Last Saturday we and Michael and his family visited Mimi’s parents, Ralph and Opal Graham, in Hurricane MS area in northwest Pontotoc County. I had to swallow my pride and admit they have a large tomato crop and bring a big bag of them home so Mimi will have at least one big ripe tomato to eat this summer. Lisa and her family visited them on Thursday, Raph and Opal, not the tomatoes.

Mimi has been doing her best delicious downhome Southern cooking ever. Recently she made tomato-cucumber-onion-sweet_peppers in oil and vinegar. The tomatoes I grow are perfect size, I am sorry to say, for that dish. She has also fried zucchini, made super delicious sweet tomato soup with elbow macaroni, sautéed squash and zucchini and onions, fried okra, fried taters & onions, cooked fresh purple hull peas and butterbeans, peeled and sliced maters, made frozen fruit salad, and made hot cornbread. Next we are having fresh stuffed baked bellpeppers. I imagine most young people, and lots of Yankees, never had such a blessing and don’t know what they are missing.

This week we picked from the Victory Garden and delivered to the Collierville Food Pantry 45 lbs of zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, acorn squash, banana peppers, jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, purple hull peas, and tomatoes. Total year-to-date is 770.1 lbs. This includes 35 lbs we picked Sunday, which was taken to Page Robbins on Monday.

Pontotoc County MS has an annual Bodock Festival, since bodock (bois d’arc) trees are common there. Three of us Pontotoc writers have begun a Bodock Post free bimonthly email newsletter for us and others in that area or from that area to write stories in.

Wayne Carter and Ralph Jones and I will have a booth at the Bodock Festival. We are calling ourselves Bodockers. Subscribe to the Bodock Post at: http://www.bodockpost.com/ or send me an email.

The editor of the Collierville Independent has asked me to move to the Collierville Herald with her. I have agreed. I don’t know how that affects the other newspapers the Independent was associated with. I still am in the Pontotoc Progress most weeks. God is blessing me richly.

Column / Short Story:

Tomato Questions June 10, 2008

“It’s difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.”

~Lewis Grizzard

One reason a Master Gardener sounds wise is we get the same questions over and over. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy sounding wise for a change.

One question has nothing to do with tomatoes but is asked in May and June. Where are the hummingbirds? Usually the asker doesn’t remember the same question last year and the year before since he/she remembers them gathering around the feeders in April and from mid June until late in the year. The answer is they are nesting, and when they nest, they eat mostly tree sap and gnats to get the nutrients and protein they need.

The most common questions I am asked about tomato problems are:

What are those ugly brown spots on the end of my tomatoes? That’s blossom end rot caused by overwatering or under watering which causes too little calcium to be available to the plants. We senior citizens have that problem sometimes, too.

Why have my tomatoes stopped setting fruit? Tomatoes are self pollinated by gravity, which is effective only when nighttime temps are below 70 degrees and daytime temps are below 87 degrees. That’s a narrow range, but days like that occur at least once most weeks.

Why are the bottom leaves turning brown or yellow and have spots on them? We Master Gardeners are trained to look at the calendar and if it’s before July 1, say it’s the early blight, else we are to say it’s the late blight. Not much you can do but remove the diseased plants. Don’t touch another plant until you have sanitized your hands and any tools you used. Next year plant in a different place and use a fungicide the first month after they start growing.

Why are the bottom leaves turning yellow? There are several possibilities:

- Too little or too much water. Heavy mulch can prevent moisture from getting to the roots. Too much water can leach away nutrients, and too little water can prevent nutrients from being soluble so the roots can uptake them.

- Too little nutrients such as iron etc can be caused by too little fertilizer.

- Nitrogen deficiency. Heavy mulch uses up available nitrogen as it composts.

- Too much nitrogen causes the canopy to outgrow the root system, thus the plant quits sending sugar to the older leaves.

I imagine many of you have these questions, and I hope this helps. Email me anytime with your questions and tell me about your gardening problems and successes,

Aint God good! Carl Wayne Hardeman, Master Gardener mymaters@yahoo.com

An OLD column/newsletter:

Veggies Eating Challenge July 20, 2007

“…children who grow up eating fresh-from-the-garden produce also prefer the taste of fruits and vegetables to other foods…”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070418163652.htm

Children all too often do not get to enjoy and learn to appreciate a wide variety of fresh vegetables. Poorer children have little or no access to fresh veggies. Other children have little access to locally grown, fresh, tasty veggies.

Most of the fresh produce in stores was grown elsewhere and shipped here. They are mostly hybrids grown to ship, stack, and for long shelf life, not for taste or smell. See if they have a delicious fresh smell. It’s difficult enough to get children to eat their veggies, particularly almost bland mushy overcooked ones.

Walk through a garden, or farmer’s market, with a child and savor a fresh pea, bean, carrot, cucumber. Pick one up and smell it to compare with ones you find in the grocery store. Smell the veggie, not the child. Veggies almost always smell better than a child.

It’s important for both taste and nutrition to eat produce picked in the last 24 hours, grown in local soil and air, and with a wide variety of veggies and of each veggie.

Gather or buy from a farmers’ market. Prepare a dish of sliced fresh tomatoes, squash, zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, and cucumbers, with ranch dressing or Rotel on the side.

Lightly saute or steam some of those veggies with onions, new potatoes, and peas. Season and dab on a little butter.

Make a salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and as many varieties of lettuce as you can find. Serve the dressing on the side. You may like salad veggies

without it.

Make your own delicious homemade soup. Use as many veggies as you have, except cucumbers and greens, add tomato juice and water for liquid, lightly season, and simmer

until your desired level of tenderness. Aunt Cora’s soup had many different veggies including okra, corn, and several kinds of peas and beans. A real cornucopia. Mimi makes it with lots of ingredients, too.

Last night for supper Mimi prepared sliced tomatoes, cantaloupe, real mashed potatoes, English peas for me to make a nest in the mashed taters, okra fried crisp in a skillet, and four salmon patties. We only ate two salmon patties because of all the other fresh tasty goodies. That says it all.

Ain’t God good! Carl Wayne, Master Gardener, mailto:mymaters@yahoo.com

Web Gleanings:

Humor:

How to tell if your feet stink:

http://www.thecutereport.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/catfeet.jpg

Science & Ecology & Medicine:

Gov’t says 90 billions barrels of oil offshore from Arctic:

http://www.physorg.com/news136127696.html

Material makes electricity from automobile engine heat:

http://www.physorg.com/news136127265.html

Latest statistics on software engineering success factors:

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2008/08/0808Cockburn.html