My favorite time of the year is here – summer. I love the warm days, fireflies, bonfires, farmwork, and of course, the fresh local food the season brings to us in abundance. Now is the easiest time of year to support our producers and eat refreshing fruits and vegetables. All the area outlets, from CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farms, farmers’ markets, farm stands, and natural food stores, are filling their shares, stands, and shelves with produce. We are once again able to enjoy big bunches of leafy greens, salad mix, carrots, garlic scapes, radishes, turnips, snap peas, onions, berries, and more as the season progresses.
My husband and I enjoy watching the moonrise with bonfires on summer nights.
Summer also brings full schedules. With the nice weather I find myself needing or wanting to do all sorts of different things – work in the orchard, fix fencing, mow the lawn, preserve fruits and vegetables, plant flowers, go canoeing, take my dogs for a hike, visit with family and friends – the list goes on! Prioritizing fresh food can slip lower on my activities to do, even when it’s most available. That means easy-to-make but versatile recipes are key to my summer eating. A favorite recipe we enjoy at home is Dragon Noodles. When you google “Dragon Noodle recipes”, there are many different variations that pop up and often have an Asian flavor influence. Our version stems from a friend’s recipe my husband learned while working on a vegetable farm in New Jersey. It consists of rice noodles, a stir fry of vegetables, a protein source, and a peanut sauce.
The county’s Master Gardener Volunteers and several others with an interest in foraging wild plants recently met at a local trail to learn from Tusha Yakovleva. Tusha brings a lifetime of learning about local plants to her educational events, from her childhood in Russia and Scotland to her time spent exploring ethnobotany with native youth in the Adirondacks.
She started by guiding the group to use all of our senses when learning about a new plant. Though we used a plant known to most of us for this exercise, rather than skipping right to how it looks and what it’s called, we started with feeling the presence of the plant, noticing the sounds in the plant’s environment, the hairiness of the stem, the smell of the crushed leaves. We even considered what name we might give the plant based on our observations. Lastly, we landed on the common name, goldenrod, and its use as an immunity boosting tea. This guided exercise primed us for what Tusha called “slow and present observation” throughout our 2+ hour walk on St. Lawrence University’s Kipp trail.
A stand of black locusts in full bloom attracts pollinators. The flowers are edible.
Of the many plants we encountered, some I most enjoyed learning about (and tasting) included black locust flowers – which taste like alfalfa sprouts – and wood nettle, our native nettle with tasty leaves that can be dried for tea, eaten raw or cooked, or even dried and rehydrated.
A beautiful stand of native wood nettle
I also tried the broccoli-like unopened flower buds of common milkweed – the only nontoxic species of milkweed. In addition to the flower buds, the young shoots are edible before the leaves unfurl in spring, and the aromatic flowers can be used to flavor drinks and baked goods.Read more In the presence of plants
For those new to gardening it can be hard to know where to begin. You may see a picture of a beautiful garden with all the different vegetables and wonder how you’ll learn to grow them all when they have different nutrient needs, spacing, diseases, etc. My recommendation is to focus your energy on growing one or two staple crops – a more achievable goal – and adding more once you feel more confident. This fact sheet will cover how to grow tomatoes, a popular and versatile crop you can enjoy fresh, processed into salsa or sauce, or canned for winter use. Here’s what you’ll need to know to successfully grow tomatoes in the North Country, starting with site prep and ending with frost protection.
Site and layout
First consider the garden site and whether it is suitable for growing tomatoes.
Does it receive enough light? Tomato plants need at least six to eight hours of direct sunlight each day – the more the better.
Is the pH of the soil in the ideal range of 6.0-6.8? Contact CCE about soil testing services and interpretation of test results and recommendations at SLCGrowline@gmail.com.
Is there water at the site? Adequate water is essential, particularly when seedlings are young, and when the plant is fruiting.
A rule of thumb for estimating the number of plants needed is three to five tomato plants per family member. For a family of four, two dozen tomato plants would provide some extra tomatoes for canning and making sauce. When planning the layout of a tomato planting, allow two to three feet between each plant within the row and three to four feet between rows. For example, two rows of twelve tomato plants spaced two feet apart with three feet between rows would be about eight feet by twenty-six feet, or 208 square feet. This includes a two-foot perimeter on all sides of the tomato plants for paths. Drawing up a sketch of the tomato patch will be helpful.
Tomatoes benefit from ample space for air circulation and sun penetration.
Culture
Timing: Tomatoes are in the “very tender” category of vegetables, which means they like warm weather and can be damaged or killed by frost. For this reason, tomatoes are generally planted in late May here in Northern New York, as transplants which were started from seed five to eight weeks earlier.
Transplants: Ideal for the beginner, transplants are readily available from greenhouses or farm and garden supply outlets. Buying plants that are local is a good idea since plants from outside of the region have on occasion introduced plant diseases from other parts of the country. When selecting transplants, look for healthy, stocky plants with dark green leaves, healthy roots, and thick stems. Be sure to check the plants carefully for insects. Ideally, plants will be six to eight inches tall. Bigger is not necessarily better in tomato plants; tall, spindly tomato seedlings may be set back when transplanted.
Tomato seedlings give us a head start on a short growing season and on weed competition.
Varieties: While there are hundreds of tomato varieties, most retailers will have a far more limited selection divided into three categories: standard (or “slicers”), paste, or cherry. Standard varieties are meant for eating and canning; paste tomato varieties such as Roma or Amish paste are best for making tomato sauce; cherry tomatoes have small bite-size fruits that are great to eat fresh, enjoy in salads or dehydrate as halves. Ask the sales staff for assistance if it is not clear which varieties they have.
Note: The term “indeterminate” refers to tomatoes that continue to grow and produce fruit until they are killed by frost, whereas “determinate” tomatoes are varieties that reach a more modest height (though they still benefit from trellising) and have a much smaller harvest window.
