open heart farm: Seeds are coming in

As with most years I start ordering seeds with the new year, which seems appropriate. Well, they are already coming in, probably mostly in by the end of the week, which means the next step will be organizing them. (Reminds me of another thing I like about farming, one step seems to so naturally lead you to the next. You take care of a plant for a while, then you harvest from said plant for awhile. It's probably just as natural in other jobs but I couldn't always figure it out). After that I will get on to making this years brochure . . . before you know it greenhouses.

But to savor the moment a little, there are some seeds I am excited about this year. Mostly tomatoes. Because I have access to hoophouses this year I was able to bring back a few I had given up on. Pinapple, above, is one of those striped ones that I love but are just too darn big and cracky to get reliably in the field. Most of these striped ones (like gold medal) are pretty sweet but large enough to have some nice complex tomato flavors as well. Dad's Sunset was just too nice looking and such a great name couldn't pass it up. I have one other orange tomato, Valencia, that is pretty, but I've never been one hunred percent satisfied with it's flavor. Other tomatoes I'm bringing back for a run in the hoophouses are Cherokee Purple, which in the field always had a week or two of nice early ones but then were worthless, and Brandywine, which I was truly contemplating giving up before I secured our land at South Village (where our hoophouses are and a chunk of higher ground, the need for which, see earlier posts). Brandywines really are as awesome as their reputation but I was getting two usable tomatoes a plant, maybe. Even for field tomatoes I am going back to my old regime of using Serenade for a few weeks in the beginning, probably up until the time they set fruit. It is an organic spray that I think can add about two or three weeks of life to the plants, and when you are talking tomatoes every week is worth it. They're here and then they're gone.