*~May Food Growing Mamas Thread~*

[FarmerCathy]

I am finally back, but in my 8th week of pregnancy and so tired all the time I don't stay up very late and still pretty darn busy. I will try to be here. Though getting ready to move to the East coast so I may not be around too much again for a little while. It's just crazy. Hopefully it will settle down by the end of the year and I will have my own garden again. Getting the garden next door going, but not my own. I will be gardening I'm sure in my in-laws garden while were staying there until we find a place to live. So, moving to NC. I want to stay in one place for a long long time and garden to my hearts content.

[lmonter]

Subbing.


ETA, how fitting that this is post #6K of mine...

[HeatherAtHome]

Here's a food growing question:

If I want to have 45 jars of spaghetti sauce (we eat a lot of pasta!) plus 20 smaller jars of salsa (I'm thinking of jar sizes from grocery store) and some to eat right away, how many tomato plants should I plant?

Varieties include: Bonny Best, Yellow Pear (indeterminate), Tiny Tim, Beefsteak, Roma (determinate).

I know it's so hard to tell, but a ballpark figure would be great?

[lightheart]

From my 1977 "Growing Your Own Vegetables" USDA book

Tomatoes ave. crop expected per 100 ft 100lbs.

in another chart in the same book they tell how many plants to plant per 100 ft, for tomatoes, 50 plants or 1/8 oz. of seed.

The government was pushing for container/square foot gardening even back then..., "For those who must grow their vegetables in small spaces this chart gives the aproxomite number of plants a square foot of container space will accommodate."
in that chart, tomato (regular) 1 plant per square foot , train on trellis. tomato (dwarf) 2 plants per square foot.

In another part of the book it says 'per plant yields for the various crops will vary greatly depending on the variety, the growing season, the area of the counrty, the cultural practices you follow. However, it is reasonable to expect tomatoes to yiels 10-14 lbs. per plant...."

"Joy of Cooking" says 2.5-3.5 pounds of tomatoes per quart canned. Look at your recipe to get more exact amounts since you will be doing salsa and pasta sauce.

1qt = 3 pounds
10 lbs per plant = 3+ qts
45 qts divided by 3 = 15 plants

1 pt = 1.5 pounds
10 lbs per plant = 6+ pts
20 pts divided by 6 = 3+ plants

my guess, at least 18, maybe 20 plants for canning - if you do get 10# per plant, and use 3 pounds per each qt you can.

then your fresh ones... how many tomatoes do you think you want? 10 pounds per person? 20? how many people in your house?

[HeatherAtHome]

Omg thank you! You know when something is so completely over your head that you're amazed that there's actually a way of figuring it out? That just happened.

It looks like we're right on track! I have about 24 tomato plants still alive (I thought they would all die but they look much better today) and another 15 getting started (because I thought the others would die). I plan on sharing extra with family and friends.

[dannic]

I've been wondering about that too. I think I'm going to try my hand at spaghetti sauce, salsa, sauce and sundried tomatoes. I've got thirty plants, so we'll see...

[lunarlady]

I usually do about 50 plants, and end up with around 25-30 quart jars of sauce, 20 pint jars of salsa, and 15 pint jars of red enchalladia sauce. I would have more but we love fresh tomatos and I think I eat them every day all summer long. And I roast the tomatos for my sauce and my salsa, which reduces their volume quite a bit.

Remember that more meaty tomatos will give you better canning yeild, (your beefsteak and romas) while the freash eating tomatos (bonny best, yellow pear) will cook down quite a bit. So how many plants you need will vary based on the variety.

And for what it is worth, I also don't get the best yeild from my plants because I do a rather lazy organic garden, so my plants arn't pruned, clipped, pinched, or otherwise encoraged to do their best, and I do lose part of my crop to insects, forgetting to harvest, and animals.

[KristyDi]

Well my garden has more than doubled in size since last month. I'm so excited that I can't stop adding things.

This is my first year doing more than dabbling in growing. In the past I've had 2 or 3 tomatoes and a pepper plant or 2 all in containers. Since that's what I'm familiar with I'm doing a square foot garden.

This year I have
8 Rutgers tomatoes (they're supposed to ripen a lot of fruit at once making them good for canning)
2 jalapeno peppers
1 bell pepper
1 Anaheim Chili
1 Gypsy Pepper
4 strawberries
a blueberry bush (self-pollinating)
transplanted raspberry canes
1 hill pie pumpkin
1 hill carving pumpkin
Mint
Italian Parsley
Basil
Garlic Chives
Thyme
Cilantro

Here's a pic so far.

Tomorrow I'm building another bed the same width as the one with the tomatoes, but about a foot longer. It will have 9 sweet potatoes and the 3 remaining squares will be for carrots.

I may have lost my mind here.

Of course after reading the pp about how many plants for canning tomatoes I'm thinking I should have more tomatoes. Somebody stop me.

[FarmerCathy]

Originally Posted by KristyDi

Well my garden has more than doubled in size since last month. I'm so excited that I can't stop adding things.

This is my first year doing more than dabbling in growing. In the past I've had 2 or 3 tomatoes and a pepper plant or 2 all in containers. Since that's what I'm familiar with I'm doing a square foot garden.

This year I have
8 Rutgers tomatoes (they're supposed to ripen a lot of fruit at once making them good for canning)
2 jalapeno peppers
1 bell pepper
1 Anaheim Chili
1 Gypsy Pepper
4 strawberries
a blueberry bush (self-pollinating)
transplanted raspberry canes
1 hill pie pumpkin
1 hill carving pumpkin
Mint
Italian Parsley
Basil
Garlic Chives
Thyme
Cilantro

Here's a pic so far.

Tomorrow I'm building another bed the same width as the one with the tomatoes, but about a foot longer. It will have 9 sweet potatoes and the 3 remaining squares will be for carrots.

I may have lost my mind here.

Of course after reading the pp about how many plants for canning tomatoes I'm thinking I should have more tomatoes. Somebody stop me.

Love the pictures of your garden. I wish I was planting already. Seems we are so far behind next door and here. Too much going on.

[Alyantavid]

I'm jealous of all the planting going on! It's still too cold here and we've spent the last 2 weeks under a wind advisory so there's nothing going on in my garden yet.

DS2 has a sunflower plant and I have some cilantro sitting in the window, but so far, that's it. I can't wait to get my garden going.

[lunarlady]

Originally Posted by KristyDi

This year I have
8 Rutgers tomatoes (they're supposed to ripen a lot of fruit at once making them good for canning)
2 jalapeno peppers
1 bell pepper
1 Anaheim Chili
1 Gypsy Pepper
4 strawberries
a blueberry bush (self-pollinating)
transplanted raspberry canes
1 hill pie pumpkin
1 hill carving pumpkin
Mint
Italian Parsley
Basil
Garlic Chives
Thyme
Cilantro

I can't access your picture, but I hope you put that Mint in a pot...it can and will take over if left to its own devices! Don't worry if you start small. I think my first year I only canned 4 quarts of pasta sauce. I just always want more.

[KristyDi]

Originally Posted by lunarlady

I can't access your picture, but I hope you put that Mint in a pot...it can and will take over if left to its own devices! Don't worry if you start small. I think my first year I only canned 4 quarts of pasta sauce. I just always want more.

Yup the mint, thyme, and parsley are in pots and the basil and cilantro are in the holes of the cinder blocks that make up one of my raised beds.

Though since I heard that mint takes over I've kind of wanted to plant it in my weed filled backyard in hopes that it will take over a bit and make my dogs smell good and smell awesome when it gets mowed. Is that weird?

[lunarlady]

Originally Posted by KristyDi

Though since I heard that mint takes over I've kind of wanted to plant it in my weed filled backyard in hopes that it will take over a bit and make my dogs smell good and smell awesome when it gets mowed. Is that weird?

Nope. Our last house had the whole side yard taken over with mint. The dog would run around in it and then come inside smelling lovely. Kills the grass, however. My DH didn't mind not having to mow, and when it flowered it was actually quite lovely. It was slowly gaining ground, and I imagine at this point the people who bought that house are wondering about ripping it out.

[ms.shell]

i have also read that mint repels ants....i have often wondered about letting it grow to replace a section of yard. i planted my chocolate mint right in the ground in my strawberry patch to let it grow like a weed between them, instead of other weeds. so far we have been happy with this....it definitely has spread and is happy and the strawberries seem not to mind at all.

well, we are coming into tomato time. we have been eating yellow cherries as they ripen in the garden, just a couple a day so far, and the first goliath i noticed this morning is finally beginning to turn from green. there are loads of green ones on just about every plant, probably 100 on the bonnie grape and i noticed today we have the beginnings of yellow pears....these were planted later than the rest of the tomatoes. there are also peppers on a lot of different pepper plants.
my onions are about to flower already. They grew really long bulbs but last i checked haven't gotten very fat and round. i am hoping they do that at the last minute; otherwise i might have done something wrong. I have used some of these long skinny red onions already, and they taste fine and sweet, but they are not rounded at all. i planted them in october and i guess i should have fertilized them over winter, which i neglected to do. i made myself stop pulling them for dinner probably 3 or 4 weeks ago, though, so i am hoping to be surprised with fat round onions when it is time to harvest them (which is after they flower and start to turn brown, right?)

[lightheart]

tomatoes!!!! yum!!!! Our snow peas are just starting to bloom!!!!!

[ShwarmaQueen]

Lots of blooming gong on here! Romas, Campbells 1327, and Early girls. My green bell peppers are blooming and soon I'll have cucumbers.

On a sad note, I think I may have killed my eggplants. All the leaves were holey, like lace, so I googled it and it seems like a simple soap would solve the problem. I made a weak solution of Palmolive and squirted it on the leaves and now the leaves are brown and shriveled but hoping that they survive!!

[lightheart]

Holes on your eggplants probably means flea beetles, for those who have eggplant plants that aren't infected yet with those little buggers or are just starting to get holey... try a row cover, something like a light weight frost cloth to keep the bugs off them, use dry wood ashes on them, sprinkle/dust the plants with the ashes, reapply when it rains or you water and it washes off.

I was told the other day that another method was to 'sacrifice' one of your plants, knick the stem, weaken the plant - the bugs would attack that one and be less likely to get the other ones.

For the PP, if your willing to go buy new plants and have enough of the growing season left for them to produce, leave the weak ones and add a few more to your garden.

[lightheart]

We ate fresh from the garden broccoli tonight, forgot how GREEN good broccoli is!

[FarmerCathy]

Originally Posted by lightheart

We ate fresh from the garden broccoli tonight, forgot how GREEN good broccoli is!

Awesome!

[FarmerCathy]

I just wanted to remind everyone there is a seed swap thread under resources at the top of the DITE forum. Just in case some of you don't know about it.