This year’s experiment is an upside down tomato plant, in one of those As Seen On TV planters.  Cheesy? yes, but one of my favorite church ladies swears by the upside down method, which she does with 5 gallon buckets.  I got the tomato plant at a fundraiser table for the local high school, so any actual fruit it bears is a bargain, since my $ are supporting some school program.

This year’s tomato varieties:  (1 plant in each variety)

Sun Gold (cherry)

Sweet Pea (currant/grape)

Gold Medal

Malachite Box

Cuor Di Bue

Mountain Fresh

Super Steak

Costovoluto Genovese

Anais Noir

Pink Brandywine

Carbon

Herbs (1 plant of each unless marked otherwise):

Basil (2)

Thyme (2)

Cilantro

Italian Parsley

Rosemary (7)

Marjoram

Sage

Other plants:

Two zucchini plants (for their blossoms)

Four nasturtium plants (for their flowers as salad garnishes)

Two Gerbera Daisy plants (to make the yard look pretty

We’ll see how it all goes this season.  I should have some pictures soon.

Our Illinois Urban Farmers

DH and I recently returned from an annual event.  Each spring we visit his parents in central Illinois, and help them plant their EarthBox planter with tomatoes for the summer.  This is tomato season #3 for them.  Longer term readers might remember them from last year, and their system of tying cages to the bench.

This year, they purchased a determinate variety of beefsteak tomato locally, and we brought another Sun Gold cherry tomato plant from Minnesota (an indeterminate variety).  We were a week or two earlier in planting the box than last year, given our freer schedule this summer.  We’re all hoping for good tomato yields and less cold and rain than they experienced last summer.

J & M in front of the EarthBox in Downingtown, PA

J & M live in Downingtown, PA, where it’s been wet, and plants are going crazy, as you can see by the lush lawn and the gynormous cherry tomato plant on the right, which is dwarfing the heirloom tomato plant on the left, which is only a little taller than J, who has just turned 3.  (Happy Belated Birthday, J!)

Equipment

• food processor or mortar & pestle
• garlic press (optional)
• knife and cutting board (if you don’t use a garlic press)
• Microplane  or other fine cheese grater
• bowls (2) or 1 bowl and 1 plate
• rubber spatula
• salad spinner
• nonstick skillet
• pot holder

Ingredients

• fresh basil leaves, approximately 4 cups, lightly packed
• Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, approximately 1 1/4 cups,  freshly grated
• pine nuts, approximately 3/4 cup
• garlic, 4-6 cloves
• salt to taste
• lemon juice, approximately 3 Tablespoons
• olive oil – use the good stuff if you feel like it- there’s no heat to kill the subtle flavors in this recipe.

Prep

1. Pick all the basil leaves off their stems, then rinse and dry in a salad spinner.
2. Grate your cheese with the fine cheese grater onto a plate or bowl.
3. Peel your garlic, if you’re not using a garlic press, or if your garlic press won’t work well with unpeeled cloves.

Here's our basil, in two different varieties

Here's the grated cheese

And some small garlic cloves with the press. No peeling for me!

Process

1. Put the pine nuts in the nonstick skillet on the stove over medium heat.  Toast the pine nuts, flipping them every minute or two, until they are toasty.  Don’t leave the stove when you do this because there’s a very fine line between toasted and singed.
2. Put the basil, pine nuts, and garlic into the food processor or mortar and pestle.  If you’re using the processor, pulse until you get small consistently sized bits.  If you’re using a mortar and pestle, bash the ingredients until you’re satisfied they’re well mixed.
3. Add olive oil  and pulse or mix until you have a smooth paste/slurry (approx. 3/4 cup)
4. Using a rubber scraper/spatula, move the paste to a bowl.
5. Mix in 3/4 of the grated cheese, and about half the lemon juice.
6. Taste the pesto, then add salt and more cheese or lemon juice until it fits your taste buds.
7. Use immediately, or store in plastic containers, with plastic wrap pushed onto the surface to prevent oxidization, or with a thin layer of olive oil over the top. Otherwise, the pesto will turn brownish.  This isn’t dangerous, just not as aesthetically pleasing.  Store the pesto in the fridge. It will last a couple weeks.  This recipe made enough for about 2 lbs of pasta.

Beginning of Toasting Procedure

Toasted pine nuts - I erred on the side of caution

Completed Pesto

Our first picking

I’m pleased to say that we’re having good luck again this year with our EarthBoxes.  I picked these 5 cherry tomatoes (variety Sun Gold) from our plant on June 28th.  Yes, they are supposed to be orange, not red.

Here’s where I picked them from:

Ripening Sun Golds

What’s even more impressive is that the plant itself is now taller than we are, and is expecting a second level of trellising soon:

The plant's HUGE!

This is mostly due to lots of moist rainy days, then a sudden surge of sun and heat, I’m guessing.  It’s almost shocking how quickly we went from basic plants with a few blooms to bushes with big green tomatoes.  We’ve got about ten plants, of varying ages, and all but one have tomatoes on them now.  Here’s the rogue’s gallery:

Plant variety forgotten, but look at these beauties!

I can’t remember which plant these are from, but look- a whole bunch! And plenty of light seems to be improving my photography.

Paul Robeson tomatoes peeking out from under the leaves

This blurred shot (ok, photography improvement is pretty spotty) shows two on our Paul Robeson plant, which has a very sturdy main stalk, supporting small bunches of tomatoes… these are about the size of a tennis ball right now.

Cuor Di Bue (Heart of Ox) tomatoes, about half final size

And here are two of my current favorite variety, Cuor di Bue.  See how the one on the right really is shaped like the heart organ?  These will get a bit bigger, to the size of a red delicious apple, but with MUCH better flavor.  Again, like their namesakes, these tomatoes are dense in texture and flavor, with less runny water than other varieties, but not arid like a paste tomato can be. It was these tomatoes that made me appreciate the “beefsteak” varieties.

Yet again, our EarthBoxes are quietly doing what they do best- grow plants!  I should get pix of our thriving herb plants, too.

Do you have an EarthBox?  Please let me know if you’ve got pictures you’d share!

(Hello, my wonderful relatives who received them as gifts…. I’m talking to YOU  too!  Don’t let J and S get all the fame!)

And just in time….  Ruhlman’s blog has  got a HomeMade BLT challenge on for the summer.  I’m DEFINITELY in for this one.  Who wants to join me here in Southeast Minnesota?  Should we get together for some summer bacon-making?  I can call the pork farmer tomorrow….

FIL and MIL with their replanted Earthbox

This past weekend, DH and I went to Normal, IL to visit his parents, and help them get their Earthbox replanted for the season.  They bought a Better Boy plant (left), and we brought them another Sun Gold cherry tomato plant (right, by MIL), since they enjoyed them last year. They decided that Romas are not their type, and are going for the bigger variety this year.

Doesn’t FIL look pleased with the whole thing?  We tied the cages to the bench from the start this year, so they won’t have to deal with tipsy cages in the wind.  Now that they are experienced with the Earthbox, they’re looking forward to the mass of tomatoes.

In the course of the weekend, we also made another visit to the Bloomington Farmer’s Market, which has a large section devoted to art and musicians, as well as plenty of great seedlings,  free range chickens, and other foodstuffs.

Photo credit to DH, copyright 2009

I am the type of person who would like to move to Emilia Romagna for a month to have some elderly woman teach me the proper way to make homemade fresh pasta by hand, and to spend a month or so making it at least once a day to be sure I can actually do it correctly.  While I have a passport, and can speak Italian, the likelihood of this happening soon in my life is remote.

I do, however, have good cookbooks, access to eBay, and some lovely KitchenAid appliances at my disposal.

First, the cookbook:  Marcella Says…, by Marcella Hazan.  Marcella has made a career teaching Italian cooking to Americans and others, in the USA and in Italy.  This book is one of the first cookbooks I bought when I moved to the midwest.  I read through Marcella’s description of making homemade pasta, and I read that she herself, in her advanced age, no longer uses the hand crank pasta machines one often sees.  She uses the pasta roller and cutter attachments made in Italy for Kitchen Aid.  So, the pasta attachments became a wish-list item for me.

Five Years Later….

I was  perusing eBay looking for a used ice cream maker (thanks to a wonderful visit with Adelia and Burt in Stillwater, OK), and ended up bidding on the KitchenAid pasta rollers.  I’m pleased to say I won the auction, and got them for less than retail.

Pasta Roller on Mixer

This weekend, I took the lovely rollers out of their box, and checked it all out.  It was time to refer back to Marcella for the basic recipe.  She doesn’t tell you how easy it is, as Jamie Oliver does, and show you how much fun it is to energetically mix it with your hands.  She’s much more direct.  I will paraphrase/embellish the directions here.  For enough pasta for 2-4 people (2 as a generous main dish or 4  primi piatti (first course), IMHO):

1. Put your metal blade in your food processor.  Add a heaping cup of all-purpose flour and two eggs.  Process until it clumps together.  If it’s sticky, add flour by the tablespoon, pulsing between until it isn’t sticky.  If it’s too dry, add water by the tablespoon until it comes together in big clumps.
2. Gather the dough into a ball and knead it for one minute, pushing it away with the heel of your hand against the worksurface.  Turn, fold, and repeat.  The heat of your hands and the pressure will make the dough smooth.  Cover the dough with plastic wrap or foil and let rest (15 min. to 1 hr.)
3. Roll and cut with the pasta roller and cutter, according to the manufacturer’s directions.  Either cook the pasta immediately in boiling water (2-4 minutes), or let the pasta air dry on tea towels, and store for later.

Doesn't this dough look well rested?

Okay, so there’s none of the romance of making it completely by hand, of a special skill gained learning to roll the pasta with a dowel.  But it is fast, easy, and delicious in the way that dried pasta can never be.  It’s tender, tasty, and has a texture all it’s own.  You can understand why this has a special place in the hearts of Italians by taste alone.  The fact that it’s made with love by mamma, well, books have been written about that.

We made this pasta twice this weekend.  (First to try out the tools and a quick sauce recipe, and the second time to avoid the mistakes of our first effort, cutting too-sticky pasta by hand. And to use up the sauce.  And because we were hungry.)

Roller in Action

Honestly, it IS possible to go from eggs and flour to cooked pasta in about 35 minutes (15 min. of resting time) with the food processor and the KitchenAid pasta roller and cutter. If you add another 20 minutes on the front making a quick tomato sauce, in an hour it’s a really great dinner.  OK, we’re aided by some sophisticated machinery.  But it does pass Michael Pollan’s test for real food.  We can identify all ingredients, and we combined them together at home.  And Michael Pollan never said sophisticated cooking machinery was not allowed. (Imagine the backlash…)

I can see why this might be too much effort for some people.  But I am pretty sure this is not a flash in the pan gadget for us.  Tonight, while we were cooking the pasta pictured here, DH mentioned that this might be a great first course at a dinner we’re cooking for a silent auction.  Or that we might want to do this at another dinner party.  Marcella would be proud.  I’ve introduced another person to the joys of homemade pasta all’uova, and he can tell how good it is.

We all know many reasons for growing our own tomatoes, most of which are related to tastiness, and the non-rubbery texture home garden tomatoes have, in comparison to their (dare we call it? ) relatives that one finds in Minnesota supermarkets in February.

An Earthbox is designed to handle two tomato plants, which will grow and prosper.  DH and I actually did the experiment of 2 plants in the ground in the yard vs. 2 plants in an Earthbox one summer.  Ground: 3 tomatoes, Earthbox: 40+ tomatoes.  You now understand why we haven’t bothered with the ground since.  If you want to have more tomato plants (more varieties, etc), get more planters, rather than crowd the box (We did this one year, too, and there’s a reason the experts say to do it the way they do.  Believe them.).

Think ahead a little about what kind of tomatoes you like, and what kind you think taste best.  It is also good to check if the plants are determinate or indeterminate types when you are pairing them in boxes.   Determinate plants will stop growing in height after they reach a certain size, while indeterminate plants don’t.  This can be important when planning for your staking needs.

I would recommend not having more than one cherry tomato plant unless you have a household of more than two people, unless you have plenty of time for picking, or you just like teeny tomatoes.  I think we had six different varieties of plants this year.  This summer I  finally really understood the appeal of “beefsteak” type tomatoes.  I usually just head down to the Farmer’s Market here in town, and start asking questions about varieties from the plant vendors.

Note some of the following pictures show the Earthbox with a staking system, which we use for our tomatoes, though as you’ll see, traditional tomato cages can also be used to good effect.

Initial Planting

Once you have the casters on the box, and you have installed the grate and the watering tube, you’ll add soil to the square holes in two corners, to create the “wick” for the water to reach the soil.  Then you’ll fill the reservoir with water through the watering tube, until some water starts coming out the drain hole.

Wicking soil added to corners, after grate and watering tube

Tomatoes need the extra nutrients supplied by lime or dolomite, so if you got the kit, now is the time to mix your dolomite package with the potting soil.

Mix the dolomite with the potting soil

Get your hands right in there and mix it up.  Don’t be afraid to get dirty… this is GARDENING!

Again, fill up the box as full as possible, mounding the soil up over the rim, as shown in the profile view below.

Profile View of Soil

Now, add the plant food/fertilizer strip on top of the soil, in the appropriate position for your tomato plants.  This time, you want the fertilizer along the opposite long side of the box from where you will be placing your plants.  And yes, I do use Organic fertilizer.

Fertilizer Strip for Tomatoes

Then, put on the mulch cover.  Now you’re ready to plant.  Cut your X shape into the mulch cover in the corners opposite the fertilizer strip and watering tube, dig out a hole for the seedling, and push the seedling through the cover.

Plant Tomato

Here you can see I am planting my tomato seedling.  This is a good view of the outriggers for the staking system, which also have places for casters at the bottom.  The casters are especially useful in the fall when temperatures dip at night.  When there’s danger of frost, we just wheel the tomato plants into the garage overnight.

Water in your seedlings from the top JUST THIS ONCE, and assemble any staking system, or place your tomato cages.  Do it now, since it’s hard to do once the tomato plants are bigger.

Tomatoes planted in Earthbox with Staking System

And all you’ll have to do now is keep the water reservoir full for the season, either with a hose, or your trusty bucket and funnel, or, if you are really not into maintenance, the Earthbox people have come up with a perpetual watering system if you have several boxes.  Even we haven’t gone this far yet.  We still see the fetching and carrying of buckets as a small part of our fitness routine.

In just a matter of weeks, your plants can look like this:

Tomatoes in Cages

And you will be the grinning  (urban or suburban) farmer(s), not unlike MIL and FIL, here.

S and J, happy suburban tomato growers

I am in no way compensated by the Earthbox company for my enthusiastic support of their product.  But I LOVE these things. As someone without much natural patience, and little patience for maintenance routines, these planters make it possible for us to have real tomatoes growing along our driveway, and to have fresh herbs within reach of the kitchen door all summer.  These make home cooking fun and more tasty.  How’s that for Slow Food?

Of course, you can learn this in more detail from the Earthbox site, but these are containers that have a water reservoir in the bottom, and a mulch cover on top, so it is gardening with  NO WEEDING and it’s IMPOSSIBLE TO OVER WATER.  We currently have about 6 Earthboxes in our collection, and we may supplement them this season, as we have yet to have too many tomatoes.  Essentially, all you need to do is go buy yourself an Earthbox, some potting soil, and some healthy seedlings.  After about half an hour of setup time, all you do all summer is add water, and pick vegetables!

We  grow herbs and tomatoes and peppers in our Earthboxes, but you can grow almost any plant in them.  In the tutorial, I’ll demonstrate how I planted herbs in a new Earthbox, and then how I replanted an existing Earthbox with tomato plants.  (For some history, for Xmas, we had given several relatives a  Complete Kit and this was to show them how to set it up.)

Besides a good pair of scissors, the best things to have around when gardening with Earthboxes is this:

Water Bucket and Funnel

If  you have easy access to a hose, that works, too.

When you get an Earthbox Complete Kit (my recommendation for newbies), here’s what comes in the box:

Earthbox Package Contents

The thing that looks like a black plastic bag is the mulch cover.  The two white packages contain dolomite (for mixing with soil when growing tomatoes) and the plant food (fertilizer) packet.

If you decide to get an Earthbox without the complete kit, do yourself a favor and get the casters from the Earthbox people.  I decided to cheap out one year, figuring these were standard things I could get at the local Menards/HomeDepot/Lowe’s, but I was WRONG, and the  Menards casters wouldn’t stay in, and fell out at inopportune times.  I ended up buying casters from Earthbox the following summer.  Save yourself the frustration, if you are planning to put your planters somewhere on a deck or a driveway, etc.  The wheels are great- we can roll the boxes into the garage if there is threat of frost/hail.  Or if you’re really obsessive, you can roll the planters around to different sunny spots as the sun moves around each day.

Attach the Casters

Turn your planter upside down, and put the metal legs of the casters into the holes.  They won’t click with a sound, but they will set into the housing.  It doesn’t require much pressure.

Empty Earthbox

Here’s the empty Earthbox, now right side up. Note the drain hole, at the top center.  This is one of the features of genius.  Note in the lower two corners, some small areas that are squarish.  This is where the cut out corners of the grate go when it is added, which is the next step.

Soil Grate In Place

Now, you see the round hole in the top left, where the water tube goes, and the square areas which you will pack with potting soil.  These corners provide the wick for the water to get to the plants.

Water Tube and Soil Wick

This picture shows the watering tube in place, and you can see that I’ve packed the corners with soil.  Your next step is to fill the Earthbox with water, using your trusty bucket and funnel (or hose).

Water Running Out the Drain Hole

As you can see, I’ve filled up the water reservoir, using my funnel and bucket, and since the water reservoir is full, the excess is draining out.  This is your signal to stop watering.    See?  Even a PhD can do it!

Box filled with potting soil

Now, you fill the box as completely as possible with potting soil.  This is an important step.  You want the soil to be mounded up as high as possible, so that when you cover it with the mulch cover, rain will run off, rather than pool in the cover.  Below is a profile view.

profile view of mounded soil

This may require more soil than you think.  The specs on the vendor site say 2.0 cubic feet.

The next step is to add the plant food/fertilizer in a strip on top of the soil.  The position depends on the kinds of plants you are growing, but in this case, herbs, you put the strip of plant food down the middle on the top of the soil ridge, in a strip shape.

fertilizer strip for herb plants

Now, you put on the “shower cap” mulch cover, which comes with a hole for the watering tube.  This is what keeps you from having to weed.  Hurray!

With the mulch cover

Now that the mulch cover is on, you need to get your seedlings together, and your scissors, since it’s time to plant. You can fit 8 seedlings in with this configuration.

You might want to take some time to figure out which plants grow tall, (basils, sage and parsley, for example) and which plants tend to grow out and across (marjoram and thyme, for example), and decide where you will put them in the box (tall on one long side, short on the other; or four talls on the left and four shorts on the right, so you can turn the box as sun exposure needs change).    This is something I didn’t do last year, and my marjoram and thyme died out underneath the basil and parsley that took all the air space.  Again, please learn from my experience.  You’ll have better results.

Now take your scissors, and cut a small X in the mulch cover where you are going to put your first plant.  You may be able to see the faint red box around the x shaped hole in the cover.

X shaped hole cut in cover, for plant

Use your fingers to push the soil to either side, to create a hole big enough for the soil packed around your seedling.

make the hole for the seedling

And, as you might guess, stuff the seedling (gently) into the hole, and pull up the corners of the mulch cover over the soil.

add the seedling

And JUST THIS ONCE, you will add a little water from the top to coax the seedling soil to meld with the Earthbox soil, and get things going. After you’ve planted the box, you will only add water through the watering tube.

JUST THIS ONCE, water lightly from the top

Repeat this cut/dig/plant/water process with your remaining plants.  In this case, I only had 6 herb plants to put in a box that could have held 8.

Herbs Planted

Now, for the rest of the summer, all we had to do was keep the water reservoir filled, which we did, using our trusty funnel and bucket.  You’ll be amazed at how well the plants grow.   I’ll show more evidence in the next post, where I talk about growing tomatoes in the Earthbox.