Category Archives: Grafted Plants

Tomato Time At Last

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Midnight Snack tomatoes have little secrete stars The First Tomato Is Just So Delicious After the cold, windy spring, summer got off to a very slow start. In fact, there were a number of false starts before actually summery weather … Continue reading

Posted in Grafted Plants, Health & Wellbeing, Plant Partnerships, Pollination Gardens, Pollinators, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living, Tomatoes | Tagged , | 10 Comments

When Basil Blooms Too Soon

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Pinching out blossoms makes basil bushy New Basils That Take Their Time As summer arrives—or doesn’t—I gotta say that I sometimes envy gardeners in Oregon and California. There, summer is a real presence, with warm days and sultry nights that … Continue reading

Posted in Care & Feeding, Grafted Plants, Health & Wellbeing, Planting & Transplanting, preserving food, Recipes, Soil, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living, Vegan Recipes | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Singing With the Bees

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As I thinned the vigorous stems, I found tomatoes ripening on every plant. As always, I interplanted annuals and a few perennials with my edibles and am happy to see them alive with bees and other pollinators. While tomatoes are self-fertile and pollinated mainly by wind or vibration, it turns out that fruit set is greatly increased by the presence of certain bees, who vibrate their wings to the tone of middle C. In this case, the beneficial bees are not European honeybees but native bumbles and mud bees as well as various other native pollinators. To encourage the bees, I’m planting lots of annuals, and to encourage great tomato set, I’m humming favorite songs. Fortunately, the key of C is nearly universal; you can sing almost anything in C, as lots of folk songs demonstrate. Can’t sing? Use a middle C tuning fork to help tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and blueberries shed way more pollen by vibration, aka buzz pollination. Isn’t that so amazingly marvelous? Continue reading

Posted in Annual Color, Care & Feeding, Early Crops, Grafted Plants, Pollinators, Recipes, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living, Tomatoes | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pampering Your Tomatoes

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Offer Protection On Chilly Nights Nurseries are full of tempting tomato plants right now, including fabulous varieties that are all but irresistible. It’s wise to buy these beauties when you find them, as pickings can get thin as the season … Continue reading

Posted in Garden Prep, Grafted Plants, Nutrition, Planting & Transplanting, Sustainable Gardening, Sustainable Living, Tomatoes | Tagged , , | 5 Comments