What to plant in your vegetable garden: Dog Days of Summer

We are in the “dog days’’ of summer here in Tallahasssee, which means we are right in between the two major planting seasons for your vegetable garden: Spring & Fall. It’s typical at this time of year to have a few empty spaces open up in your garden as plants like squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and more, begin to succumb to the oppressive pests and heat.

We often have customers coming in at this time looking for vegetable starts to plant in those spots, but we don’t have any in stock. It’s too hot and wet to keep them healthy in small transplant pots, and our local growers go on their much-needed vacations in summer. Trying to establish tender young veggie transplants in this weather is near impossible. There are however, several options for you to take advantage of that open space. 

Veggies such as bush green beans, southern peas, corn and okra can be directly seeded into your garden. You can even begin to plant Cauliflower, Carrots, Collards, Cucumbers and Onions from seed a little early if you want to give it a try, though we usually wait for August.  

Plant Zinnias or Sunflowers from seed now if you’d like to attract butterflies and provide food for pollinators – they make nice bouquets too! It’s also a good time to pull out your basil that has begun struggle and bloom, and replant it from seed.

Message to Spring Vegetable Gardeners from Donna

Be on the lookout for insect pests on your vegetable plants. While hand watering this morning, I discovered leaves on several tomato plants that looked almost like netting. I cut the whole leaf off and turned the leaf over to find lots of tiny, tiny caterpillars - you almost cannot see them. By catching them early and picking off the whole leaf or section of leaves, I can get rid of them before they grow and spread out to the whole plant.

If you are too late and the caterpillars have spread (they are called army worms for a reason!), you can dust your plants with Dipel or spray with Thuricide - both are used by organic growers to specifically kill caterpillars on vegetable plants.

The other pests I encountered this morning were stinkbugs - quite a few of them hanging out together on our potato plants. First I noticed the tips of some of the plants wilting and upon closer look I saw 2 - 3 stinkbugs on each of the wilted tips. My gardening partner, Ann Morrow, and I keep a plastic jar in storage by our garden for stinkbug removal. We have never had a problem this early and never before on the potatoes - usually later in the season on the tomatoes. Put a little liquid soap in the jar and fill about half way with water. Then hold the jar under the infested leaves and thump the stinkbugs in. They will soon drown.

The beauty of hand watering is that you take the time to visit each plant and observe problems before they get too far. I switch to drip irrigation when the watering needs of the tomatoes become greater as summer approaches.

Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant and new potatoes are all coming along nicely. We are still enjoying lots of kale, shallot shoots, Swiss chard and lettuce from the winter garden, but that will come to an end soon with the heat!

Heirloom Tomatoes-Taste the Rainbow!

Once again, it’s time to start putting out your tomato plants.  If you’re hoping for a crop with the old-fashioned full-bodied tomato flavor like the ones your grandparents grew then your best bet would be to plant heirloom tomatoes.  So what are heirloom tomatoes?  And which ones grow best here in Tallahassee? In general tomatoes fall into two categories; hybrid and open-pollinated.

Hybrids are the first generation offspring of two distinct parents. A specific “mother” flower is pollinated by specific “father” pollen. The resulting seed produces a tomato plant and fruit that is different than either parent plant. This involves a lot of work and partly accounts for the high cost of hybrid seed.  Hybrid tomatoes have been bred for uniformity, disease resistance and the ability to withstand mechanical harvesting, packing and shipping. Unfortunately this usually comes at the cost of flavor. The biggest disadvantage of hybrids in my opinion is that they don’t come true from seed. This means you have to buy new seed every year. If you try to plant seed saved from your hybrid fruit, you will end up with an entirely different and unpredictable plant.

Open-pollinated tomatoes are varieties that have been genetically stabilized by someone patiently selecting desirable fruit and growing out generations of tomatoes. This usually takes several years, but once a variety is stabilized it will come true from seed.  That means the plants and their fruit will be the same from year to year.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated varieties that have been passed down through several generations of a family or community because of their valued characteristics. These varieties are dynamic, that is they mutate and adapt to your environment as you save seed from year to year.  Therefore the ‘Cherokee Purple’ your neighbor has been growing from year to year is likely to be better adapted to Tallahassee weather than the ‘Cherokee Purple’ seeds you order from a seed farm in Iowa.  Ask your nursery if it gets its plants from local growers who save seed.

Heirlooms come in a myriad of colors, sizes and flavors.  So what varieties of heirlooms should you plant?  I like to plant a few tried and true varieties that I have saved and grow every year, along with a few new ones to experiment with.  I am looking for tomatoes that not only taste great, but are productive and reliable enough to earn their space in my garden.

Here are a few of my top tomatoes:

• ‘Jaune Flamme’ is an old French heirloom bearing abundant, early crops of 4oz fruits with bright orange skin. Its excellent flavor is a perfect blend of sweet and tart! They are delicious fresh in salads or dried. This “yellow flame” has been the first to ripen in my garden for the last two years.

• ‘Speckled Roman’ has gorgeous long red fruits with jagged orange and yellow stripes. These paste tomatoes produce heavy yields of 4-5oz fruit with meaty flesh and few seeds. They have a great “tomato” taste and are great for processing and fresh eating. They also store well once they are picked.

• ‘Matt’s Wild Cherry’ these small red cherry tomatoes are packed with an intense, sweet and full flavor. Originally from Mexico, these large plants produce copious quantities all season. Great for fresh snacking in the garden and in salads or pasta.

• ‘Paul Robeson’ is a beautiful, “black” beefsteak tomato that is really a dusty, dark red. This Russian heirloom has a luscious, earthy flavor with a good sweet/acid balance. I’ve been very impressed with its productivity.

And these two I am excited to trial in my garden this year:

• ‘Mandarin Cross’ a Japanese variety that produces bright orange 6-10oz round fruits with a mild sweetness.

• ‘Costoluto Genovese’ an old Italian heirloom with very large, stunning tomato with deep ribbing that is known for its intensely flavorful deep red flesh.