Three New Items and a quick garden update

26 Straw bales - these, and some grow bags and containers will be the 2022 garden

First news item - The Joe Lamp’l (joegardener)/Craig LeHoullier (me! nctomatoman) collaborative, self paced, all video course, Growing Epic Tomatoes, has been reopened throughout the month of April for new students. Just click this link to register.

Second - Patrina (my Dwarf Tomato Project co-lead and co-creator) and I will be presenting on our project via Zoom in an event hosted by the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) on April 13 at 7 PM Eastern. All who are interested can join - the Zoom link for you to attend is here.

Finally, I’ve decided it is a good time to restart my regular (weekly, unless indicated otherwise, typically a conflict on my end) Instagram Live sessions - 30-45 minutes of me discussing whatever is going on in my garden, including plenty of time for your questions. These will begin on Thursday April 14, at 3 PM Eastern. If all goes well, I should be able to do a video demo of spotting dwarf tomato plants in the F2 generation of an indeterminate X dwarf cross.

As far as what’s happening in the garden: All of the straw bales (26 of them) have been purchased and situated in my yard, and treatment has started. By April 15, all will be ready for planting. I will probably go for direct seeding of squash, cukes and beans around that date, and wait until May 1 for planting tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Updates on all of this will be part of my weekly IG live sessions.

All of my seedlings are up, and I’ve started to transplant into individual pots. Aside from tomatoes, peppers and eggplants, I have spinach, lettuce (several types), petunia, zinnia, snapdragon, lunaria, basil (several types), and salvia in various stages of growth. For the most part, seedlings are hardened off and spending most of the time outdoors, being brought in only when frost is likely.

There is no formal seedlings sale this year in the Hendersonville area. I do overplant, and there will be some extras for folks that are interested, but the variety list is far smaller than prior years. Plants will be available for a donation of the plant recipients’ choosing. Availability will be late April to mid May. In future blogs, I will outline exactly what will be in my garden. Any folks living near me who are interested can drop me an email - nctomatoman@gmail.com - and I will send further seedling details. Those in the Raleigh area have two good seedling options, listed in my March 26 blog entry.

That’s it for now - keep reading my Off The Vine and my Seed Collection blogs. The next in each series will post soon.

The rare and beautiful Oconee Bells, spotted during an April 4 walk in the WNC Arboretum, Carolina Mountains trail.

It feels like spring - and it is starting to look like it too. 2022 garden update!

We didn’t plant these (thanks to the birds or squirrels!) - but we are certainly enjoying them!

All of a sudden I am incredibly busy - blogging much more frequently (I hope you are enjoying the trip through my seed collection, and the republishing of Off the Vine!), weekly office hours (live Zoom) for the Growing Epic Tomatoes course with Joe Lamp’l, answering a lot of emails, starting seeds, mowing the lawn, cleaning up the garden, writing some articles, and preparing for some Zoom garden workshops. We are also finding time to hike in Pisgah or DuPont 3 times a week with our dogs.

I’ve gotten an idea of what will be in my garden, based on germination results. Most will be in straw bales, some in grow bags.

The tomato flat a few days ago

Eggplants - Mardi Gras, Skinny Twilight, Twilight Lightning, Midnight Lightning, Green Ghost

Peppers - Pinata, White Gold, Royal Purple, Carolina Amethyst, Fire Opal, Chocolate Bell, and hopefully (because they were just seeded - no germination data yet), Shishito and Padron.

Tomatoes - Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Green, Cherokee Chocolate, Lucky Cross, Polish, Captain Lucky, Estler’s Mortgage Lifter, three new family heirlooms sent to me, a new dwarf X indeterminate hybrid - Glory (Dester X Dwarf Gloria’s Treat), some mysteries that are F2 generation from a few of the hybrids I created a few years ago, Coastal Pride, Irma’s Highland Cherry (a new chocolate colored dwarf out of Teensy that we hope is ready for release), and various other experiments and mysteries.

There will be squash and beans and sugar snap peas and some spinach and chard and lettuce, perhaps cucumbers (though they really do struggle with disease here), basils and flowers. The weather looks quite iffy over the coming weeks, with one really deep freeze possible. We hope that it doesn’t bite the buds on the flowering shrubs and trees, something that occurred last spring.

I won’t be selling seedlings this year, but sharing a few extras locally. I won’t be shipping plants any longer. I’ve completed fulfilling seed requests. What comes next is purchasing and prepping the straw bales. My target plant out date is around May 1, depending upon the night time temperatures. I expect to be doing transplanting - separating and bumping up seedlings into separate containers - in early April.

For those events that are open more broadly, I will post links here, and on Instagram (I am @nctomatoman there). I will be on the WPTF (Raleigh, NC) weekend gardener on April 16, as well as Niki Jabbour’s Weekend Gardener radio show out of Nova Scotia, Canada on May 8. You will be able to listen live to each - watch for more news as the dates approach.

Double spirea just popped into bloom yesterday

So much happening - and poised to happen! Growing Epic Tomatoes - New York Times article - peppers and eggplant seeds in the flats!

Let the 2022 garden begin! Peppers, eggplants, some flowers seeded on Feb 18

Oh well, things were (relatively) slow for the last month and a half….aside from fulfilling a load of seed requests, being really active on my blog, cataloging seeds from my dwarf tomato project participants, doing some great Zooms with various garden groups.

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All of that was nothing compared with what lies just ahead. It is time to relaunch Growing Epic Tomatoes, the collaborative course between Joe Lamp’l and me that was such a wonderful experience last year. It will be different this time in that the entire 10 module course is complete! Last year our students had to adjust their pace to the real time progress of the course. This year, it will be all there, ready to be accessed at the pace of each student no matter where they are in their growing season. The Friday Office Hours will proceed as they did last year - weekly opportunities for the students to ask Joe and I their questions - live.

The key dates for the informational course webinars - free opportunities for prospective students to learn everything about the upcoming course and a chance to ask us questions - are as follows:

First - the course is now open for early enrollment at a reduced price - click this link (it is also on my website banner).

The webinar that explains the course - Five Keys to Growing Your Own Epic Tomatoes - is scheduled three times, to provide options for your convenience:

• Wednesday, February 23 at 3 PM EST

• Thursday, February 24 at 3 PM EST

• Friday, February 25 at 10 AM EST

You can choose which of these you wish to attend by signing up at this link.

Creating this course was an immense amount of fun. The feedback from our first year students has been overwhelmingly positive. Join one of the webinars and find out all about the course. I can confidently say that Growing Epic Tomatoes is the perfect way to make my book, Epic Tomatoes, come alive, strengthened by all of Joe’s gardening experiences that we’ve found blend so well together with my own. Though I am still so pleased with Epic Tomatoes and its information, it was written in 2012-2013 - I’ve learned so much more in the 9 years since publication, and all of that new knowledge is incorporated into the course.

A few uniquely wonderful features about this course:

• It is composed entirely of self-paced video modules, so students can watch us discuss the topics.

• It is entirely self-paced - each student can progress as their own season progresses.

• Course additions, bonus modules, and enhancements occur throughout the season, accessible to all students, including last year’s class.

• The weekly live Office Hours are also for all GET students, new and first year (and for all future) - there will be life time access to Joe and I to answer gardening questions throughout the season.

• All students have access to a community on the Circle platform, providing yet another way to pose questions, post pictures, and have meaningful interchange with Joe and I. I spend a lot of time in that community daily, ensuring all questions are answered - as well as providing updates from my own garden. It is free - it is NOT Facebook - and there are no ads or sales pitches.

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Speaking of Joe Lamp’l, our mutual good friend and fellow talented gardener, author and educator Margaret Roach (A Way to Garden) interviewed Joe and I about starting tomato seeds. The article is in the New York Times, and can be found here. Thanks, Margaret - the article is just lovely.

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Finally - the 2022 garden is officially begun with the planting of a selection of pepper, eggplant and flower seeds, shown in the top picture. This is a significant reduction of filled cells (30, compared with perhaps two flats of 50) in previous gardening seasons. My decisions to stop seedling sales and reduce garden size mean things will be far less hectic this spring. I am testing Metro Mix 830 as my seed starter. I will update varieties and progress in future blogs.

In the mean time, enjoy the republished Off The Vine article blogs, and my seed collection journey blogs. They will each appear weekly for months and months to come! Feel free to post comments against them!

Betts and I in Downtown Hendersonville this morning, while Sue shops!

The snow is melting, and my 2022 garden planning continues...

Marlin and Koda - looking at Marlin’s ghostly doppelganger, perhaps?

Let’s take a break from my Seed Collection and Off The Vine blog series and get serious about my 2022 garden plans. I will be starting seeds in a month, so this is certainly timely.

Here goes! To put this in perspective, I had 109 tomato plants and dozens of pepper and eggplants. The plan below represents the first major reduction in garden size in decades.

10 straw bales for tomatoes, 2 tomatoes per bale (not specific as to which tomato in which bale yet!).

The 20 indeterminate tomatoes.

Cherokee Purple - flavor favorite

Cherokee Chocolate - flavor favorite

Cherokee Green - flavor favorite

Polish - flavor favorite

Lucky Cross - flavor favorite

Captain Lucky - been on my list for years - a find from Lucky Cross sent by a friend

Estler’s Mortgage Lifter - searching for the real deal, trying seed from Neil Lockhart

Yellow Family heirloom, sent to me this off season

“Mary’s Heirloom” - family heirloom sent to me off season

“World War II” - family heirloom sent to me off season (maybe)

JD Special C Tex, potato leaf variant, sent to me off season (maybe)

Glory F1 hybrid which I created on film last year - Dester X Dwarf Gloria’s Treat

Cherokee Purple X Lillian’s Yellow Heirloom F2 - potato leaf selection (3 of them)

Blue’s Bling X Polish F2, potato leaf variegated selections (2 of them)

Blue’s Bling X Little Lucky F2, potato leaf variegated selections (3 of them)

The two with “maybe” above could end up substituted with other varieties. We shall see.

5 gallon grow bag - 1 in front of each of the 15 bales - 15 tomatoes

Lilly family (Lillian’s Yellow X Speckled Heart) F2 dwarf selections, potato leaf (3 plants)

Lucky family (Lucky Cross X Buddy’s Heart), F2 dwarf selections, potato leaf (2 plants)

Blingy family (Blue’s Bling X Dwarf Mocha’s Cherry), F2 dwarf selections with variegation and antho (2 plants)

Moby family (Cancelmo Family X Moby’s Cherry) - F2 dwarf selection (1 plant)

Crossy family (Lucky Cross X Mocha’s Plum), F2 dwarf with potato leaf and antho (1 plant)

Plummy family (Lillian’s Yellow X Mocha’s Plum), F2 dwarf with potato leaf and antho (2 plants)

Donny family (Don’s Double Delight X Mocha’s Plum), F2 dwarf with potato leaf and antho (2 plants)

Misty family (Mr. Snow X Mocha’s Plum), F2 dwarf with potato leaf and antho (if I can find it!) (1 plant)

Dwarf Coastal Pride (my garden friend Mike thinks this needs to be in my garden - so, here it is!)

Again - substitutions could happen depending upon germination results. It is clear that the focus this year is on finding interesting things from recent crosses.

5 gallon grow bag - 2 next to the bean and squash bale group - 4 tomatoes

Suzy F4 dwarf with fuzzy pink fruit (1 plant)

Fuzzy purple fruit (1 plant)

Fuzzy pink fruit (1 plant)

Variegated Micro (1 plant)

The last three above may be switched out - they can go into grow bags in a different location.

5 gallon pots near the driveway area fence - these are all cherry types, most sent by garden friends as unusual finds - 8 tomatoes

Egg Yolk potato leaf

Egg Yolk red fruited variant

Fruit yellow cherry

Fruity orange cherry

Suzy’s Wild Red

Suzy’s, orange variant

Sun Gold hybrid - flavor favorite

Egg Yolk - flavor favorite

The above adds up to 47 tomatoes - 28 indeterminate, 16 dwarfs and 3 ???

Five straw bales for eggplants and peppers (5 of each)

I will focus on my Orient Express and Islander selections for these.

This will prove to be a very interesting set of plants. There will be less sure things, however!

Marlin looking for attention in the morning (as usual)

Watching the snow blow, the dogs nap - and thinking of 2022 in the garden

Hendersonville winter wonderland, morning of Jan 17, after 10 inches of snow

My blog has been busy, with two series running in parallel - a “reprinting” of Off The Vine, the newsletter Carolyn Male and I published way back in the early 1990s for three years, and a review of my seed collection, starting with tomato number 1, 10 tomatoes at a time. I hope to one each weekly.

In between, I will be using this blog more frequently as a sort of garden diary/log. Each year in the garden is, of course, very different. Working through my gardening history through my seed collection and that newsletter gives me the impression of my gardening experiences as a big arc. I dabbled, starting in 1981, then things really ramped up with the growth of my collection, and garden size, due to excitement in joining the Seed Savers Exchange. The steep part of the arc, the upward slope, also included dipping into the USDA seed collection, selling seedlings, the Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project, writing and publicizing (though many traveled-to workshop and podcasts) Epic Tomatoes and Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales, culminating with the work with Joe Lamp’l on the all video on-line course Growing Epic Tomatoes, work with Seedlinked (the collections), and using Instagram Live to take folks “into my garden” with me.

A few days from turning 66, settled into Hendersonville in a more rural setting with more outdoor activity possibilities, and having great satisfaction of all of the wonderful fellow gardeners I’ve met and tomato varieties I’ve grown, it seems a perfect time for the arc of my efforts to be on the downward slope. Things already seem simpler; departing from Facebook and Twitter, ending my newsletter, and focusing on Instagram and my blog (and of course, email) really take the load off of my communication efforts. The time saved will be dedicated to finishing the Dwarf Tomato Project book, and, perhaps, further books, titles and topics to be determined (these are the types of things I ponder as I hike in the beautiful surrounding parks).

As far as the garden in 2022, much of the Dwarf Tomato Project remaining heavy lifting will be done by those who expressed interest and now have seeds to grow, as well as those long time volunteers who still have the fire to continue. The course, Growing Epic Tomatoes, will relaunch soon, but with most of the filming done last year, the demands will be much lighter. My garden will be significantly smaller and simpler, as I am happy to garden vicariously through the efforts of others, recipients of so many seed samples over the last few months.

My ideal present and future will have less obligations, less dates in the calendar, more freedom for Sue and I do drop what we are doing and go for a hike, or a day trip. I am really lucky - I’ve never regretted any endeavor I’ve taken on (post my less than wonderful 25 years in the corporate world!). In fact, everything associated with gardening throughout my life has been an absolute delight, and I expect that to continue, because it will be highly targeted for particular objectives. For me, it has always been about learning, teaching, and sharing. It always will be.

I’ve begun thinking about what I want to grow this coming gardening season. There will be straw bales with summer squash and bush snap beans. There will be straw bales with tomatoes, and perhaps, bell peppers and eggplants - but less than in previous years. There will be less containers, less plants to keep track of. Each plant will have a reason behind growing it that I will make clear in this year’s blogs and Instagram posts. It’ll be lots of fun - we’ll have a blast!

Jan 17 AM view off the back deck - flower garden is under a snow blanket