You must me chiving me

One of the herbs I've been growing over the past few years is chives. Back in 2009 I was gifted a pot of a moderately mature plant, with maybe 4-5 small bulbs in the soil. All I would do to it is water periodically and leave it outside during the warmer months. When the cool air of autumn would come around, I'd bring the plant indoors and continue a light watering up through December, then stop. Then in late February/early March, I'd start watering again. The plant would spring back into action almost on cue.

I didn't realize it, but the plant produced more bulbs. This season, it was getting particularly dense growth. Previously I wouldn't harvest all that much from the plant, only picking some chive shoots here and there for soups, potatoes, sauces, and eggs. But I was feeling bad about seeing so many shoots eventually dry up due to age. It seemed like such a waste. At one time I'd harvested a cluster of chives, dried them, and then chopped them up for later use but the taste significantly diminishes when the chives are dried. My usual practice has been to chop off about a half-dozen shoots, stick them in a small ziplock bag, and put them in the refrigerator. But guaranteed, after a week or so they'd turn a pale green and eventually yellow.

Recently, I stumbled upon a tip on-line about freezing chives. I tested it out with a few shoots and was amazed to see how well they hold up, with no diminishing of flavor. So...

I harvested a hearty helping of chives, cut them up, and stuck them in the freezer. I've been enjoying them this way for several weeks and I'm now convinced that this is the way to go. Meanwhile, after harvesting a good 40% of the chive crop, it grew back rather ferociously.  I can see doing this every few weeks during the peak growing season and amassing a terrific amount of chives for use all throughout the year.

My technique for storing them is to first wrap them in wax paper, then place it in a ziplock bag, press all the air out and seal it, then lay it on a flat surface inside the freezer. They thaw out so fast, you'd almost forget they'd come from the freezer.

About harvesting, I've read that it's best to cut chives off at about 1-2" above the base. You never want to pull chives completely out of the ground (where you see a whitish end). I've seen people cut off an entire crop of chive shoots in one fell swoop, and they do grow back. But I prefer to cut off a good portion of the larger chives, leaving a healthy population untouched so that the plant is still receiving a good amount of nutrients from photosynthesis. I think this helps account for the robust re-growth I noticed 2 weeks after I'd made that rather large harvest.

Incidentally, I've read that chives tend to grow about 8-10" long, but I had some that were 16-17" long. Not sure if it's just a characteristic of this variety or if the fertilizer I've been sporadically adding influenced it.

Chives are a terrific herb. You get the benefit of a nice onion flavor to accentuate your food, while not getting the lingering taste/breath that is so well known with onions. Plus, they're easier to handle and store for later use. I braved the task of extracting my chive crop from its pot and separating the bulbs to re-plant. Overall, it went well and I'll post about it later [here].

Well, it finally happened -- "Got BER"?

When I initially planted my tomatoes, I mixed in pulverized eggshells with the soil to provide a nice solid foundation of calcium to feed the plants for their growth into maturity. I figured I might have to supplement a little towards the end of the growing season, but it wasn't foremost in my mind.

Well, the other day I noticed some black spots on the lower sides of a couple tomatoes. It looked like BER (blossom end rot), but it wasn't directly at the bottom. BER has always looked to me like it doesn't compromise the shape of the tomato much, just turns it brown as if soaked in dirty oil. But it can cause a significant depression in the skin, which is what I was seeing.

BER is usually caused by a calcium deficiency, but not necessarily due to a lack of calcium in the potting medium. The common cause is dramatic swings in potting medium moisture, going from dry to soaking wet and back, that impedes the ability for the plant to uptake calcium from the soil. This did happen to my BK... when I'd let it go about 3 days between watering. There appears to be little margin of error with container growing. If your water supply runs dry, the plant starts suffering very shortly thereafter.

Instead of allowing the fruit to continue growing, I picked it since I didn't want any precious nutrients devoted to a failing prospect. Thankfully the two others that have small BER like depressions in their sides have not shown any BER progression.  Hopefully they'll avert that fate.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, the tally went higher. I've had a total of 8 tomatoes that were struck by BER...

Here are some other examples... one looks like BER but the other seems to be more like a lesion (hopefully minor and won't spread):

Peculiar lesion on the side, with segmented pattern

Front one is likely stake rubbing, but tomato behind it has a classic BER side dimple

BTW. today I noticed the BK parent plant has been increasing water intake. We had a major rainfall just two days ago and when I checked the plants yesterday they had decent reservoir water levels. But when I checked this morning, the BK was nearly dry. Several leaf clusters near the top had softened and started drooping and the tallest production stem was bending over. I promptly filled the reservoir in addition to a little watering from the top and within about 15 minutes, the plant showed a significant response. Another 15 mins after that, I noticed the reservoir was down about a quarter! This plant was really thirsty. First time I'd ever seen this.

Meanwhile, I picked another lemon boy and it was interesting to see the stark contrast between freshly picked and counter-top ripened, essentially lemon vs. cadmium yellow.

Sometimes a dormant pollinated flower can spring to life

I'd heard about this from a couple of people, but wasn't quite sure if I'd ever see it--a fertilized blossom stalled for many weeks, that suddenly starts growing fruit.

Earlier in my blog, I showed this photo with the "team of three" flowers on one particular truss, all looking like they had pollinated but nothing else, no tomato growing. Just a shriveled anther cone and stillness:

After a few weeks, I managed to nick off the anther cone of the one on the right. About a week later, all of the sudden it started to shrivel up. I'd never seen this happen before, where all of the sepals simultaneously browned. Usually the stem knuckle goes yellow and the whole thing falls off. But perhaps having been on the truss for so long, the connection was too solid for it to drop. It looks like something straight out of a Tim Burton movie:

Well, a few more weeks after this, and the center flower started growing a tomato! This is more than 6 weeks of having just sat there, doing nothing:

Pretty remarkable, isn't it? I've counted one other tomato on this plant that also sprang back to life after being dormant for more than 4 weeks. It's an interesting thing to witness and it definitely suggests that you should never pluck off any blossoms that are just hanging around with dried anther cones and healthy sepals. They could end up growing into tomatoes at some point when the plant has the resources to spark them into action.

The Mutants Have Arrived

Really weird looking, eh?  I'm not quite sure what to make of them.  These are on the Black Krim parent plant. These are the exception, thankfully. But I've also noticed a couple of similar shaped tomatoes (although not as extreme) on the Lemon Boy. I wonder if there's some peculiar aberration with the pollination going on.

At least they're not growing any eyes in those sockets, like this:

I have one peculiar looking tomato like this on the Black Krim seedling, but it looks like the others are mostly normal. Incidentally, that seedling (now BK#2 plant) is going gang busters with fruits. Amazing what a difference my chances made (potting mix instead of top soil, plenty of fertilizer up front, and a modified SWC for better wick action through the mix).

There's currently 12 fruits going on this seedling, although a couple look a bit mutant like. Also, the bottom ends on a few have black spots which... I'm hoping does not turn into BER (blossom end rot).


Speaking of BER, the parent Black Krim plant is suffering from it on two tomatoes. The typical culprit is calcium depletion, so I've added my pulverized eggshells to my watering regimen in hopes of curing it. Otherwise, this plant has now reached over 6' tall (including the pot), with some fruits above eye level.  Pretty wild. I never expected it would grow this tall in that puny 6 gallon container.

I've counted 19 fruits in various stages of growth on the parent plant... as though it were trying to make up for lost time. I'm kicking myself for not fertilizing enough earlier on... but that's "water under the bridge". Unfortunately a few are exhibiting some unwanted characteristics like black speckles and some deeper spotting that is reminiscent of BER... although not specifically focused on the center of the bottom (as is typical with BER). I'm hoping the natural calcium infusion will resolve this affliction and that it will remain isolated to just a couple of fruits.

Like the economy, production is increasing!

If you've been reading my blog, you already know that I'd had a tough time with the Black Krim tomato plant I've been growing this season. The plant is generally fine and healthy, but fruit production has been next to nothing. I planted it back in late May and thus far, I've picked only ONE tomato from the plant. Well, the good news is that I've got 5 more tomatoes growing on it. And I've still got several flowers that may have fertilized but were stopped before committing to full tomato growth, possibly due to insufficient fertilizing of the soil.

What I've been doing now is applying Jobe's Tomato Vegetable and Food fertilizer every other watering, and then adding a high nitrogen rich fertilizer combined with Epsom salts on the alternate watering. We've been getting some pretty strong rainy days here and there which is the "regular" watering, that probably flushes out fertilizer. Container growing is definitely a different type of gardening and you have to rethink your ways, as nutrients do not stay in the soil as well as with in-ground soil. So... I may actually get a few decent tomatoes for the tail end of the season.

The Black Krim has now topped out at over 5' tall.  This is a BIG plant, for container growing. Unfortunately, that cluster of two tomatoes you see above is at the top end, so I definitely don't want to trim those off in trying to contain the height. But I will probably snip above it.  The only issue is that flowers are much more abundant at the top, rather than below. I wonder if cutting them prematurely will incite the plant to try growing them further down the plant.

The Black Krim seedling is doing fine and finally has its first tomato. It's a little peculiar looking with a slight misshapen appearance, but hopefully it'll grow out of that and look mostly normal. There is an abundance of flowers for its size and I'm trying to get them pollinated. I've let one sucker grow into a secondary production stem, and I might leave it to just 2-3 of them.

The Lemon Boy had a slight problem at one point, where the reservoir ran dry and then I thoroughly watered it after that (watering from above to moisten the soil and also filling the reservoir). As a result, some cracking appeared on a couple of fruits. The cracks healed and didn't look too bad when the tomatoes were small, but now that they've enlarged the cracks look more pronounced. At least they won't affect the taste!

Otherwise, it has a nice population of tomatoes continuing to grow that I expect will have a couple ready for picking in about another week or two. I did find one tomato that started turning color while being very small in size (comparable to a golf ball), which was tomato #4. I suspect the lack of fertilizing stunted the growth, or it was just random chance.

The stalled proto-tomato waited for the right time to grow

 As you can see above, this mature cluster has one tiny tomato nestled in the bunch. This was a flower that I thought was going to be aborted. However, it kept hanging on, the sepals staying mostly green and healthy. Since they are all connected to the same truss, I suspect the priority of nutrients were going to the other fruits. Once they achieved a size near maximum, the little runt finally got its due of nutrients and began to grow. It's definitely going to be lonely in a few weeks after the others are reaped.  ;-)

When Lemon Tomatoes Are Smilin'

The Nitrogen Warnings -- too much or not enough

One of the things I'd read about in my early days of tomato self-education via wandering around the halls of the Internet was the dreaded "too much nitrogen" syndrome.  It seemed more often than not, people would struggle with too much nitrogen in the potting mix, which is a common cause for lack of fruit production. In fact, too much nitrogen will cause blossom drop.

When I'd started out, the only fertilizer I had on hand was some by Miracle-Gro for orchid plants. I ended up not using it for my orchids, because it contains nitrogen from ammonia. That's apparently a "cheap" way to get nitrogen to a plant, but for orchids it's a touchy kind of thing. It can end up making a plant's condition worse.  So I had this fertilizer and started applying it to my tomato plants early on. But then blossom drop happened not long after and I attributed it to too much nitrogen.  What I failed to realize is that blossom drop can happen dude to too little nitrogen. A lack of nitrogen will cause stunted tomato growth as well. Not having grown tomato plants before, I didn't realize that the growth I'd been experiencing was below average.

By the end of the first week of August, the Black Krim has reached the top of the 6' bamboo supports. That's pretty decent growing for height. But looking over the foliage, a good bit of it curled and some of it rolled, and I have to conclude that I'm looking at a nitrogen deficient plant.  I'm going to try increasing nitrogen infused with the watering and see if that helps any. It might encourage a few more flowers to set and perhaps I'll get at least a few more tomatoes before the season is over. The good thing is that on the upper 1/4 of the plant there are two pea sized tomatoes that are growing, which means I'll have a minimum of 6 tomatoes from this plant by the end of the season. That's not too bad considering what went wrong in the beginning.

Black Krim -- 6' tall

There are a number of flowers that have set but then stopped growing. Inside the dried up anther cones are proto-tomatoes that will either end up aborted or try to resume growing into fruits. I pulled one of the anther cones out of curiosity to see what was doing inside. And then about 5 days later, the whole thing shriveled up... didn't even fall off, it's on so tight. Looks like something straight out of a Tim Burton animated movie.

The Black Krim seedling is doing just fine. It outgrew its first support post. I put in a 6' plastic coated steel rod, which will provide ample support for the rest of the growing season, later supplemented with bamboo supports around the perimeter. There are 6 flowers going in various stages. I buzzed the ones in full bloom with an electric toothbrush to help encourage pollination. Hopefully it'll have done the trick. There's a fine coating of pollen on the toothbrush tip, so it definitely got dislodged.  ;-)

Black Krim seedling -- taking off in high spirits

There's no doubt that this seedling is growing much more aggressively than the parent did when it started out. It's satisfying to know that I've done at least a few things right. Hopefully I can keep it going.  :-)

August... the final stretch

August is the major month of reaping for tomatoes. While some late maturing varieties will roll on over into September before yielding first fruit, most varieties will have exhausted their load by the end of the month.

DTM or "Days To Maturity" is something you'll see commonly mentioned with tomato varieties and it is an estimate on how long it will take to go from a newly transplanted seedling to producing fully ripened fruit. The time from set flower to ripened fruit is probably a little shorter with a mature plant.

Black Krim DTM is approximately 75 days. I actually got my first tomato in about 65 days, but if you've been following my blog you'll know that I went a good 3 weeks before seeing any signs of other fruit set. Presently there are two definite tomatoes in progress, but only two others at a fragile stalled early stage that is still uncertain of future growth. There are many other blossoms that look like they might have been pollinated with thick stems and sepal elongation, but the anther cone remains stuck fast and there's no signs yet of swelling fruit growing within. If they don't mature, I could very well end up with having only *3* tomatoes from this plant for the whole blasted season. No blight. No pests. Just... failure.

We just had another big rain and unfortunately I'd let the Lemon Boy's reservoir run dry (I've been filling it daily whenever possible), so two fruits ended up with concentric ring cracking. Nothing too serious, though. After a day the cracks healed. But it may mean the fruits will be a little watery in taste. They're also still rather young, so I hope this doesn't mean they'll be stunted in size.

Lemon Boy -- Concentric Ring Crack

The Black Krim seedling I'd started from a rooted sucker is growing like gangbusters.  It seems like it's growing an inch in two days, comparing one day to the next.  Here's an example:

Black Krim -- July 29th

Black Krim -- August 3rd

There are blossoms already that I'm hoping will fertilize. It's quite possible that with the alternative potting medium and organic fertilizer, it may end up producing more than its parent. I may get lucky and have some fruit ready by the end of September and a continuing stream of them until late October early November (if I bring it indoors). But the late season brings other challenges to it, namely lower overnight temperatures and more dynamic weather conditions. Growing this seedling is really more of an experiment than anything else--any fruit produced will just be a side benefit.