Jenmenke

Road Warrior

how to

The Earliest Ripe Tomatoes

Step-By-Step Instructions

You can read all about Wall-O-Water mini greenhouses, early tomato varieties, special fertilization methods and countless other ways to get the jump on your garden tomato season and try to implement them with varying degrees of success depending on the weather and rainfall in your area. Or, you can follow my easy, step-by-step instructions for the earliest garden tomatoes right here. It’s your choice.

This is the easiest, fastest (by about 2 months!), and foolproof method. It’s a little like scoring a deal on a cute pair of shoes from Target: you might not want to tell anyone how you did it, but you’ll feel a little guilty if you don’t. That’s my disclosure.

Are  you ready?

1) Buy a medium to large tomato plant from a nursery with tomatoes already growing on the plant. Frankly, I don’t think these plants transplant very well, nor do I think they thrive in the garden as well as smaller plants, but don’t worry, because that won’t matter. I bought my beautiful plant in an 8″ pot for only $6.95.

2) Protect your plant from the elements and very gradually harden it off to sunlight and wind. This is important! You don’t want your plant to be stressed when you plant it outside! Most nursery tomato plants have been grown under glass or plastic. Moving them outside into direct sunlight (and even a little wind) can stunt the plant’s growth.

3) Once your plant is hardened off, place it in a protected area of your garden until you are ready to plant it with the rest of your tomato plants.

4) On planting day — this is important — forget to plant your large and pampered tomato plant. In order to get the most ripe tomatoes in the fastest amount of time, also forget to water the plant for approximately 4 days. It is helpful if these four days are also hot and sunny.

5) Wait 7 days.


6) Harvest red ripe tomatoes and brag to neighbors and friends.*

*Disclaimer: This article neither defends nor denies the use of artificial growing methods. Due to challenged diameters, tomatoes are a potential choking hazard for children under 6. Tomatoes are part of the nightshade family; vines are toxic to humans and animals. Methodology is not intended to be a long-term growing strategy nor does it survive cost benefit analysis.

How Not to Plant Shallots

Ignore that picture, as there is nothing wrong with it.

What I should have done is take a picture of the date next to the cute little rows off pointy-headed bulbs. Because that would be more appropriate with the title of this post.

You see, I am approximately 4.5 months late planting my shallots. I know that I have mentioned my ‘to-do list’ strategy, right? The one where I keep a running list of what I need to do in the next day or two? I’ll go a step further. This is the actual list:

Followed by excerpts from the next two months of lists:

…where you will note that an empty circle is an unfinished task. As we progress from October to December — when the ground is frozen solid — I finally gave up and scratched “Plant Shallots” out and off the list forever. Until I rediscovered the bag of bulbs in the garage yesterday…

Funny, though, as I look back on these lists, the other things I have forgotten to do… A client’s thing… My Mom’s photo mug… Another client thing… And that damn Greenhouse Motor. Which you will be happy to know that I finally figured out how to detach, pack up and send off for repair. I finally crossed it off my list.

Yesterday.

On 3/17/2010.

A full five months and ten days after it was first written down on 10/7/2009 (see above).

So anyway, the shallots. The truth is, I simply didn’t get them in the ground before it froze last fall. Then I rationalized that, since the directions that came on the package said, “Plant shallots in the ground immediately upon delivery in all but the coldest northern regions.”

That’s not that far of a stretch, is it? We’re pretty damn cold and pretty far north. Still, I think given that we plant garlic in the fall, the shallots should have gone into the ground with them.

So I planted them yesterday. Which is not the correct way, but I’m crossing my fingers that 1) the bulbs are still viable, and 2) the bulbs will grow. We shall wait and we shall see. They will be in for plenty of wild weather, but they would have gotten that if they went in the ground last fall, too.

Now: do you think I should gamble and plant these, since I decided not to cook them and serve them to Dave?

I think I should. Please chime in.

How Not to Prune an Apple Tree

See those forks? That’s how NOT to prune your apple tree.

All these tweets and blogs saying stuff like “10 best ways to…”, “How to make the perfect….”, etc. etc. Well, if you’ve come here for clear instructions on how to do anything perfectly, I can tell you now: you are in the wrong place.

I am an expert at nothing. And while I may write about things and post pictures, I am in no way suggesting you do the same, lest you poison your family (see cutting boards), start a wild fire (see burning asparagus tops) or today, potentially kill your apple trees. (As I am sure I will hear from a botanist that I have completely botched the job…)

In my never-ending quest to improve upon my ugly apples, but also in my never-quite-making-it quest to prune my apple trees in a timely fashion, I have approached things in differing manners over the years.

Last year, I attempted to prune the blossoms. You see, I missed the window of pruning the branches. And, because there were thousands of branches per tree, I had literally thousands upon thousands of blossoms. I knew the apples would be pitiful if I let them all fruit, so I dragged the ladder out and tediously pinched off appoximately 50% of the blossoms in the hope the remaining blossoms would develop bigger and better quality apples.

Aside from being the biggest pain in the ass imaginable, who knows if it worked or not. My apples were ugly, but fine. They were not as large as they had been in previous years, but I am no apple expert, so, like I said: who knows.

I mean, I don’t even remember which kind of apple trees I planted! I remember the first one was a Honeycrisp. I’m guessing one is a Macintosh. The other three? No clue. I even called in a good friend and apple expert, who grew up on an apple orchard for his advise. He told me he could tell me. He tasted each one… paused… and said “hmmmm. could be….” and went on to list every variety grown in Minnesota. He did have some applicable advise though. Which was: “You need to prune.”

Duh.

Frankly, living in Minnesota, that is easier said than done. Opinions differ widely as to when the right time to prune actually is. Most agree that for us, it is in early Spring. Which actually means: late Winter. Which usually results in: never.

Who wants to troop out in 3 feet snow and gale-force winds to prune apple trees in February? Seriously. Who does this?

Not me.

I pruned them yesterday. And, I probably killed them.

I hope I am kidding. But we’ll see. And you’ll get to be my witnesses.

Actually, I did it this late because the StarTribune ran an article about a week ago that said, “Now is the time to prune those apple trees!” Full of happy exclamation points and optimism. So if my trees die, I’ll know where to point my law suit.

And if YOU decide to go out and prune your own trees based on the fact that I just did mine, let me know and I’ll get you the StarTribunes contact information for your files.

I forgot to take a picture of the full Honeycrisp canopy, but it was dense. It was the tree I pruned the most heavily. It is also my favorite apple. I’m crossing my fingers, is all I got to say.

Here are the before and afters:

This is the Honeycrisp. You can’t tell, but I sawed off a 4″ branch that grew to the middle and created a second smaller fork in the tree. All branches that crossed or grew toward a major branch were trimmed. All branches growing straight up were trimmed.

This is the Macintosh (I think). Note how dense the first picture is. I opted not to saw off the smaller side of the fork. The pruning books say to never take off more than one quarter of the tree. I’ll see how it does this year and if the pruning I did is deemed a success, I will toy with the idea of removing the fork next year. I decided the Honeycrisp fork will have to stay, as it comprises at least half of the tree.

This is one of the mystery apples. It is also the only healthy tree I have not to exhibit a major fork. It does, however, exhibit the effect of the prevailing wind.

So there you have it. How not to prune your apple trees. I hope it has been informative.

Next up: How not to plant Shallots. (aren’t you excited?!)

How To Boil An Egg (no, I’m not kidding)

boiled egg results based on freshness of egg
boiled egg results based on freshness of egg

Let’s get something straight, right off the bat: I am an experienced cook. And while I am the first to toot my own horn, I think most people who know me would go so far as to say I’m a good cook, too.

To the point: Every single year, around Easter, I invariably google “perfect boiled egg” or “how to boil an egg.” I recently bought a beautiful cookbook by James Peterson called Cooking, 600 recipes, 1500 photographs, one kitchen education. I would like to point out that Peterson does not scoff at my ineptitude. Seems boiling eggs (perfectly) gives lots of people problems. He says “when boiling eggs, the trick is to stick to the same method and learn exactly how long to cook them… to your liking.” I don’t actually use his method, but I do agree with him. His method is to put the eggs into already boiling water. Mine tend to crack when I do that, so I put my eggs in a good pot, cover them with cold water and bring them to a slow boil. Once that happens, I take the pot off the heat, cover the pan and leave them in the pot for 15 minutes.

But even doing that, I was still running into problems. And I finally figured it out. My problem isn’t likely to be your problem, but then again, you never know. So here is what I have learned about boiling eggs:

DON’T USE FRESH ONES!!

I have chickens, so I have really fresh eggs. I didn’t use to keep close of track of which eggs were the freshest, but — at least this time of year — I try a little harder. In order to boil eggs that will peel nicely and not leave some ungodly gelatinous ruin like the second egg pictured above, your eggs must be at least 2 weeks old — from hen to pot. Funny, isn’t it, that store bought eggs rarely, if ever pose a problem? It does happen on occasion however, and here is a good way to tell: put the egg into water and see what happens. Psychotic publications bordering on hysteria (you know, the ones that tell you that your frozen hamburger should be thrown out after six months when we all know it lasts forever…) will tell you an egg that floats vertically should be thrown out because it is bad. While I won’t tell you to eat an egg that is seriously floating on top of the water, I will tell you that deviled eggs will be the END of you if you don’t begin the process with an egg that is just on the verge of floating upward off the bottom of the pan. You won’t die, I promise.

To prove my point, I have photographed two eggs: the first is exactly two weeks old. I wasn’t careful about peeling it, so it isn’t perfect, but it was quite easy. The second should give you pause, if not violently turn your stomach. It is the same size, cooked the same amount of time. The only difference was that the second one was laid by one of my obliging hens today.

Actually, given what a pain in the ass deviled eggs are, it might not be a bad idea to use fresh eggs the next time you are asked to make them for a family brunch. I bet they won’t ask you again!