Category Archives: tomatoes

Peregrine Farm News Vol. 8 #17, 7/13/11

What’s been going on?

The heat? So I see that we are one day ahead of last years record setting pace for days over 90 degrees, at 40, the record is 91 and I hope we don’t get there. These are the days we work hard to get out of the field and the sun by noon at the latest. Down into the deep shade to work at the packing shed, or seeding fall crops or something similar. It is just not practical to be out in the field moving like turtles, suffering to do something poorly or taking two or three times as long to get the job finished over what it would take to do in the cooler hours of the day. Some folks say I’m getting soft in my old age, I just think I am getting wiser.

Good class last night at A Southern Season cooking school. It has become an annual event where Craig LeHoullier and I carry on about tomatoes and Marilyn Markel (who is the manager of the cooking school) is calmly cooking up some great dishes with our tomatoes. If you haven’t ever taken a class there it is very well done, entertaining and you get a whole meal (with wine included) for a very reasonable price.

I have mentioned this before but Craig is the god father of heirloom tomatoes. Back in the early 90′s when nobody knew what an heirloom tomato was, I came across an old fashioned printed newsletter that he co-edited call Off the Vine. It was an amazing resource on all of these crazy varieties where he and others would share their successes and failures growing these unusual tomatoes. Craig now keeps almost 3000 varieties in his personal seed bank and shares his new finds with the world. Maybe most importantly he is responsible for introducing Cherokee Purple to the seed companies and for discovering the new Green Cherokee.

He lives in Cary and over the years we have communicated and run into each other. Finally a few years ago we began doing these cooking/gardening classes at A Southern Season and it has been great fun to learn more from him about where these varieties come from, the stories behind them and the new work he is doing on easy to grow varieties for the home gardener. Another amazing resource we have here in North Carolina.

Picture of the Week

Need some Celosia?

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 8 #16, 7/6/11

What’s been going on?

Well we made it to July, hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. We are in tomato mania at the house right now. The counter is covered in those tomatoes that are not “stable” enough to go anywhere but from the field to the house and then into our stomachs. It is a tomato (at least) at every meal and then other uses are dreamed up as we go along. Hot weather and a house full of cookbooks can lead one into dangerous territory.

Just in the last week we have made Betsy’s favorite Tomato and Basil risotto, several different batches of salsa (with our red onions and serranos), a yellow gazpacho, oven roasted some Blush tomatoes for later use on dishes, Betsy has made a huge pot of tomato sauce (to be frozen for all year consumption) from the new Slow Food Presidia variety we brought back the Torre Canne from Puglia, sandwiches, tomato salads and just plain eating as one walks by. If you want to try more of our varieties and not cook yourself, there are at least three tomato dinners coming up using our tomatoes and at least five restaurants using our toms.

The turkeys graduated from elementary school yesterday. Three weeks old and growing fast, we let them outside for the first time. This group is not timid, usually when we open the front ramp of the brooder they all mass at the opening, blinking at the new world and wait around for the one brave soul who will actually walk out there. Sometimes it takes them an hour or so to get the courage up. Not this group, they were down the ramp and into the grass in minutes! I take that as a good sign that they will be good foragers when we finally take them to the field in two weeks.

They will spend a week running in and out to the new mothership, protected by the chicken wire surround. Next week we will move the mothership back and surround it with the electric net fence to give them more room and to get used to the mild shock of the fence, this is like moving from middle school to high school. Finally the last night or two they will sleep out in the mothership. At five weeks of age they will graduate from high school and go to college, into the blueberry field and on to greater and more interesting things. When you are a turkey, you grow up fast.

Picture of the Week

A turkey’s eye view of the new world

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 8 #13, 6/15/11

What’s been going on?

So you all may remember our troubles with Fusarium Wilt in the heirloom tomatoes, it slowly kills the plants and severely reduces production. It is a problem we never experienced until about six years ago and then it didn’t become fully apparent how severe it was until about three years ago. Several solutions are possible and like most good sustainable ag approaches, it takes multiple tools to do it right, no silver bullets here.

The first tool is resistant varieties, easy enough with the hybrid tomatoes most of which are bred with resistance to the wilt but we don’t grow many. So we have been saving seed from our past crops, from the plants that seem to be fighting the disease the best, with the hope that we can slowly build resistance to it. Second tool is grafting the variety we want onto a rootstock that is resistant to the soil borne disease, just like fruit trees are done. Last year we attempted to do it but didn’t get our timing right, this year we contracted with someone to do it for us for the two most disease prone varieties and they failed too.

The third technique is to solarize the soil which will kill or greatly reduce the amount of the fungus in the soil and it has been shown to be very effective. Solarization is covering the moist soil with clear plastic and heating it up to as high as 140 degrees. It needs to be done in the 6-8 hottest weeks of the summer. We have designed the Big Top rotation to have a rest year (without cash crops) to really build up the soil with cover crops, so we do have a window in which we can solarize.

With that in mind, covering a quarter of an acre is a lot of plastic! We needed to put some new plastic on one set of the Big Tops so last fall we did just that and reserved the old plastic to use for the solarization. Yesterday I turned under the remains of the huge winter cover crop and the soil was nice and moist from the two inches of rain we received on Friday night, perfect! We pulled the plastic covers over and buried the edges. Now we just have to wait and hope it does the job. Next year will be the test as the tomatoes will be in that section again. Patience my friend, patience.

Picture of the Week

Let’s hope this works

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 8 #5, 4/20/11

What’s been going on?

Interesting Farm Tour this year. Saturday was a bit odd and at times tense with the storms moving through. We were very fortunate to just receive a very intense down pour with just a little bit of wind following it. We feel for all of those folks east of here that received the brunt of the storms, clean up is always hell. To be expected our Saturday crowd was small but dedicated, the Sunday visitors made up for it with gusto. Great folks both days but the Sunday tourees were reveling in the beautiful day and we had great discussions on all topics related to sustainable agriculture and farm life.

Busy weeks now. Today is tomato planting day and our first Wednesday market. I have spent the last part of the morning drawing up the map of where the nearly 1000 plants will go. “Only” fifteen varieties this year but the field that they are in, along with the edge effect of the Big Tops (more water on the side beds than the middle ones) dictates careful placement. Some can take extra water, like the Romas and Big Beefs. Some have to be protected in the middle like the Sun Golds and Striped Germans. The varieties that are new or we don’t grow a lot of need to be on the end we pick from so we can keep a close eye on them. Which ones will do best in the bit of heavy soil on the far corner? It is never perfect but the die has been cast.

Earth Day on Friday and today is the one year anniversary of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, kind of polar opposites. We think often of the impact of that spill on such a important and vibrant ecosystem and what the unknown long term effects will be on the area and it’s residents. It will be easy to lose track of that disaster as it leaves the news but I think we will be reminded at least each year on it’s anniversary which maybe will make Earth Day seem even more relevant as time goes on. Makes us even more committed to doing the best job we can with this piece of land that we are the temporary stewards of. OK, off to plant tomatoes.

Picture of the Week

Tomato transplants marching to the horizon

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #18, 7/7/10

What’s been going on?

July is a tomatoey month. Sure there are other fruits and vegetables out there to eat but the real focus of the month is all things tomato. We have four tomato dinners and events on our schedule alone, plus our tomatoes are featured on the menus of at least five local restaurants. It is a lot of pressure to put on just one crop from the farm and I do have to give plenty of praise to Betsy’s lisianthus and celosias as they are a big part of our business this month too.

The first dinner is actually tomorrow at Foster’s Market in Chapel Hill. Foster’s Farm dinners are family style and the menu looks great, why not let someone else cook when it’s this damn hot? Betsy and I will be there to visit and talk tomatoes, we’ll see you there. Through out the month we will be carefully making sure we have enough fruit to cover all of these events and the restaurants. On top of all this we have to ship tomatoes to Alabama next week as part of a fundraising donation we did for the Southern Foodways Alliance! We have never tried to ship tomatoes before, somehow we need to make sure they don’t arrive as juice! Hopefully this continuing heat won’t cut production short.

It was turkey moving day yesterday and it seemed uneventful until this morning. We move the birds to new fields every two weeks or so depending on how big they are (how much manure they will drop) and when the next field they need to move to is ready. The past few weeks they have been down around one of Betsy’s recreational flower beds with shade under some ornamental trees. We moved them right next door to the field that had the onions and the first zinnia planting. The old zinnias provide them shade but not as much fun as hanging out in the trees.

This morning I could see from the office window that a couple of birds were outside of the fence. Not unusual in the morning as they first stretch their wings. Betsy comes in and says we have a mass escape, sure enough 26 birds decided to sleep in the trees last night instead of on the roosts in the shelter, should have shut them up last evening to make sure. Fortunately they were all happy to run through the woods and then be rounded up and herded back into the fence. I’ll make sure they stay in tonight!

Picture of the Week


Turkeys drifting through the woods, their white tarped shelter is in the background

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #17, 6/30/10

What’s been going on?

Who would have ever thought we would be looking forward to July in hopes of escaping a heat wave? With the current forecast, the 4th Of July will be cooler than just about any day we had in June! We did finally get a little rain last night so at least for a day or so I won’t have to irrigate. We had really gotten into that daily routine of go out early, turn on the irrigation, change zones every three hours, check for leaks, back wash the filters, etc, etc. Maybe July will give us another completely different picture, it would follow with how this season had unfolded so far.

Just in time for the holiday weekend we are in nearly full tomato splendor. It took the guys all morning on Monday to pick their way through the plantings. So far it looks like this will be a fair tomato season, better than last year but not as good as some years past. We do have some fusarium wilt in this years field too, which is mostly effecting the yellow varieties, but it is not as bad or wide spread as last year. With the arrival of true tomato season also comes the sometimes overwhelming demand for Americans favorite fruit, especially from the restaurants that want to have a fresh tomato plate on the menu.

Over the years we have arrived at a careful balance of varieties and how much of each to grow, it is never enough and people always say “why don’t you grow more?” There are a number of reasons we can’t and don’t produce more tomatoes. The obvious one these days is because we have a really devastating foliar disease that will prematurely kill the plants (different from the soil borne fusarium wilt disease), we grow all our tomatoes under cover (the Big Tops and the little tunnels) to keep the leaves dry and slow the disease down. We only have so much field space under cover and don’t want to or have space to put up more Big Tops.

The real reason in my mind is that we have developed a careful balance on the farm of crops, inputs and labor that make this operation sustainable and our quality of life better. If we planted many more tomatoes it would throw that balance off. Tomatoes not only take up a lot of room but they take a lot of labor. We would spend so much time in managing the tomato crop that we wouldn’t be able to properly take care of the rest of the place. Too many eggs in a basket you know. So now we will just have to do the careful dance of trying to make sure everyone gets the tomatoes they want and hopefully not leave anyone lusting after forbidden fruit.

Picture of the Week

The tractor headed to the shop with a broken steering arm

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #8, 4/29/10

What’s been going on?

For some reason the Farm Tour wore us out more than usual, maybe it was because the weather was so nice instead of the record highs of last year. Great to see everyone here at the farm, both new and old faces, they are still crunching the numbers but it looks like it will be near the record number of visitors of last year for the whole tour. We had a few dignitaries and some distant travelers too including two groups from Maryland, one each from Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina. Welcome to those of you newly signed up to the newsletter.

A very nice four tenths of an inch of rain on Saturday night was the perfect gentle rain to make everything happy. Monday was one of those milestone days that happen every season, one of those days that marks the end of the somewhat more casual early spring and heralds the coming of late spring and summer. The guys occupied their whole day in the tomato field. First they had to build the eleven hundred feet of trellis for the plants to grow on. 99 six foot metal T-posts later and wire fencing hung they began to slip the eighteen different varieties into the beautifully prepared soil. Yesterday I finished the last three rows, all happy and watered in. More variety information to come but there are several new things we are trying this year including new paste, cherry and green-when-ripe tomatoes. Can’t wait!

The other milestone passed for the season was the first delivery of lettuce to Weaver Street Market. For 19 years now we have supplied all the spring lettuce to Weaver Street Market in Carrboro. That is one marker, the other for the season it that now every Monday and Thursday through August we will be delivering either vegetables or flowers to them. Add that to now twice weekly Farmers’ Markets and the season is in full swing, no turning back. Today, on one of the last cool mornings and with a nod to the passing of spring, we are going to finish up the splitting and hauling of the firewood for next winter. A little past official Chainsaw season but at least it will be done.

Picture of the Week

The first rays of sun on a beautiful spring day

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #4, 3/31/10

What’s been going on?

The last day of March and a brilliant moon last night, just on the other side of full, it hangs on the tree line in the west as the sun is beginning to clear the horizon on the east. Signs of a good day to come. We need a solid day as “the stand”, as we call it, is rising like the phoenix after collapsing in January snow storm. Yesterday we got all of the posts back in line and the supporting beams in place so that today we can raise the rafters back up. With any luck we will be putting the tin roof back on tomorrow.

The moon setting over the rising Stand

Lots of good progress this week, we did manage to slide the “little” tunnels to their 2010 positions. Prior to moving we also prepare all the beds that will be soon indoors with irrigation lines, landscape fabric and for the tomatoes the trellises that will support them. We slid on Thursday and then closed them up to help warm up the soil before planting the warm season crops that go in them. Yesterday the early cucumbers and tomatoes went in the ground, a few days late but happy none the less, hmm real tomatoes in two months!

Great rain for us on Sunday, no severe weather, just a nice long rain with just over an inch. I was beginning to twitch with the thought of having to set up irrigation this early in the season but this rain will keep that job off the list at least for another week. With the winds of yesterday it should be dry enough in the next day or two to return to cultivating the early season crops, have to get ahead of the weeds when they are small. The big batch of spring crops have been going in the ground over the last several weeks and are really beginning to grow now that we have had a good rain. Another round gets planted this week and next and then it is time to turn our sights to warm season flowers and getting ready for the main planting of tomatoes. With the temperatures reaching toward 90 later this week it will seem like it’s time for summer crops, not yet please!

Glenn and Cov planting tomatoes

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6/23/04 Vol. 1 #15

Longest day of the year on Sunday and now Betsy begins to rejoice as the days get shorter, in her mind frost is surely just around the corner!  These are the kinds of mental games we play during the steamy days of summer.

Tomato harvest is in full swing now and we are beginning to get into that summer harvest rhythm.  The spring vegetable crops grow so fast and are so tender that we have to harvest them every day or so to keep up.  These summer crops, like tomatoes and soon peppers, we harvest just twice a week in a concentrated effort then leave them alone to ripen up some more fruit.  New staff on the farm always take some training to get our tomato system down, from the beginning of turning under of the cover crop of wheat and clover, the laying of the reusable landscape fabric (don’t like to use and throw away black plastic), the building of the fence/trellis’s, careful planting of the many different varieties in just the right row (just so so as my grandmother used to say),  pruning and tying the plants up to the trellis, and then repeated tyings.

These steps are just anticipation of the real dance of carefully picking, wiping and sorting of the fruit themselves.  Every Monday and Thursday now we load the truck up with empty boxes and head to the field.  Certain people pick certain varieties and become specialists in their idiosyncrasies, the Cherokee Purples are hard to get the stems off and we sometimes have to use pliers, the big Striped Germans bruise so easily that you have to use two hands to gently pull them from the vine, the Green Zebra’s and the Aunt Ruby’s German Greens have to get just the right amber cast to them before they are ripe.  Back to the tailgate of the truck with full buckets and the sorting begins.

Each tomato is inspected and wiped with a soft cloth and put into one of three boxes for each variety, one for fully ripe ones, another for the ones that need a few more days to fully color up and a third for the freaks.  New helpers always need coaching on what is ripe and what constitutes a freak, great angst over to “freak it” or not “it just has one kind of funny spot?”  Then there is the “have to eat today” pile, fruit that got bruised or split in the picking process or is perfectly good but has one worm hole in it so it won’t keep.

When we are done picking we gently drive the boxes down to the packing shed and take them into the air-conditioned room and carefully stack them according to variety and ripeness, the ripe piles destined for the next market and the restaurants and the less ripe to while away a few days for the next market or the grocery stores.  Early in the season it is just a few boxes of a couple of varieties, this past Monday it was 40 or more boxes, next week it will be over a thousand pounds at each picking.

It has taken the whole morning to harvest and now we all stand around, soaked with sweat and stained green from rubbing up against the tomato foliage, as I select out one fruit of each variety to sample and cut off slices for each to try, “Wow, look how green that Aunt Ruby’s is inside and the flavor is really good”;  some folks like the Striped Germans some don’t “too sweet”;  noses wrinkle, in a good way, at the tartness of the Green Zebra;  they all love the Big Beef and rarely do we sample the Cherokee Purple after the first pickings because they all know it’s their favorite.  Everyone gets a bag and takes as many fruits as they want from the “have to eat today” pile and then round out their selections from the “freak” boxes and head home talking of the tomato sandwiches, salsas, and sauces they are going to make.

These Monday-Thursday harvests leave time the rest of the week to get other chores done, weeding some here, planting a little, trellising the peppers, cleaning the freshly harvested red onions in the shade when it’s beastly hot like it was last Friday, even finishing up projects put off like finally putting a door on the feed room of the Poultry Villa so the critters don’t eat holes in the feed bags that are being delivered this week.

Picture of the Week
These Kellogg’s Breakfasts will be ready to pick on Thursday