This ebook on how to grow tomatoes is written by Lucia Grimmer and Annette Welsford. Lucia has a Masters Degree in Plant Pathology and works as a technical nutrition specialist in the fertilizer industry. Annette has a partial degree in Horticulture. For me as an amateur grower this puts some weight behind the 37,000 words on the 73 pages. I paid $34.90 + $8.72 VAT to get the ebook in .pdf format down on my PC. You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book with many details so I’ll limit myself and only talk about the things that were new to me.

Definitions

A term I often see when reading about tomatoes is determinate versus indeterminate. In the book there’s a good clarification of what this means:

• Determinate types are the low ones, up to 1 meter. The tomatoes are picked over a few weeks in a concentrated crop.
• Indeterminates grow up to 5 meters and are picked over 12 to 20 weeks.
• Semi-determinates grow up to 2 meters and are picked over 2 to 6 weeks.

Water

There’s a lot of information on watering in the book but some things stood out to me because I realized that I have probably made a huge mistake earlier on with my tomatoes, and potatoes for that matter.

To water correctly you need to soak to a depth of 15-20 cm. So far so good. But you need to do it early in the morning, and only the soil must be watered. No water on the leaves, for God’s sake. If the leaves do get wet it’ll dry off during the day. That’s why you should water in the morning. The problem with wet leaves is that it will be a heaven for fungus and disease spores. If you have read about my 2010 tomato disaster you’ll know what I’m talking about. Drip irrigation, mulching to prevent soil splashing, and water in the morning. That’s the way to do it.

Reproduction

Pollination is still a confusing subject to me. I don’t know if it gets any clearer but apparently tomatoes are self-pollinating according to the book, because the flowers contain both the male and female organs. At least it’s beginning to make sense to me, why a heirloom variety can stay with one grower for a lifetime without outside DNA material. But then again, you wouldn’t want that with humans, right? Weaknesses would build up, but I guess tomatoes can handle that somehow.

And a good tip on propagation: Save your clippings and dip them in a seaweed solution or plant hormone powder. Then plant them in a pot, and you’ll soon have en new tomato plant. That’s easy

Fruits

The advice on the actual tomato fruits goes against what I believed you should do, but the authors recommend picking the fruit before they even have the right color. Thereby the plant will focus its energy on the remaining fruits. Makes sense. The picked fruits should be kept away from sunlight or they’ll overheat and ripen unevenly. Makes sense too. Green tomatoes should be placed in a warm location to ripen at 18 – 21 C (64 – 70 F).

Tips & Tricks

• One way to plant out your tomato seedlings earlier in the season is to use a ‘wall of water’. It’s a device with several vertical tubes filled with water surrounding each pot. The water absorbs heat during the day and releases it during the night.
• The book also has a tip on compost that’s new to me: Earthworms hate onions. So keep onion scraps out of the compost.
• If you use red plastic as mulch on the soil below your plants they’ll think they’re overcrowded and grow even more. I think it has something to do with the color of the fruits?
• In an organic garden you should consider using neem oil / margosa oil if you want to actively fight pests. It has been used in India for a long time against almost any type of insect.
• A greenhouse made from polyethylene has several advantages: Low cost, ease of replacement, high light transmission and good heat retention. I didn’t like the artificial look, but with all these advantages it’s quite interesting compared to traditional glass.

What I LIKE about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• It comforting to know that even the experts from the industry agree that the quality of supermarket tomatoes is very low these days (no flavour, few varieties, hard as apples).
• A chapter about biodynamic growing is included.
• Quote: “The advent of Genetically Modified Food is a revolutionary change to our food that offers no nutritional improvement, but increases the profitability and market power of global seed and chemical companies. Changes include incorporation of pesticides and weedicides within the DNA of the plant. If the ingredients and chemicals were properly labeled, like our processed food, some might be defined as pesticides!” Oh? And we’re supposed to eat that?…
• It comes with a huge online variety database
• The book covers the whole world and considers different growing conditions depending on location.
• Great info on heirloom versus hybrids.
• Easy to read and understand.
• Thorough nutrition problem key to use if you find sick looking plants, so that you can diagnose and treat the problems.
• Includes organic bug killing recipes.

What I DON’T like about How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

• Some of the text on the illustrations is unreadable.
• It’s important with references but I prefer to have all of them in the last chapter and not ind the middle of the book.
• Pictures and charts should have a higher resolution in the .pdf version.
• The book mentions that drowned snails can be tossed into the compost heap. I don’t think that would be a good idea as they would attract slugs that would eat the dead ones. At least that’s what Arion lusitanicus would do.

Who should buy How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

It’s a very comprehensive book and a lot of the information is not directly related to tomatoes but of course if you’re serious about growing tomatoes you would need to know all of that too. And the specifics about tomatoes are in there too, so if you want to build a business around growing tomatoes you’re all set. A complete beginner could probably do with half the price, half the number of pages and half the details. The fertilizing scheme alone makes my head spin, despite the fact that I’ve already grown almost 10 kilos of tomatoes.

I doubt I’ll ever need another book on tomato growing so if you serious, knock yourself out and buy this one. If you haven’t grown a single red one yet you could probably do with less.

You can get the ebook here: How to Grow Juicy Tasty Tomatoes

First of all most of the apples blew right of the apple trees before they had a chance to mature, due to the strong wind:

Fortunately my girlfriends dad cleaned up the lawn while we were away – thanks Peder!

This pile of rotting apples is a heaven for sugar craving wasps, but I managed to save some of the apples for jam. There are still some left on the trees so I think we’ll be able to make a decent amount of jam:

Before I left I wrapped my chicken coop project in a tarpaulin and it stayed on the coop the whole week, although the sharp edges punched a few holes in it:

I’m really looking forward to some dry weather so that I’ll be able to finish the project.

The rain water collection tank proves that the weather has been wet, wet, wet. 550 liters in a week:

It turns out that if bird droppings end up in a tank like this you’re likely to get a problem with bacteria if the water is standing still for too long. This can be a problem if you water crops which are not boiled before you eat them since the bacteria is carried into the kitchen.

My bean trellis took a hit by the strong wind and almost collapsed:

But the beans are have been growing fast and new ones are still developing:

My sweet corn plants have also been hit by the wind and one of the plants fell over. Not a pretty sight but hopefully we’ll get some fruits before the end of the season:

The squash plant didn’t waste any time – compare the fruits with my foot to the right:

The fruit near the ground is huge! But I knew that would happen. You need to check the size of your squash fruits every second day during the peak of the season. The same thing happened with my squash a couple of years ago.

Two different kinds of caterpillars in my broccoli?? Jebus… You guys must be hungry. It doesn’t even look tasty anymore:

The strawberry plants decided to grow all over the place:

and the tomato plants got hit with blight and the fruits are rotting… Sigh. :

I hope I can do a bit of damage control by removing wilted leaves and rotten fruits, to help the healthy tomatoes through the season.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a thriving cucumber plant with flowers and healthy fruit:

but my saved pea seeds looked far from healthy. I made the mistake of throwing the pods in a cardboard box with the lid on, so that the moisture couldn’t escape freely which resulted in mold, and some of the peas even started germinating! 2 x sigh… :

To finish off this crappy status, all of the potato fruits fell off and started rotting on the ground:

But then again – the flowers are nice:

I’ll leave you with a lonely bee on a white Cosmos flower:

and a video that show the fencing around my garden that is supposed to shield off against the wind, dammit:

That’s exactly what organic farmers have been doing. They’ve been taking age old ideas and just doing them much better. Making better compost, setting up better crop rotations, figuring out different ways in which there is a symbiosis between different parts of the biology on a farm.

– Eliot Coleman

The ground has a heavy slope which means that the water tank is standing on the ground about half a meter (1.6 ft) below the floor of the carport.

I found out that I had a bit of cleaning to do of the gutter which had been neglected by the previous renters. It simply won’t work with all that organic material stuck in the gutter:

I managed to unhook the gutter to ease access:

And found this – the gutter was absolutely stuffed:

But I don’t mind – it’s actually very good material for composting, and almost entirely decomposed. I’m wondering how long it’s been in there A couple of years maybe?:

Yummy! The worms in the compost pile are going to love it (along with the kitchen scraps, tomatoes, cucumbers, kitchen paper rolls and what not):

I gave the rain gutter a thorough hosing to clean it up as I don’t want too much crap in my water tank:

And now on to the clever part of this project: A water “thief” (I don’t know the English word for this baby ):

This is a device you insert somewhere in the rain water drain pipe which will divert the water flow away from the main pipe and into a tank or whatever.

And this is an illustration showing what’s on the inside:

Only when the small pipe on the right side is full of water it will start to pour over the edge on the inside and down into the main pipe. Until then most of the water goes into the small pipe, but of course a small part of it will fall into the opening in the middle, but I don’t think it will be anything significant.

This next picture is showing the piece inserted in the main pipe:

Because of the sloping ground the small diverting pipe needs to be 4 m (13 ft) which makes the whole thing look like something from a cartoon :

but hey – it works®!:

I’m ready for the rain.

Four pieces of round pressure treated poles are placed in each corner:

I’m using metal chicken wire to form a box. In the picture below you can get sense of the heavy sloping of the garden down towards the stream at the lower end. There’s a 10 cm (4 inch) gap in the right corner of the box due to the slope of the ground:

The lazy man’s guide to fixing chicken wire to a pole (I really have to cut down on my use of plastic cable binders – they don’t decompose well):

Finally I have room enough to store composting material separately before building the entire compost heap. Notice the open field in the background. It’s a pleasure to be this close to nature, instead of the bricks and concrete I was used to:

The reason for storing the different composting materials before building the heap is that the different materials will be more likely to get good contact with each other, because you’ll be able to spread out thin layers of each type:

In the past I used to throw in a very thick layer of grass cuttings each time I mowed the lawn (‘greens’), and much later I would throw in a lot of ‘browns’ and the materials would not get mixed and start to decompose. In small places a compost tumbler would be preferred as this would ensure that greens and browns would get properly mixed.

I watered my new compost heap after building so if everything goes well it will start to heat up and turn the waste materials into new compost to be used in the garden.

Here is my review of Jonathan White’s product called Food4Wealth. Jonathan has over 20 years of experience as an environmental scientist and horticulturalist. He claims that if you follow his program in the form of an eBook and related videos you can save up to $5,000 per year, and that may indeed turn out to be Food4Wealth if it holds true.

The product consists of an 80 page eBook, a project plan, and videos with a total length of approx. 60 minutes:

• Dimensions: 8:24
• Creating a Frame: 3:07
• What Goes in the Frame: 7:53
• Putting up a climbing frame for peas and beans: 2:03
• Adapting your existing vegetable garden: 2:12
• Composting: 4:46
• Planting out your Plot: 5:07
• Planting a Seedling: 2:25
• Self Seeding: 4:11
• Maintenance: 5:10
• Seasons: 6:52
• Potato Beds: 3:16
• Mini Food 4 Wealth Plot: 2:58
• Food 4 Wealth Fruit Farm: 5:20

I paid $39.97 for the Food4Wealth product.

How does Food4Wealth work

It is truly unbelievably simple, which Jonathan points out himself, but he says it should not keep one from using the system. He says that there are probably many within the profession who would reject it compared to the traditional orthodox horticulture, which he says is about solving problems. Food4wealth is different in the way that you build a system from scratch, which is in a position to solve its own problems, like an untouched natural ecosystem does. He uses the example of a rainforest. In such a system there will always be great diversity unlike traditional monocultures. And it is exactly this diversity that protects the system, for example when he plants various plants close to one another. A single lettuce head next to a single tomato plant, etc. It reminds me of what I do in my raised beds where I plant a row of one type of vegetable, and the next row is then a second type of vegetable, but Jonathan then takes the idea further to the extreme where all vegetables are mixed together in one big mishmash. Another important aspect of the system is that it also takes care of the sowing itself, i.e. self-seeding. After some years there will be so many seeds dormant in the bed that every spot is filled by vegetable plants and weeds will not have a chance. As he says, nature does not allow empty niches. They will gradually be filled by the right plants in the right place at the right time. A bonus that comes with this diversity is that pests are totally confused because they cannot find their desired plant in this jumble. All of this makes sense and the claim is that it works and you can harvest something from the garden every day.

An important part of the system is that the soil is disturbed as little as possible because digging dries out the soil, so one of his golden rules here says that the soil must never be left bare. Digging disrupts the system and the first plants that show up to restore balance are the weeds, which we do not want in our gardens. Weeds are the ultimate niche fillers. So it’s all about constantly covering bare soil with compost, which you produce yourself, if you follow the system. Many books have been written about composting, so that’s not something new here. But yes, it is clearly a natural thing to do to make it yourself out of kitchen scraps.

The less bare soil you have, the less it dries out and the less you will need to water. So – be generous with the compost at all times. And here is another thing which is somewhat new to me. He even recommends that compost contains the seeds of wilted plants. I have been accustomed to removing seeds from the things I put on the compost, but it’s logical when you think about it – but only the correct seeds, so they can sow themselves. Then you even save money on seeds. This system is very much about freedom.

The system is built entirely from scratch, for example on top of existing lawn. It doesn’t matter. You put these layers in a wooden frame or another kind of frame:

1. Newspapers
2. Hay
3. Fertilizer
4. Hay
5. Compost

As the years go by you constantly fill empty spots with compost, and the small ecosystem takes care of itself and live its own life. If you take good care of it, it will take good care of you, in the form of fine vegetables.

He talks about summer crops and winter crops, and recommends a few kinds of vegetables as being more than enough to provide for you and your family:

• Swiss Chard (Silverbeet)
• Spring Onions
• Carrots
• Snow Peas
• Lettuce
• Celery
• Zucchini
• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Rhubarb
• Parsnip
• Cucumber
• Corn
• Pumpkin

He claims that the system can be maintained with only 8 hours of light work – per year! I actually believe him, and the project plan also shows why it could be true.

What I like about Food4Wealth

* Jonathan White has a great energy and enthusiasm and I cannot help but get moved by it. He’s like, “come on now, let’s change the world for the better, and here’s how we’re going to do it – you know it works, right?”, and he is convincing in his explanations. He has spent much of his childhood in the Australian bush, and it seems like he has either talent or intuition on how things fit together in the small ecosystems that he talks about in Food4Wealth. All of this also results in a convincing sales page, which probably sells a lot.

* The fact that he makes use of video as much as he does works quite well, rather than simply using an eBook. For me personally it’s easier to remember key points when I’ve seen a video. There’s more bandwidth, and more information coming through.

* I like that the system is so simple and I just sit back and nod, of course, of course; it seems very smooth, intuitively and sustainable. The fact that he provides plant lists and a project plan is quite good because you can quickly get started without knowing very much about how and why the system works. He is well structured and organized, and that he emphasizes on getting away from control and instead move toward freedom gets a big plus in my book.

What I DON’T like about Food4Wealth

* Sometimes he acts a bit over the edge because he’s so excited about this. It sometimes makes his videos a bit too ‘new-age, peace, hugs and love’ according to my taste. It’s okay, but I just know that I react to it and it interrupts my learning process.

* Another thing that is annoying is the sound volume in the videos, which are blown up when the jingles are played, and turned down when he speaks. And there are many jingles in the videos. It would be nice to get the volume normalized through an entire video, so you don’t have to turn the volume up and down all the time. His “studio” seems quite small and it would be nice to see more space around him. It seems crammed.

* He mentions that you can use railway sleepers to create frames for the beds, but it is certainly not something you would do in my area, as they are treated with some very toxic substances. It may be that it’s a different situation elsewhere in the world or that I have misunderstood what he says about this.

* He treats potatoes a bit different within the system, but still as part of the system. I don’t understand why he doesn’t let them take care of themselves with self-seeding instead of using the traditional method, where you save some of your harvest for next year, which will then be clones, and therefore not adapted to the ever changing conditions in the local area. Volunteer potatoes have new and different genes and are therefore hopefully more robust and adapted.

* A general issue related to the purchase of the product is that a relatively substantial tax sneaked into the purchase, which I could not see immediately. I should probably have dug in and read some of the fine print.

Who should buy Food4Wealth

I think it’s best to build the system from scratch, even though Jonathan also tells how to adapt your existing garden to the new system. I would start from scratch with a clean slate, if I decided to try it out. And when you start from scratch then everybody can actually do it, because the product describes the entire system, i.e. the design, construction and maintenance. And since it is quite detailed, I believe very little experience in horticulture is required to get started and succeed. I’m not new to the vegetable garden but I would allocate a piece of lawn for the project if I were to try it out, and then follow the instructions to the letter. The reason I will not begin such a project right away is that I have moved to a rented piece of land where I do not plan to stay for several years, and that is exactly what the system requires, that it will need some years to find a balance with high soil quality and sustainable self-seeding. But the idea of mixing the vegetables completely to confuse pests and the idea of self-seeding is something I might test in a dedicated raised bed.

You can buy Food4Wealth here.

The old one I used to have had a flywheel with blades mounted on it, but the problem was the blades wore down really quick, and on top of that you would have to force the material into the shredder, because it simply couldn’t get hold of it any other way.

This new shredder uses a different principle and there are absolutely no problems with getting the machine to ‘eat’ the organic material. It chops everything into 3 cm (1 inch) pieces and have a very strong motor (this version runs on 16 amps at 230 volts AC). The third picture shows the grinder; a good way to keep ‘the suits’ out of your garden pretty scary for someone wearing a tie:

But I’m glad the suits put this on the market, because it’s a wonderful machine. I’m really looking forward to see the quality of the final compost.

Here’s a video showing some action. I’m chopping up shoots from apple trees with the leaves still on:

And the result (I’m closing down this raised bed, or else then material would go onto the compost heap instead.):

The shredder even took care of the Christmas tree during winter :

In about two weeks a new garden adventure will begin for me, as I’ll be moving to a new property together with my girlfriend and our two small kids. What’s new for me is that this time it’s a rented place compared to our current house, which I own myself. We had a brief talk with the landlord, and it turns out that the former renters were allowed to put up a greenhouse,  and we’re free to do what we want in the garden as long as it “appears cultivated” as he put it. I’m still a bit unsure about what I can and what I can’t do, but maybe it’s better to ask for forgiveness instead of permission in this case Of course I’ll leave any old trees alone, but I’m certainly planning on converting part of the lawn into vegetable beds. Whether I’m bringing in a truckload of concrete slabs to be used as paths between beds I’m not sure, but I guess most of what I would like to do in the garden can be cleaned up and removed in a matter of weeks. The ultimate garden dream is still to have my own land to play on. I’m looking forward to that.
I’m leaving five old wonderful apple trees behind, but luckily there are two old ones on the new property and according to the owner they produce loads of apples and they are free for us to use. I’m glad we bought a high quality juicer last year, perfect for apples too. The apple trees provide shade in the garden, but it also has an open space with lots of sun. To the south west there’s even a small stream running by, and across the stream there’s a field with grazing horses. Very nice scenery.
Unfortunately I’ll have to leave my 30 sq m (320 sq ft) garage behind and cram most of my stuff into a much smaller, unheated shed, in like only one fifth of the area. I’ll have to sell or give away some of it, but that’s okay, this was never meant to be a high tech operation anyway. I’m keeping the shredder though – that is just an awesome piece of equipment, a Bosch AXT 2500HP. I’ll post some pictures and videos of that beast later on. It has helped me produce great composting ready material, so I’m seriously considering moving my three compost heaps with me to the new location, if the content is not too gross. Gotta feed the soil, right?
Speaking of feeding the soil – sometimes I get carried away and just go on and on, talking about  soil and manure and homesteading, and somewhere along the road my girlfriend somehow convinced herself that rabbits running freely around the garden is a total win-win situation. When will I learn to shut the hell up? I’m not sure I agree entirely with that But at least neither one of us talks about chopping them up for meat like good old John Seymour did. That’s just too old school for us vegetarians. I’m sure the kids would love to play with them though. We just need to convince them that it’s NOT candy that’s scattered all over the lawn

This is a 43 pages eBook about making compost written by Rod Turner in 2005 titled “The Worlds Best Compost – The How & Why“. My own attempts at making compost have been a bit disappointing. Of course there’s some kind of break-down of organic material into humus, but I can ensure you it’s not world class. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that this is actually a book about biodynamics, which was not mentioned in the sales pitch. I paid $34.77 to download the eBook.

How to make the worlds best compost

According to Rod the best compost is a kind of material that resembles jelly. It contains fluid but the material feels dry when you touch it. Jelly also contains the good stuff too. This property must be the same in compost if you want it to be world class. Rod calls this type of compost colloidal humus compost, because it contains up to 75 % water plus all the nutrients. The high amount is needed by the plants in order to grow normally. The water provided to plants must be free of nutrients or it’ll mess up their system!

You need to build your compost pile in a single day. Therefore you have to collect the material in different piles throughout the months prior to building the pile. A key ingredient is fresh animal manure, in fact up 40% of the pile needs to be manure. Nitrogen rich materials, carbon rich materials and manure have to be really wet when you build your pile or else the composting process will not run properly. The three different types of materials need to be in close contact throughout the pile which is then covered with straw during its 3 to 6 months life. And it is literally life. All kinds of organisms and animals will come and go when needed to take part in the composting process. Add some biodynamic herbs and mojo and you got yourself world class compost.

What I LIKE about The Worlds Best Compost

* It uses a biodynamic approach to making compost. I’m fascinated by biodynamics because curiosity, respect and harmony are key aspects in this way of gardening.

* It’s easy to read although it contains a lot of information.

* It has lots of pictures and easy understandable illustrations (21 throughout the eBook).

* Straight to the point, no BS.

* Written by someone with 20 years of experience using the methods described (teaching it for 10 years).

* Interesting references to people and further reading.

* The reasons behind the different actions you need to take are explained too.

* Several bonus eBooks and videos included in the purchase: “Mysteries of Pruning Revealed”, “Professional Secrets to Stunning Azaleas” and “Wonder Plants and Plant Wonders”.

What I DON’T like about The Worlds Best Compost

* Not actually about the eBook, but the sales pitch page is just too much.

* The price is a bit high for a 43 pages eBook, but taking the bonuses into account it seems fair. They seem solid too.

* Some of the biodynamic mojo is included in the process without explanation. I would like to read a few critical thoughts about this whirling madness (you have to make some kind of soup if you want to be best in class).

Who should buy this eBook

You need more space to use the method described in this eBook than you would using traditional urban composting methods. You need space around the pile and space for storing the different materials before building the pile, so I think it’s best suited for people living in rural areas where you can raise your own cows and horses too. Of course you can transport the manure into your urban garden but it’s a lot more work. I think the book can be used by beginners as well as experienced gardeners. The only thing you need is a desire to provide the best growing conditions for you plants.

You can get the eBook here.

Birds normally take cover during rain but not the blackbird. It’s running around out there in the garden getting wet, but it pays. A lot of earthworms are crawling to the surface as fast as they can, just to get eaten. Sad story. For the earthworm at least. But why on earth would they do that? It seems stupid.

Well is an earthworm stupid? At least it’s trying to survive. Earthworms have a problem with hard rain, which translates to water soaked soil. They have a soft moist skin through which they breathe oxygen from small air pockets in the surrounding soil. During rain these air pockets are filled with water and it gets hard for the worms to breathe. Therefore they are forced to take their chances and crawl to the surface in order to breathe.

Good news for the birds anyway.