harvest rotation.