Planning for our vegetable gardens

That lettuce is very pretty. Looks yummy. Good enough to eat!!

We made our Territorial order order before we discovered that that was the only place to find Linda's lettuce. Will have to live without it this year as just can't bring ourselves to pay their outrageous shipping again for one seed packet. Like I said once before... there are some plants you need to grow just for the name, and it's a bonus if they taste good too!

I have started a mixed flat of lettuce this year, but it hasn't sprouted yet. Am getting hungry just thinking about garden goodies..... come on warm weather!

Hello,

I just joined Dave's Garden today and saw this thread. I live in McMinnville Oregon and plan to grow some tomatoes. They are:

Bloody Butcher
Brandywine Pink
Brandywine OTV
Brandywine Red
Cherokee Purple
Black Krim
Amana Orange

I am lookingforward to see how well everyone's gardens do.

Thanks,
Bret

Brett,

Welcome to DG and to the PNW forum! You will find that DG is a great resource, and this forum is a wonderful place to hang out and share your garden.

Your tomato selection sounds nummy. I will be curious to see how you like the Brandywine pink. We don't have enough heat in my garden to grow the heirlooms well, but our vacation house on the east side of the state does, and we go tomato crazy there. We grew Caspian Pink last year and it was just wonderful in flavor, but it split like crazy. I would love to find a pink that was a bit sturdier.

Bret! Welcome to DG. Hope you're happy here - there's much to see and do - something for everybody. And we love to share information, so please feel free to ask or suggest. I drove from Corvallis to McMinnville last weekend for the first time in 20 years. My Dad threw out the first pitch at a Linfield baseball game. He's 91 and played baseball at Linfield in 1941. The drive was awesome I can't believe how many vineyards line the road. Went there for wine tasting over a long weekend a few years ago. Clearly it's time to go back. In a few years, it'll probably look like Europe. It's just such a lovely area.

Hello and welcome Bret. Hope to see you on more of the PNW forums! Your tomato selection sound colorful as well as nummy. Do you have enough heat for them to do well or do you cloche them or some such as some of my friends do in the Centraila area?

Welcome Bret. Nice to have you join us.

Welcome Bret. Wooah!! Tomatoes in red, purple, pink, black, and orange. You go for the whole range.

I too am prone to trying something simply because it has a catchy name. Last year I grew wrinkled crinkled crumpled cress for this very reason. It was quite peppery, good sprinkled in a salad in moderation. One four foot row of it was way more than my family could manage since only a few members were enamored of it.

Hi Bret & welcome!...another fellow Tomato enthusiast here.
That's a very nice array: hope the weather obliges this summer.

Hi, Bret, from south Jersey, home of really great tomatoes. I am growing some this year. You WILL find that DG IS a great resource as well as a T-rific place for comraderie.

HI Bret----I'm fairly new to this forum, too, though I've been a PNW born and bred person all my life. I took up veggie gardening at least 30 years ago, back when I lived along the very highway Katie59 was writing about. Territorial Seed Co was brand new in those days and I carried the catalog around like a bible. Then, they had specific instructions for each veggie. I have saved lots of those old catalogs and still refer to them now and then. I liked them better than I do now. I don't like changes anymore, but that's the sure sign of an old bah humbug lady. LOL I have an original copy of Organic Gardening West of the Cascades by Steve Solomon. That was another bible when I first started out because he gives such great instruction for each and every veggie. Well, I've rambled enough. Later i will list the tomatoes I have started, including the ones that haven't emerged yet. And peppers, too.

Welcome Brett - I am an honorary PNWer. A welcoming bunch these. Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Katie - a bit of a curious statement that, what do you mean that in a few years it'll look like Europe? I'm picturing Autobahns, Eifle Tower, medieval churches, and the European Parliament all ending up in Oregon. Let me think.......

Hi Bret! I grew up and went to high school in McMinnville, so great to see you on the forum. In fact Beebonnet, your post sent me back down memory lane. My Dad was an organic farmer in the Mac area in the '70s and '80s - he likes to tell the story about Oregon Tilth being created in our living room. He fell out of touch with that group after a while and moved on to a different vocation, but still grows quite the vegetable patch in his backyard (now in Canby).

This year I'm growing Stupice, Sweet Million, and Marzano tomatoes in Seattle (seed from Territorial of course!). I've tried Brandywine and Green Zebra heirloom types, but they haven't worked real well for me, maybe in McMinnville though - you get some nice hot summers there. Would love to see pics and hear how they do for you.

Kymm

Oh, Laurie - I wasn't picturing the cosmopolitan parts of Europe, but the rolling hillsides in France with lines of grapes and villas . . . haven't been there, but I've seen pictures. Sorta like this

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/89540616.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=A7B69CF049AC90054BDE42F4D05683A0488F6EE29DC1D89E5F7D1FF5291E080C

Hi Bret, welcome aboard! would love to see pictures and hear how they do for you. My son grows mostly heirlooms, he's added a few hybrids this year to increase his yield as he loves tomato sauce. Hope it is a great growing season for you.

Yes, the Willamette Valley is warm enough in summer to grow great tomatoes. Here on the Southern Oregon Coast it is always iffy, but I have found that if you find a nice warm spot (micro climate) perhaps you can grow and ripen enough to satisfy your palate and even put up a few. My warm spot is big enough for 6-7 tomatoes that always do quite well considering the cool summers, mostly because of wind. I can't stop there, though. I always plant more in the raised beds that are not as protected as the warm spot. We usually have a nice long fall and that's the saving grace. We get tomatoes very late in the season when the rest of the country is already shivering. Last fall we had nice warm days yet cold nights. Some of the tomatoes gave up by then, but my big yellow Russian tomato seemed to thrive in that combination and we ate them almost to Thanksgiving. Every year I try new ones and regrow favorites and then have a huge dilemma trying to decide which ones to plant and which to give away. Oh, yes---I do save seeds. I love that we are pretty much on the same page in the PNW when it comes to growing the heat lovers.

Ohhhhh, that europe. Okay.

Welcome Bret. I too enjoy the tomato and we grow lots here in Montana. Lots of sun and most of them do well. I have started to sun dry my best ones to have them grace my meals all year long. I use the top of my car (black) and cookie trays to do it fastest.
Though I have been busy building rock walls and changing grade at my house. I am having a garden "Rendezvous" on June 18-21 for those interested. I will look up the thread and post it here.

Soferdig, what kind of tomatoes do you dry? One of the ladies on the strawbale forum uses the Black Russian tomatoes. She uses a dehydrator. I bought one last fall, but it was too late to get much use out of it so am really looking forward to it this year.

She sent me some seeds for the BRs would you like some? I have some left. Let me know.

Jeanette

Hello Bret! Welcome to the PNW forum. When I joined I was a brand new gardener and I've learned so much form DG. I live in Portland and grow tomatoes, herbs, green beans, cucumbers, spinach and lettuces. This year I plan on expanding my vegetable garden but I'm getting a late start as I've been out of town. I hope you enjoy DG as much as I have!

I'm doing the happy dance today as my lettuce is FINALLY sprouting. I started a flat of mixed varieties, and plan on putting some in the vegi garden and using the rest of it here and there throughout the garden. This is the first time that I have started lettuce in a flat rather than in the ground, so it will be an interesting experiment for me.

Happy dance here too; Icicle Radish, Mustard, carrots, mixed lettuce and head lettuce are up and growing outside. Waiting on beets and cabbage to appear soon. Shelling peas are struggling against either slugs, rabbits or birds to make it. We've planted a flat inside to compensate for the losses and they are up along with Pac Choy and several early lettuce varieties along with the heirloom/hybrid tomatoes... going to be busy uppotting shortly and planting out.

I've got spinach and peas coming up in my mini-veggie garden.

My peas are showing a little green. Yippee!!! Putting in carrots and beets soon.

Ooohhh I am so behind! However, it is cold and rainy here again, and the forecast for next week is more of the same, with only tomorrow being sunny. I won't be doing things from seeds this year so I hope the nursery will still have what I want by the time I manage to get there!

Sorry Jnnt but was away for a while. I dry every tomato that is in excess. Our summer days are very dry and very sunny so they dry pretty well in one day of sun. Then we finish them off in the oven.

Sofer, when you dry them in the oven do you put olive oil on them? Freeze them? Can them?

Just dry them and keep in tupperware. then I cook with them moistened or oiled. We eat them up often like you would potato chips.

I dried some in the oven with olive oil last year and my daughter and I ended up eating so many that there were very few left. . . so good. This year I will dry them without the oil and try to keep them around. Thanks Sofer!

Judi, how do you you dry them with oil? I wouldn't think they would dry. Bet they would be good tho.

Getting very excited now for harvest season.... still way too far in the future!

It is great to hear what people are growing right now, especially out of doors. Kathy, how about when people start to harvest, you do a new thread with the results of our vegetable gardens. There are lots of vegies that people are growing that I am not familiar with in the garden, and would love to hear about early harvests as snacking in the garden is one of my favorite pasttimes!

Will have to try drying a tomato or two this year. We will most likely be canning again this year, but is there any bad way to preserve a tomato? I think not! The problem with canning or drying though is that they have to make it past being eaten raw or turned into salsa!

Ah, salsa. My sister (EWA) is the Salsa Queen, and my son made some wonderful hot sauce this past fall from peppers he got at the local market. We are going to try to grow those he used, as well as others, to replicate his concoction. He gave it away in small jars for Xmas -clearly not enough to get through the year. A chunky tabasco type sauce (unstrained). Yum.

Julie,

Got this off of the recipe file and it sounds sooooooo good. Have to try it.

SPINACH ONION TOMATO PIE

Ingredients

1 (9 inch)deep dish pie crust(I used a frozen one from the store)
4 tomatoes, peeled and sliced
1 cup chopped fresh spinach
2 sweet onions, thinly sliced
1/2 pound lean bacon - cooked, drained, and chopped
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese(or 1 cup cheddar & 1 cup mozzarella)
1/4 cup mayonnaise

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Prebake pie crust for 7 minutes.
In alternating layers, fill pastry shell with tomatoes, spinach, sliced onions, garlic powder and bacon. In a small bowl, mix cheese with mayonnaise. Spread mixture over top of pie.
Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Serve warm or cold.


The best thing about planting tomatoes is all the wonderful ways to use them. I even used to freeze them whole when I didn't have time to do anything with them and then work them in the winter. They were like croquet balls. I would put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them and then just put them in zip locks until I could use them. Or,if they took up too much room, could just quarter them and freeze them that way.

But, I have a wonderful recipe for roasted tomatoes when the time comes I will give it to you. Right now there is too much to do getting to that point. LOL

Good idea, Julie. I'll do it (remind me if I forget).

Jnette, that pie sounds fantastic! We tried freezing tomatoes whole once, and they looked beautiful.... until they thawed. Do you can them after thawing? Ours just kind of shrivled into a mushy mass.

BH, EWA is "da bomb" for salsa ingredients (we grow most of our tomatoes at our vacation home over there as they do so much better than on the wet side!). Tomatos, walla walla onions, fresh peppers..... I think you you guys have me drooling now.

It probably depends on the type of tomatoes. Mine didn't do that. They obviously were not like fresh off the vine, but you still had the fresh tomato flavor and we used them for salsas and sauce.

LOL, Where is your vacation house Julie? We used to go to Union (I think that was what it was called, down by the tri-ciities) and Wapato for tomatoes and peppers. They grow such wonderful produce.

Wow! What a warm welcome from a great group of people! Thank you all.

My back yard has one spot in it that gets full sun all day and is protected from the wind and seems to always be a little warmer than anywhere else in the back yard. Last year I built a raised bed about 20" deep and used a plastic mulch to try to hold some heat in for my tomatoes and I was pretty happy with the quality of tomatoes we harvested. McMinnville tends to get several pretty hot days throughout the summer and normally stays around 50 degrees at night where my plants are. I only have room for 7 plants so they tend to get the royal treatment. Hopefully the weather holds up for all of us so we can all enjoy some really good veggies!

Thanks again for the warm welcome.

Bret

Hi again, Bret!
I had to laugh about your tomatoes getting the royal treatment - same here. They are almost like children...
How long is your raised bed? My garden has all raised beds - couldn't stop at one, and just kept on building them. But they are 4 x 8, so 2 tomato plants per bed, otherwise it's too crowded.
I'm getting impatient for warmer weather...

Jnette, Julie has not had much time on the computer these days, so I will answer your question. The vacation house is on the Potholes Reservoir. The mailing address is Othello, but that is 17 miles away. Our house is across the Reservoir from Moses Lake.

Oh, many happy memories of the Potholes. We used to do multi-family camping on the islands when I was a kid. Skiing right off the beach, tons of cousins to get in mischief with, fishing, great fun.