Who gets voted off the greenhouse?

As we continue to add more great flowers to our spring line-up, some of the old flowers need to be put out to pasture to make room for the new stuff. My nominee is Gypsophila. If you have any feelings about this flower, please vote on our poll.

Reasons to Stay:


Gypsy Deep Rose Gypsophila, is a small compact plant, covered with flowers, that blooms all seasons. This pink Baby's Breath won the All American Selections award about 10 years ago. It looks fabulous in our greenhouses in May.


Reasons to Go:


Actually, there is only one reason for it to go. "Gypsy" has very fine leaves, so it is prone to drying out. Depending on your container, it may require watering every day, possibly twice a day if we have a heat wave. It is absolutely unforgiving if you forget to keep it watered. If you forget to water it, and it goes a bit droopy, it will recover. It will let you do this once or twice, but after that, it is pretty much a gonner.  We're not very good at watering our containers, and as you can see, it didn't do very well for us. Next to it was a container of geraniums that did great with the same amount of watering.

Pretty Much Picasso

Would You Buy This?

Named "Pretty Much Picasso" this may be the most unusual petunia you've ever seen! I like it, I think it's refreshing and new, but I'm not sure if would plant it in my garden. Hmmm, what do you think? To help us decide if we should grow and sell it next year, vote on our poll!


For further information on this new petunia: Proven Winners

More from our garden

Calliope Red Geranium Here's a pic of the best new geranium in a number of years. It's Calliope Red, and it's terrific. It's called an "inter-specific" geranium because it is like a regular zonal geranium, AND has a trailing habit. When grown in hanging baskets, to will completely hide the basket. The red is probably the nicest red geranium colour available, impossible to do it justice with a photograph. It will need occasional dead heading, and as you can see ours could do with a little trim. We've had more comments from customers who bought it this year and loved it, than any other flower we grow. Definitely we'll be growing a lot more for next year -and watch out for a new Calliope colour too!

Interesting tomato article in today's Spec

There was a brief article on this year's tomato blight in The Spec this morning. I thought it was balanced, covering the major issues, from differing points of view. A bit brief on the research, but it was a short article after all. I couldn't have written it better myself. Well, actually, sure I could.

Views of our Garden

Here's a look at some of the flowers that we've grown this year:

Silhouette Red Double Impatiens. We've got them growing in morning sun which they really like. There are about three plants in the photo. No work other than watering occasionally. Actually the hose doesn't reach that far, so I guess they were ignored all season long!. My kind of plant.

Whirlybird Nasturtiums. Nasturtiums are a great filler. Plant them in a "hole" in your garden, and they will fill it in with beautiful blooms that are good to look at, and also to eat! Nasturtiums spread out over walkways as you can see in the picture.

Have your tomato and eat it too.

Okay, another post on tomatoes, and I'll start with a few questions:

What would you prefer, sun ripened tomatoes or chemically ripened tomatoes?
What would you prefer, hand picked or machine harvested tomatoes?
What would you prefer, Roma tomatoes for $24/bushel, or $12/bushel?


Lets go out on a limb, and figure that most people want a bushel of sun ripened, hand picked tomatoes for $12. On our farm, we hand pick sun ripened tomatoes, and they cost $24/bushel (we actually pick in ½ bushels for $12). They taste great, but why can't they be cheap like the ones at the grocery store?

It all comes down to economics, and as you know, modern industrial farming goes to great lengths to satisfy consumers' demand for cheap food. On our small farm, Rafael can pick about three bushels an hour. In the large farm roma tomato business, one man can pick over 1,000 (yes, one thousand) bushels an hour! How is this possible? They are picked by machines such as the Pic Rite HC290. On our farm, Rafael only picks the ripe tomatoes, and leaves the green ones to continue ripening in the sun. If you are harvesting by machine, you need all the tomatoes to be ripe at the same time! How is this possible? The tomatoes are artificially ripened with chemicals such as ethephon. Forcing tomatoes to ripen all at once is great for the bottom line, but there is a huge loss of  flavour and sweetness of the tomatoes.

Large tomato farms have a huge economic advantage over small farms like ours. Through economies of scale, and automation, they can produce tomatoes that are very very cheap in comparison to ours. At this time of year we get lots of inquiries about our tomatoes from people shopping around for their sauce tomatoes.  Some ask about flavour, or how they are grown, but the vast majority are asking one thing, "How much?" For an extra 25¢ a serving, they could enjoy superb tomato sauce all year long, but off they go in search of cheap tomatoes, that look good, but are tasteless.

I am constantly amazed at how little our society cares about taste, and that that so many people taste only with their eyes. If it looks good, it must taste good? Maybe its got something to do with us all being in a big rush, and we've got time for a quick look at what we're eating, but we don't take the time to sit down and enjoy great tasting food.

I'm glad there are enough of you foodies out there who do pay a little more for our tomatoes, so that our crop is profitable, and we'll grow them again next year.

Tomatoes - 05 - Black Zebra

Another (and last) of our striped tomatoes. Black Zebra is dark orange with green stripes, and a deep red interior.

Black Zebra has an exceptionally rich, complex, really delightful tomato flavour that contain hints of smoke and sweetness, characteristic of the best black tomatoes  -one of our favourites for looks and taste.

Tomatoes 04 - Tigerella

There is confusion between Tigerella and Mr. Stripey. I bought and planted Tigerella seed, and this is what we got. Image searches of either tomato will get you many images that are the same. Maybe they are actually the same tomato, known by two names. Who knows? 'Tis the nature of heirloom tomatoes.

Tigerella is a small tomato about 1½" in diameter. We use it sliced as wedges in salads, and that probably is its best use. It's texture is similar to cherry tomatoes -firm skin, with a juicy interior.

Update: This is Tigerella. Mr. Stripey is a large red tomato with yellow stripes, and it actually isn't very stripey!

Tomatoes 03 - Green Zebra

Is this not the most eye-catching tomato you've ever seen? This beauty is ripe when it is yellow with green stripes. The flesh inside is green (like Aunt Ruby's), and tastes just like a yummy red tomato.  This tomato is not too sweet, which really lets the pure tomato flavours dance on your tongue, and put a smile on your face.

"Green Zebra" is a modern heirloom (Tom Wagner "created" it in 1985). It's is famous for being served at Chez Panisse, Alice Waters' revolutionary restaurant in Berkley, CA.

Try this tomato,  you'll enjoy it for years to come!

First Day of School

It's quiet here on the farm this morning, there's some fog so  you can't see Mount Nemo from our house, which gives us a feeling of isolation from the rest of the planet. It's just me and our dog Molé, and maybe a few customers. The rest of the family is back at school (Rebecca is now in grade 3, Alex grade 6, and Wendy is teaching at Nelson once again). The buses for school were late, typical for the first day, new drivers and all. Alexander's driver asked me for directions, so who knows if they made it to school!

I took the photo just before Alexander and I headed off to the end of the driveway to meet the bus. This is our bed of Tidal Wave Petunias, which I posted on this blog earlier in the summer. As you can see they are doing great. If you want a carefree bed of flowers, you can't beat the Tidal Waves. Water as needed, they fill in quickly so you don't have to do much weeding, they're maintenance free to!

Sorry about the picture quality, I hadn't noticed my camera was set to "night time"....oops!

Tomatoes 02 - Aunt Ruby's German Green

You are blindfolded and someone feeds you a slice of "Aunt Ruby's."
What colour is it?
Red, orange, yellow?
You picture a big luscious ripe red beefsteak.
Wow, that's a great tasting tomato.
You will never in a million years guess you're eating a green tomato.
"Aunt Ruby's" is new for us this year, and we love it. It is a "must have" (must eat?) variety.
Use it just like any red tomato -sliced thick on sandwiches, salads, etc. It will look particularly good mixed with other tomato colours.

Stay tuned to this blog, one of these days you will see a review of our green spaghetti!

The Problem With Heirloom Tomatoes

Okay, what's for dinner tonight?

Spaghetti was on the menu. I wanted to make green spaghetti out of our Aunt Ruby's German Green heirloom tomatoes. Aunt Ruby's tomatoes taste absolutely fabulous, although it is somewhat peculiar, in that they are fully ripe when they are green (to be precise, they are green when they are ripe)! I was out-voted, red was the color de jour, and our first instinct was to make the sauce from our regular field tomatoes, which do indeed taste darn good; however, I have a heck of a lot of faith in my taste buds, and I know that almost all of our heirloom tomatoes (with the exception of the yellow ones) taste better than the regular ones, so we made our spaghetti sauce out of Brandywine Pink heirloom tomatoes (and if you are keeping score, this is the longest sentence in our blog so far, so there). Phew.

You know what? That sauce was fantastic: Brandywine Pink tomatoes, Ailsa Craig onions, garlic (not from China), portobello mushrooms, sweet red pepper, a touch of jalapeno, and a splash of vino tinto (we grew everything except the 'shrooms and garlic, btw). Usually we use our regular tomatoes, with some tomato paste, plus the other goodies (no cow in either recipe), and to be perfectly honest Wendy and I were both, independently, blown away by the superior taste of the heirloom tomato sauce. Heirloom tomatoes taste so good!

So, what's the problem?

Well, heirloom tomatoes tend to have funny shapes. The Brandywines come in assorted shapes and sizes, and often have awkward marks on the bottom -it takes a bit of work to cut them out, especially if you're making large batches. We were planning on canning a couple of bushels of tomatoes this weekend. Usually we use the Romas -they're perfectly shaped, consistently sized, blemish free -fast and easy to work with! The choice is clear: fast and pretty good, or slow and scrumptious! I guess I'll be chopping tomatoes this weekend.

One last thing: I almost forgot the economics of the whole endeavour -heirloom tomatoes are about three times the price of Romas!

Name That Tree

Yesterday Wendy, Alexander, Rebecca, and I enjoyed the last "family day" (school hasn't started, and the farm store is closed) of the summer. We ended up in Fort Erie. The Niagara Parks Commision does an outstanding job of their flower beds (they must plant millions of them), and they are fantastic to look at. As a grower I enjoy seeing what they've planted, what combinations they're using, how they are doing, and seeing if I know the names of the plants. In the bed in front of the historic fort, we encountered something I've never seen before.

We saw a short tree, about 4 feet high, with a 1½" thick trunk, supporting a beautiful ball of orange flowers and green leaves. Now, I know what the flower is, we grow it, it's Lantana, and Lantana is not a tree. It is a beautiful flower, but it grows down at ground level, and certainly won't survive our winters. This is clearly a fake! So I look behind the foliage to see what type of pot they're using, and to my surprise, it is indeed a Lantana standard. Wow!

This Lantana is clearly a number of years old, I've no idea how they grow it in this form, I suspect it involves a lot of work and moving it into a greenhouse for the winter.