New Kid in Town

Hello, TomatoFest followers! My name is Alana and I was recently taken on by Slow Food Chicago as the official TomatoFest Coordinator. I will be posting articles featuring TomatoFest participants, ways for you to get involved and updates on the Old School BLT Bonanza (Damien Casten's tasty plan for exposing Chicagoans to the delights of the heirloom tomato-- more details to follow). You might see me taking pictures and chatting with people at farmer's markets or happily sampling some of the wonderful food this city has to offer (I have yet to try this deep dish, Chicago-style pizza everyone keeps raving about!). Needless to say, I'm very excited to be here, working for such an important and delicious cause.

Determinate vs. Inderterminate: Guest post on Chicago Now

Local garden blogger, photographer, and connector of people, Mr. BrownThumb asked me to do a guest post on his Chicago Now Blog describing determinate vs indeterminate tomato plants. My post is here.

Take a look around Mr. BrownThumb's site. He has unearthed some of the more interesting gardeners in Chicagoland and is a great source for information. For example, he followed my post with great info of staking tomato plants. He also has a flickr pool set up for Chicago Garden pics.

Skinny Beaks for a Skinny Garden

This short post is in response to Gina over at My Skinny Garden, and her query about birds' nests.

Though it confuses me, I do admire her honesty as a gardener when she says:

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know crap about birds. And when it comes right down to it, I don't really care for them.

What?

Gina, you seem to have unbridled enthusiasm and ambition in the garden, you find all sorts of creative ways to grow things, and for goodness sakes, you have a "kitchen garden" complete with six raised beds! How can you be so flip when it comes to birds? You're nuts! Who else is going to eat the little bugs that seem to be living in your compost rich soil? Which other creature is going to gently till the soil as they pull up worms? Color me confused.

I am an unabashed supporter of all the birds that settle into the nooks and crannies of my family's garden each year. In fact, your post inspired me to photograph a few of them as they emerge from their nests, ready to eat all the things we don't want in the garden. At the entrance to the veggie garden, we have a structure that attracts nests under the eaves. At the moment it is home to two nests; one robin and one wren.

These are for you, Gina. You may have to look close to see the detail, but there are three little bug eating, soil tilling, seed distributing, poop leaving birds in this picture.

In the wine world, I often use a bird's sense of taste as an indication of balance in wine. There is a moment when the acid and fruit is perfectly balanced in a grape, making it delicious to eat. This of course in quite intentionally arranged by evolution. The acid and the fruit are balanced when the seed is ripe.

I talk to a lot of winemakers and ask them questions about wine and grape growing. Below is a video with Fred Scherrer talking about the life of a berry and what happens as it ripens through a growing season. I post it here because I think it's relevant to understanding a bird's view of ripening fruit, and becuase Fred's use of the word "vector" for an animal that will eat and then poop out a seed always makes me chuckle in its geekiness.

The Rain Will Not Deter Honey Coop's Solstice Fete (nor backyard tomato growing)

Slow Food and the Chicago Honey Coop are pressing on with the Summer Solstice Party tonight! Be there, be wet, and embrace summer in the City. http://chicagohoneycoop.blogspot.com/

Need more encouragement to get over to the party? Word is chocolatier Katherine-Ann is going to be there with a homeade strawberry-rhubarb pie for the potluck. Maybe if you send her a nice note, she'll bring a few extra truffles as well...she can be reached on her website http://katherine-anne.com/, or via twitter @kachocolatier.

The rain has certainly taken it's toll on local farmers and now more than ever we hear at TomatoFest Chicago encourage you to "Get thee to a Farmer's Market!" I heard from Peter Klein at Seedling Fruit Farm that the storm knocked down some older apple trees at his Michigan orchard yesterday, and I know lots of folks have had a hard time getting out to plant.

On a smaller scale, I just received an udpate via Twitter that @baconfestchi (aka Seth Zurer) followed my advice and topped up the soil in his Black Cherry pot and gave his heirloom a few companions. Looking good Seth, now all you need is a compost tea watering before your fruit sets and you should be in great shape. May they go forth, prosper, and one day end up on a delicious homemade BLT.

Our first report from the fields of Chicago

This Black Cherry Tomato is growing in Seth Zurer's backyard garden in Albany Park. Seth is a co-founder of BaconFest Chicago and will be a key partner in our BLT Fest later this summer. He bought the plant at the Uncommon Ground Plant Sale.

My suggestion to Seth is that he bring the level of the soil up to the top of the pot. The small leaves at the base can be stripped, and the small "hairs" at the base of the plant will grow into roots over the summer. I would look for a mix of potting soil and organic compost to give the plant a good slow feed.

I also encouraged Seth to consider planting either some herbs - basil, oregano or thyme - as companions, or perhaps a few carrots. It seems odd to grow carrots in a pot, but they really seem to love Tomatoes. (A fact I learned from a book on companion planting entitles "Carrots Love Tomatoes"). We tried it last year and had hands down the best carrot crop we ever have grown.

Whist I am doing some encouraging, I encourage you to go check out http://www.baconfestchicago.com/ and to follow Seth on Twitter: @baconfestchi
Earlier today, Seth and I had a very productive lunch meeting at Hot Doug's, and I don't say that only because we both enjoyed a Foie Gras and Sauternes dog. The Chicago BaconFest team is going to be a huge ally in the spreading of love for heirloom tomatoes and heritage breed pigs come the fall.

R to L - Seth Zurer, Hot Doug himself, Damien Casten

Honey Coop's Sweet Summer Solstice Party

Chicago TomatoFest's host, partner, and supplier of delicious local honey The Chicago Honey Coop is throwing a Sweet Summer Solstice party this Friday night, June 19th. Few organizations in Chicago have done as much with so little to promote urban agriculture, good food, and a vibrant local community than the Honey Coop. The Solstice Party, being thrown in conjunction with Slow Food Chicago, has as a goal to raise $10,000 that they will use to begin raising their very own honey bee queens, which will in turn make the coop a more sustainable local venture. At present, the Coop buys queens from folks in the southwest where the climate is warmer and the bees winter over without dying in the Chicago cold. This money will go towards keeping the colony alive and healthy here in Chicago, avoiding the annual costs of transport and repurchase of the queens.

From the Coop's blog: Only $15 per person ($10 for Co-op and Slow Food members). Bring a dish to share and a chair to sit on. We'll also be holding a raffle with great prizes including a private tour of the City Hall rooftop garden and beehives, a dinner for 2 at Brasserie Jo, a Joe Breezer Itzy folding bicycle, organic/biodynamic wine from Candid Wines and more. Reservations are required. Find out more here - Slow Food Chicago

Sadly, it does not look like anyone from Candid Wines can be at the event as Friday night is the same night as our fundraiser with Chicago Public Radio's Sound Opinions team and Clandestino. We'll be having a great time pairing wine and food with five decades of Chicago music. If you are interested in that event, details on the menu are here. To buy a ticket, visit the Sound Opinions page.

How we stake tomatoes

A visit to the Scherrer Vineyard in the California's Alexander Valley a few year's back provided the inspiration for my current trellising system. Pictured at right is octogenarian grape grower Ed Scherrer's trellising system. Ed treats tomatoes like vines, saying "they want to grow up, so let them".

His trellis is a fairly simply tacked together wood and metal fence of sorts. There are a few keys to its success:

1) Each stake is firmly anchored into the ground (buried roughly 8-12 inches). As the vines become heavy with fruit and thick with leaves, they risk toppling the 'fence' under their weight, and can act as sails, catching lots of wind. Deeply planted stakes help to solve this problem.

2) The cross bars are firmly attached, but the work they do in supporting the plants is minimal. The plant is directed back in towards the fence with a long string tied to one end and woven through the fence as the plants grow. Having multiple levels of garden string that begin near the base is key. Waiting to tie the plants to the fence once they are too big creates pressure that can cut the stem. As they grow, this means a new string once every ten days to 2 weeks.

3) The fact that the plants grow up means that the fruit is exposed to wind, which helps prevent rot after a rain, and of course avoids contact with the soil.

Here are the fences we have built and used for the past three years. Next year, they will need to be replaced.

We move them into a new bed each year in the interest of crop rotation, and because it allows us to scope out the ideal spot. We are fortunate to have good room in our raised beds and we can experiment with a north / south vs. east / west alingment. This picture is north / south, and it appears to be doing quite well.

One other development this year is the addition of metal labels for each plant. We have a habit of either losing tags or having the marker wear off over time. Using a home labeler, my folks made metal labels this year that are attached to the wood in the fence above each plant.

This might be the best new addtion to the garden this year.