Growth is a double edged sword. Unchecked, growth can be cancerous and destructive. It is this type of ceaseless expansion that has put our society into the precarious environmental and financial positions in which we currently find ourselves. On the other hand, growth can be regenerative and life-giving. Following a forest fire or a bitter winter, the first green shoots to emerge from the earth bear witness to the earth's ability to restore life in the wake of disaster.

My goal for this blog is pretty simple and open-ended: I want to document and share with family and friends my efforts to incorporate an ever increasing degree of self sufficiency, voluntary simplicity, and environmentally-conscious design into my life as a would be urban homesteader.


Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Summer Color


Summer break may be about over, but Nature right in the thick of things. Pretty much all of the tomato plants are producing (the Silvery Fir Tree plants are actually about all petered out). In terms of color, shape, and flavor, it's hard to beat tomatoes for adding variety to your garden. I try to grow 5-6 different types every year, and it's pretty neat to see them all together. Above is a bowl of everything I had in this year. My only real disappointment has been the Speckled Romans, which all developed blossom end rot. Here are some links to Seed Saver's because it's the only place I can find the Silvery Fir Tee seeds, but you can find most of everything else at lots of different seed sites.


2 comments:

  1. Hey Mike - Nice picture of your tomatoes. I just love this time of year when they all start coming in. Up here in Minnesota, our Striped Romans also started the year out with a bit of blossom end rot, but they got through it and are now looking great. One thing I have read and been told by a few organic farmers is that the cause of blossom end rot is a lack of calcium in your soil. Since hearing that, I have always made a point of having lots of egg shells to add into the compost and directly into the soil when I plant my tomatoes.

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  2. None of my tomatoes look that good. They all had big cracks/splits around the stem. Does that come from not enough water?

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