THE VERY BEST TOMATOES
Variety. Variety
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, “Home grown tomatoes are NOT the best tasting ones.” Not necessarily, at least.
No, I’m not advocating tossing in your trowel and doing your tomato harvesting into a shopping cart. What I am saying is that choosing the best variety is all important to being able to bite into into the best tasting tomato. Grow an Early Girl tomato to perfection, harvest it at its peak of flavor, then take a bite out of it, and you’ll taste a good tomato. But not — in my opinion — a great tomato.
Heirloom tomatoes on plate
A tomato that has been handled carefully keeps pretty well for a couple of days, so you could actually purchase a great tasting tomato from a store or farm stand. But only if — I’ll say it again — that tomato is a great tasting variety. Read more
EASIER MEADOW PREP
Genesis
In my previous blog post, I described various ways to prepare the ground for a meadow. With that said, I admit to not following any of what I wrote about ground preparation for the meadow here on the farmden. Not that my instructions were wrong. As the old Chinese proverb goes, “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.” Meadows also.
Last week’s meadow prep is geared to the meadow steward who wants to be presented with a riot of color for as long as possible. That view necessitates the killing of existing vegetation and sowing seeds or setting out small plants of desired species.
My own meadow began life under the ownership of my elderly neighbor who, with two riding lawnmowers helmed by her granddaughter Read more
MEADOW BEGINNINGS
Small Meadow Prep
Despite the low maintenance a mature meadow requires, thorough preparation and planning is needed to establish one. Don’t let “meadow in a can” (a container of meadow plant seeds) or some other promise of an instant meadow fool you into believing that just sprinkling seeds or rolling out a seeded, biodegradable carpet on top the ground will result in a carefree riot of season-long color.
Thorough preparation is needed because meadow plants are not set out in neat rows easily weeded by hand or by hoe. Neat rows, after all, would ruin the random charm of a meadow. The goal, therefore, is to create conditions as weed-free as possible before setting out plants or sowing seeds.
The first consideration Read more
