Homegrown Tomatoes by Guy Clark

There's just not enough time in the day!

Since I wrote last everything has really been moving on the farm. The greenhouse is nearly completely planted with 22 varieties of peppers, 14 varieties of tomatoes, 2 varieties of eggplant, and red cabbage. The peppers nearly all sprouted and the tomatoes are just beginning to germinate. The eggplant are almost ready to be transplanted into larger pots. I started some spinach, lettuce, radishes and green onions about 10 days ago in a cold frame and everything is sprouted. We have about half of the gardens fertilized and about 10 percent of them tilled. Field work has begun. We plowed up 10 acres of hay ground and have started discing cornstalks that we didn't get too last fall. We've pulled the planter out to check it over and so far not a lot to fix on it this year as opposed to last year.
About three weeks ago we bought 30 baby chicks. This is my first time ever raising chickens and I'm happy to say 28 are still alive! I really thought they'd be like goldfish and half would die by the time I got them home. They should be ready in about three more weeks to be dressed.
Other news around the farm, it took me three full days but I finished building a play set for the boys, it's been raining for four days here which doesn't help the roads or the fields around here. Between last fall and this spring we hauled about 27 tons of rock onto our driveway and it still is like a sponge in spots.

Getting the Itch!

Even though it still is cold out, the sun is shining, the days are getting longer, and you can just feel spring is just around the corner. I've been busy planning this year's gardens and ordering all the seed. This year I am ordering from 4 different seed companies mainly for values they offer, but also some of the companies offer different varieties then the others. This year's lucky 4 are Willhite Seed Co., Jung Seed Co., Totally Tomatoes, and Harris Seed Co.I buy alot of my bulk seed from Willhite and Harris because of their value on bulk pricing. Jung's and Totally Tomatoes are essentially the same company, but both offer a wide range of products different from each other. I usually buy all of my tomato and pepper seeds from Totally Tomatoes. That would be 11 different varieties of tomatoes and 23 varieties of peppers. I can't wait! This past week I also started planting Italian Basil in flats. I hope to get some lettuce planted in flats today. If all goes well I should have some fresh lettuce and basil plants to offer at our winter market in a few weeks.

The snow is flying

As I sit here in my warm living room thinking of all the things I need to get accomplished, I look outside and notice the snow is starting to come down. We pretty much had all the snow melted away last week when another storm came through Sunday night. It didn't bring a lot of snow but the winds topped 40mph which created blizzard conditions. The wind left behind several large drifts in our driveway and unfortunately our bucket for our loader tractor has been sent off to be rebuilt. If the snow doesn't last very long today I need to make it into the grain elevator in town. My neighbor bought two corn stoves this summer and now needs more corn to heat them. Our truck auger is froze up and stuck in a snow bank so we will have to leave the corn on a wagon for now and cover it with a tarp until it warms up a little and we can thaw out the auger.

Trying Something New

Several of us vendors from the Thursday market in Tipton, Iowa decided to try something different this winter. We had plenty of produce left over after our regular season ended in October, so we thought we'd bring the market inside. October was a miserable month with rain six Thursdays in a row. We were glad to move indoors. Although business is much slower during the winter months, I'm glad I did this because it enables me to remain in contact with some of our customers throughout the winter months and gives us a chance to get together once a week still and actually visit (something we couldn't do during the regular season because we're usually to busy to talk to each other).

Time is Really Flying!

Boy does time go by fast! It's been three weeks since I wrote last and so much has happened since.The 175 pepper plants were lost due to wind and frost the weekend after they were planted. I replanted 225 more plants. I won't have the same varieties as I did before but still a wide variety of both sweet and hot peppers. Also planted were about 50 eggplant plants, kohlrabi, cabbage, pumpkins, gourds, zucchini, butternut squash, summer squash, scallop squash, cucumbers, broccoli, cantalope, and watermelons. My big garden is completely planted and my smaller garden only has tomatoes left to be planted. The soybeans are completely finished and emerged and all the equipment is cleaned up and put away. If the weather ever straightens up long enough we would like to make our first cutting of hay.

Life is Hectic!

As I sit inside and watch the rain pound down outside, I find it hard not to reflect on how hectic life has been since I wrote last. We've finished all our corn planting, prepared fields for planting beans and planted about half of our bean acres. The garden has also seen many changes including planting more turnips and beets. Keeping up with weeding the onions has proven to be a chore. The Indian corn was planted last week and is already starting to sprout. I also finished planting the green beans, yellow beans, and purple beans last week. There was over three pounds of bean seed so hopefully that will be enough to keep up with demand this summer. Monday I transplanted the okra plants into the garden. Yesterday I finally finished planting the red potatoes and transplanted 175 pepper plants. Most of them were sweet peppers including Big Bertha, Giant Marconi, Lilac, Satsuma, Super Heavyweight, and Goliath. I also planted Volcano hot peppers and Serrano del Sol hot peppers. When the straightens out I hope to finish planting the hot peppers.