Roma Virginia Select – Sustainable Market Farming

Potato and tomato yields, VABF Conference, weather extremes.

Potato harvest October 2014. Credit Nina Gentle.

We got our June-planted potato harvest finished last week, and I counted the crates – 122. That makes 3660 pounds, a pretty good amount for the space we used. The Red Pontiac seem to have done a whole lot better than the Kennebec – the same result we got from our March-planted crop. One thought is that maybe the Kennebec seed pieces were cut too small, although I’d be surprised if the whole crew managed to do the same thing twice.

We use discarded plastic crates for our potatoes. They are lightweight, stack easily and don’t grow mold. We store our crop in our root cellar, which is built into the ground, a kind of constructed cave. Nice, fossil-fuel free and low-tech. And, like natural caves, it is prone to damp. It’s prone to mice too, but we have our organic solution to that problem: a black snake lives in there. We have been known to commandeer a snake, if none has chosen to move in. It’s a good winter home for snakes

Our organic pest mouse remover. Credit Nina Gentle — Our organic pest mouse control expert.
Credit Nina Gentle

We also tallied our Roma paste tomato harvests for the year. We gathered 313 5-gallon buckets. If we’d had more workers we could have harvested more. Our plan was to harvest the whole patch of 530 plants twice a week, but during the peak of the season we were lucky if we could get one half harvested each time.The plants stayed in good health throughout the season, and the fruit stayed a good size. This is thanks to the selection work I have been doing when we save our seed (Roma Virginia Select). Also thanks to drip irrigation we have reduced water splashing on the leaves, which can spread fungal spores.

Geek Special: See our harvest data here:Roma Harvests

Roma is a determinate variety, meaning the number of trusses (branches) of fruit is genetically predetermined, but as with many crops, the more you pick, the more you get. Leaving mature fruit delays development of immature fruit. I have not found anyone to tell me how many trusses of fruit Roma has, and despite growing 530 plants each year for over 20 years, I have never taken the time to count them. Maybe next year. . .

If you read descriptions of determinate tomato varieties, you would think they are all tiny plants with a three-week harvest window. Roma is a large determinate, at least 4ft tall, and our harvest period lasts from mid-July until frost (usually late October here). Our peak period is about a month (early August to early September). Here’s a general description from www.seedaholic.com: “Determinate varieties are generally smaller and more compact than indeterminate tomatoes. . .”

The Twin Oaks Garden Crew is getting ready to have our annual Crop Review meeting. We work our way down an alphabetical list of crops, noting what worked and what didn’t. And at the same time, we pop our garlic bulbs into separate cloves for planting.

My next speaking engagement is at the Virginia Biological Farming Conference January 30 and 31 2015, with pre-conference sessions on Thursday January 29. Online registration is now open. I’ll be presenting my workshops on Asian Greens and Succession Planting for Continuous Harvests. Lots of other great workshops too, including from Jean-Martin Fortier. Follow the link to get to my book review of The Market Gardener.

If you looking for a chatty online group of homesteaders, try Earthineer or, of course, the Mother Earth News blogs (I write for the Organic Gardening Blog)

Guess which was our hottest day this year: September 2? July 2? June 18? May 26? I recorded 97F, 98F, 98F and 90F. August didn’t get a look in! June 18 tied with July 2. And our wettest day was April 29, with 3″. Hurricane season didn’t bring us anything to blog about. I’m not complaining!

Selecting and saving seed from favorite varieties

This is the time of year I start selecting and labeling plants to save seed from two of my favorite open pollinated vegetable varieties. For crops where the fruit is the edible part of the plant, it’s very easy. You simply let the fruit get a bit over-ripe, then use a wet seed extraction process to get the seeds.

Crimson Sweet Virginia Select watermelon. Photo courtesy SESE

We have been selecting Crimson Sweet watermelon for early fruiting, large size, disease-resistance and flavor, and this seed is now sold by Southern Exposure Seed Exchange as Crimson Sweet Virginia Select. (They supplied this photo.) We used to mulch our watermelon patch with hay, which actually delays ripening, because it cools the soil. So working to get earlier watermelons was very important to us. Using the biodegradable plastic mulch warms the soil, causing the melons to ripen earlier. The combination of plastic mulch and seed selection means we now get melons when it’s hot, and not just at the end of summer as we did previously!

Once the melons start to form on the vines, I walk through the patch and write a number on the skin of big melons with healthy foliage. I just did this last week. I numbered 1-42, using a grease pencil. Large early size is related to early ripening, but it’s not the same thing. If the numbered melon doesn’t actually ripen early, I don’t save seed from it. Once the melons stat to ripen, I look through the patch once a week and choose 6-8 ripe numbered melons to save seed from. I cut open the melon and eat a big spoonful from the heart. If the flavor is only so-so (I have high standards!) I don’t save seed, but just put the melon in the kitchen for everyone to eat. I keep a log book and record the harvest date, size and flavor. Then I scoop the seedy part of the melon into a seed bucket and the edible flesh into a clean bucket for us to eat later.

I ferment the seed for a few days, then wash and dry it. Usually I do one batch of seed a week for about 6 weeks, from late July to early September. Ones not ripe by then can’t qualify as early-ripening!

Roma Virginia Select, grown at Twin Oaks. Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange — Roma Virginia Select, grown at Twin Oaks.
Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

On a different day of the week, I collect ripe fruit from the Roma tomatoes. Here we are selecting for earliness and disease resistance, particularly resistance to Septoria leaf spot, which used to plague us.

As the first fruits ripen, I walk along the rows with two colors of biodegradable flagging tape. I use red tape to mark plants with early ripening fruits (and average or better foliage). Later in the season I also use another tape to mark plants with particularly healthy foliage and a reasonable yield of fruit. I tie the tape to the neighboring T-post, with a bow on the side of the post indicating which direction from the post the chosen plant is. Early in the season all the foliage is healthy – the leaf diseases develop as the season goes on.

Once a week I harvest a couple of ripe tomatoes from each marked plant. I don’t extract seed immediately. but store the bucket of tomatoes for a few days in a secret place (where no-one will find and eat them!) This lets the fruit and seeds mature a bit more. To save the seed, I cut the tomatoes lengthwise and spoon out the seed. I wash the tomatoes first, so I can then save the flashy “shells” for making salsa or tomato sauce. The tomato seed goes through the same kind of fermentation process that we use for the watermelon seed. This is a surprisingly easy way to separate the seed from the extraneous stuff, and in addition, fermentation kills off the spores of certain diseases.

This photo of Septoria Leaf Spot is from Cornell University Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Service.

With both these crops, we get both food and seed from the same fruits. And we are developing the varieties in ways that work best in our climate and under our methods of growing these crops. Plus I get to sell seed to SESE, as well as have enough for ourselves. The process of saving our own seeds involves selecting from at least 25 plants, to ensure some genetic diversity, and this inevitably leads to saving more seed than we need just for ourselves. Happily, that means we can supply this seed to others who want similar traits in their crops.

Southern Exposure has information for those growing seeds, and there is also a wealth of useful info on many seed crops at Saving Our Seeds. They have seed growing manuals for both the mid-Atlantic and the Pacific Northwest, for a range of crops. And if you find yourself really drawn in to seed growing, see my review of John Navazio’s book, Organic Seed Grower .

Growing for Market articles

The November/December issue of Growing for Market is out, and

with it my article on No-Till Cover Crops. We use an organic no-till winter cover crop mix of winter rye, Austrian winter peas and hairy vetch before our paste tomatoes (our home-grown Roma Virginia Select available from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange). We sow the cover crops in mid-September (zone 7 here, average first frost Oct 14). In early May the vetch is starting to flower and the rye shedding pollen, and we are itching to transplant our paste tomatoes. We mow down the cover crops with our hay cutting machine, which cuts closer than a bush-hog and leaves the straw in long strands. Then we set out stakes and ropes and transplant, pushing aside the cover crop as needed. The vetch provides all the extra nutrients the tomatoes need, and the resulting mulch keeps the weeds away for 8-10 weeks. By then we have installed T-posts and started string weaving.

String weaving tomatoes (these aren't Romas). Credit Kathryn Simmons — String weaving tomatoes (these aren’t Romas).
Credit Kathryn Simmons

We mow between the rows if there is much regrowth from the cover crop, or weeds getting big, then we roll out spoiled hay to deter weeds for the rest of the season, add some more organic matter and keep the cooler temperatures and the moisture in the soil over the high summer. We plan for this and make our rows 5.5ft apart, so we can unroll the big round bales to carpet the aisles.

In my article I talk about the pros and cons of no-till, and give examples of other suitable food crops and other suitable cover crops for no-till.

Also in this issue is an article about the honeybee crisis and what we can do, such as growing pollinator habitat and encouraging or importing other pollinators. A follow-up article discusses the big problem of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are very long-lasting and may even cause more insect deaths the year following spraying. This is a major problem for organic farmers and for everyone who eats vegetables and fruits. Yes, all of us.

There is also a timely article on preparing hoophouses to deal with snow-loading,and one on growing lisianthus for splendid cut flower sales.

Chris Blanchard tackles flaws in the proposed produce safety rules, which seem in places to be based on a nonsensical idea of growing food in a sterile environment. The comment period for the Proposed Produce Rule and the Preventive Controls Rule closes on November 15. If you read this before that date, click here for information and instructions on how to comment on the rules. Chris (who has written a series of very practical recent GfM articles on food safety) also writes in this issue about water (for irrigation and for washing produce) from a food safety point of view. Those who use any surface water (ponds, creeks) have a particular responsibility to check their water supplies frequently and work to keep them sanitary.

I have been writing an article for the January issue of Growing for Market, so that I can take a break at the end of the year. I am writing about Planning Your Harvest Schedule, and I’m including links here to our Twin Oaks Harvest Calendar, which lists which vegetables we expect to have when (if all goes well!). We have the list sorted alphabetically by crop, and also by starting date.

Twin Oaks Harvest Calendar by Crop

Twin Oaks Harvest Calendar by Date

You can see what you could be eating if you lived at Twin Oaks and helped us grow it all. Actually, of course, you wouldn’t have to work in the garden yourself, to get this good food. We share all our work, and you could instead be doing some tasks I’d hate to do, like repairing cars, making tofu or tackling accounting.