Information from our September 2009 newsletter regarding the late blight that devastated many tomato fields last year.  A reader requested that we post it here on the blog. A Boss’s Corner column is included every week in our newsletter.

The Boss’s Corner

Hi,

So far this September, the sun has sent its warm rays and bathed Magicland Farms with its photosynthesis inducing electromagnetic energy from sunup to sunset. Clouds have been scant and fleeting and liquid sunshine has been absent replaced with the genuine stuff. This sunny, dry weather has really helped our tomatoes and it hurt the Phytophthora infestans fungus/mold, more commonly referred to as late blight.

Canning Tomatoes

Tomatoes are usually canned using the hot water method, which is well known by most of our customers. It is also known that while tomatoes can be successfully canned with this method beans can’t be. Why? It has to do with the acidity and the problem of botulism and other bacteria. While it is impossible to get a jar of tomatoes hot enough using a hot water bath to kill the botulism organism, the botulism bacteria can’t survive in an acid environment. How to you measure acidity? Using the pH number. A pH of 7, like distilled water, is neutral, vinegar is an acid and has a pH below 3 while baking soda is an alkaline with a pH above 9. In order to can tomatoes safely, the tomatoes must have a pH BELOW 4.5. Every tomato of ours we tested tested below 3.8 which means they are plenty acid enough. (By the way our beans test around pH 5 which means they must be canned with a pressure canner.) We looked up about the USDA’s recommendations concerning blight infected tomatoes and they say it is OK to eat them fresh BUT THEY SHOULDN’T BE CANNED!!! Why? The USDA never said in the bulletin although we think it is because tomatoes picked from dead vines aren’t as tangy (less acid) than those from healthy vines. WE NEVER PICK TOMATOES FROM DEAD VINES!!! If you have a question about the acidity of your tomatoes, our tomatoes or any other vegetable or fruit, stop by our market and we can give you, free of charge, a little paper test strip that will let you know if the acidity of the fruit or vegetable is below or above pH 4.5. We also can show you how to use it-this takes about 20 seconds to show how. In short, there is a tiny sensitive area in its center where you put a drop of juice. This sensitive area turns color and you can then tell what pH the juice is-the color coding is right on the strip so you don’t need another color chart. Nice little thing…

Late Blight

First off, late blight generally infects only tomatoes and potatoes. This is the same disease that caused the horrific Irish potato famine of the 1840s. It is caused by the Phytophthora infestans organism and loves mild (60 to 80F) temperatures and lots of wetness. It is the same thing that killed Martha Stewart’s tomatoes in Connecticut and did the same to millions of other tomatoes across the eastern part of the country this year. I have never seen it before on our farm and a 85 year old woman who grew tomatoes all her life in Newaygo County never saw it before either. What happened? Well, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Kmart and Wal-Mart all sold tomato seedlings with late blight in their garden centers from April to June this year. They obtained their plants form several southern growers who grew them outdoors and apparently didn’t take care of them right so they got full of late blight. This explains how the blight got started but not how it spread to people who grew the tomatoes themselves and didn’t plant infected tomatoes (like us). The other culprit here is the weather-the lack of sun and the cool, rainy and wind. The two working together-the diseased plants all over the place in home gardens and the weather-did many, many tomatoes in this year.

Late Blight and Magicland Farms

My middle daughter, Rebekah, called my attention on August 6th to something funny on a couple of tomato plants in our #1 patch. It was late blight. That same day we removed and buried hundreds of plants, in all three patches, that had any sign of blight on them The next day I put on a fungicide on most tomato plants. Apparently, the blight had already spread and a week later it was visible on many, many more plants in all three patches. However, the fungicide and the warmer, dry weather worked together to stop the blight in its tracks and about 2 weeks later the tomatoes grew on and now look healthy with delicious blight-free tomatoes-however, we lost about 2/3rds of our potential crop since the blight really set the plants back and while they are growing well now it’s very late for tomatoes since the days are growing shorter and our usual frost is just a little over 2 weeks away (October 1). (By the way, while at the farm the average killing frost is in early October, next to inland lakes it is the end of October.)

Just to reassure you: we never knowingly picked a blighted tomato except to toss it and we don’t pick tomatoes from dead plants!

Liking the sunny dry weather for now but have a secret hope for some rain soon.

Nashle!
Tom

Things get really busy around here from about May/June until November. I mean crazy busy where we don’t know if we are coming or going.  One of the casualties of this craziness is going to be this blog. I like blogging but don’t have the amount of time needed to do it justice.

Luckily, we also publish a newsletter (at least one issue per week) during the farm season. It includes recipes, crop information, notes from the boss and whatever else strikes our fancy. You can subscribe to the newsletter by clicking on the button on the right sidebar that says  ”Email Newsletter Signup”. I think you will enjoy the newsletter and find it full of some great information.

Thank you so much for reading and please consider subscribing to our newsletter.

(Strawberries from our 2009 crop)

Sunday evening meant inspection of the strawberry patch to determine when sales would begin. There were strawberries almost ripe for picking so it was determined that we would start selling the strawberries on Thursday, June 3.

Along with the strawberries we will have radishes and sometime next week will have snow peas available for sale. Remember we also have sugar snap peas coming but they are not ready yet.

A couple of weeks ago, Tom called me from the farm and mentioned that they had found some chives that had begun growing after overwintering on the farm. He wondered if there was something we could use them in and I managed to come up with a couple of things. The first was to add a bunch to our mashed potatoes (which was a wonderful addition to already wonderful mashed potatoes) and the second was this dinner roll recipe. These turned out light and fluffy winning rave reviews from my taste testers.  I love finding great recipes to use up our herbs; they add something special to our meals.

FRESH HERB ROLLS (adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 package active dry yeast

1 tablespoon white sugar

1 cup warm water

1 cup milk, room temperature

2 eggs

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup chopped fresh chives

6 cups bread flour

1 egg white

2 tablespoons water

Directions:

In a small mixing bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in 1 cup warm water. Let stand until creamy; about 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, stir together the yeast mixture with milk, eggs, salt, butter, parsley, chives, and 4 cups flour. Add the remaining flour a little bit at a time until dough has pulled together. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and put in a warm place to rise until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

Grease one 9×13 inch baking pan and one 9″ deep dish pie plate. Deflate and divide the dough into 18 pieces. Shape each piece into a round ball, and place in the prepared pans. Cover the rolls with a warm, damp cloth, and let rise until doubled, about 40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F . In a small bowl, lightly beat the egg white with 2 tablespoons of water; brush egg wash over tops of rolls.

Bake in preheated oven for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

My notes:

• One of my many failures as a baker is spaghetti bread from our bread machine. I just cannot seem to get a good loaf. So one day when we were having spaghetti, I decided to adapt these rolls as mini-spaghetti bread. In order to do that, add the following in place of the chives and parsley: 2/3 cup Parmesan cheese, 4 teaspoons garlic, 1/4 teaspoon each of rosemary, thyme, marjoram and basil. Also substitute olive oil for the butter. Yum!
• I made 18 rolls from this recipe but they were large rolls. If you want smaller dinner rolls, use two 13×9 pans and divide the dough into 24-30 pieces depending on the size you want.
• I don’t always use the egg wash (usually because I forget). Egg washes are used to give rolls a pleasing golden color but if you are like me, feel free to forget it; they will still taste great.

Since it is so warm, we went down to the farm to open the high tunnel. The first photo shows a view of the high tunnel with the sides open. See the plants inside? They look great! The second photo gives you a better view of the growth inside the tunnel. We took off the low tunnel that you saw in the pictures last week.

Here is a look at the pea field.

The beans don’t look like much right now but just wait. This warm weather should be encouraging growth.

Because of the freeze on Mother’s Day weekend, the potatoes were set back a bit. They sure look good now. The bags you see in the photo were used to mark the rows; we don’t need them anymore but haven’t taken them out yet.

Have a guess what this might be? A tent city perhaps? Actually each one of those tents houses a giant pumpkin plant. We used agribon fabric over hoops to make the tent. This will protect the pumpkin plant from all sorts of things and give them a good headstart. Hopefully we will get some giants out of these plants. Hopefully one will set a new record for us.

That’s all for now; check back next week for our latest photo tour.

I have always loved apple turnover, or cherry turnovers, or blueberry turnovers or any turnover for that matter.  I have been wanting to make some for the family but hadn’t quite found the perfect recipe. After doing some research in cookbooks and the internet,  I combined several versions and came up with this version that we all loved. Hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

RUSTIC APPLE TURNOVERS (adapted from recipes from King Arthur Flour and Family Fun Magazine and one other place that I can’t remember)

Ingredients for Turnover Crusts:

• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup cold butter
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Ingredients for filling:

• 3 cups (about 3 good-size) baking apples, peeled, cored, and diced
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

For egg wash: (make two separate washes)

• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons water

To make the crust:

Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.  Cut the cold butter into the flour mixture, much as you do for pie crust.  Stir in the sour cream. The dough should pull together; it won’t be smooth but it will pull together. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface, and bring it together with a few quick kneads. Roll the dough out to an 8″ x 10″ rectangle.  Dust both sides of the dough with flour. Fold the dough into thirds, similar to folding a letter. Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it into a rectangle again. Fold again using letter technique.  Roll the dough into a rectangle again. Fold it in thirds, wrap in plastic, and place in the refrigerator to chill for at least one hour (or overnight) before using.

To make the filling:

Combine the apples, orange juice, sugars, and butter in a medium-size saucepan. Cook over medium heat until mixture starts to boil; cover pan and boil for 3-4 minutes. NOT A ROLLING BOIL, more like a simmer.

Combine remaining ingredients in a small bowl and stir until smooth. Add to the apples and cook  for another minute at a low boil, stirring occasionally. Remove the pan from the heat. Cool completely (about 30 minutes).

To assemble the turnovers:

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Roll the chilled dough into a square about sixteen inches. Cut sixteen 4″ squares. For a tighter seal, you can brush two adjoining edges of each square with one egg beaten with one tablespoon cold water. (I did this and they still leaked.)

Place about two teaspoons of filling slightly off-center in each square.  Fold the turnovers in half diagonally, to creating a triangle. Press the edges with a fork to seal. Beat one egg with one tablespoon water.

Place the turnovers on a baking sheet, lined with parchment to catch any spills. Bake in the preheated 400°F oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until they’re a deep, golden brown; you may see some of the filling beginning to ooze out. Remove the turnovers from the oven, and cool on a rack.

My notes:

• My turnovers oozed filling all over the place, make sure to line your baking sheet with parchment paper. You will have a horrible clean up job if you don’t.
• I made my turnovers bigger than the recipe and got about 12 from this recipe.
• The coarse sugar I used was Wilton’s White Sparkling Sugar. I am sure you could use granulated sugar if you don’t have the Sparkling Sugar. However, the coarse sugar added to that rustic look.
• These turnovers turned out very flaky and I believe that is due both to the fold into thirds technique used on the dough and the butter in the dough. The folding technique is very similar to the technique used to make croissants which turn out very flaky if done right.
• My only attempt to try to make croissants was on a hot humid July day in Chicago and mine certainly didn’t turn out flaky but I have learned from my mistakes. Make sure to chill the dough. It helps a lot!
• I used Idared apples for this recipe. Jonathans or Northern Spy would also work well. 

This past week or so has seen some good news and bad news, The worst news was the frost that occurred over Mother’s Day weekend. Freeze warnings were issued and of course, because everything got an early start this year, lots of stuff was at risk. Some fruits and vegetables were affected; see the details below.

We have also been busy planting, plowing and planning this year’s planting scheme for the farm. So let’s just cut to the chase and tell you the good, the bad and the just plain ugly news from Magicland Farms.

The Good

• The strawberries survived the frost on Mother’s Day weekend due to the use of sprinklers. So it looks promising that we will have a strawberry crop this year.
• The peas, onions and garlic also survived the frost due to the fact that these crops are cold hardy. They can take a lot of cold and still keep on going.
• The tomatoes in the high tunnel sustained no damage.
• Most of the sweet corn plantings are okay because the early plantings were small and the growing point was still beneath the soil.
• The green beans were just coming up so they sustained no damage. Tom was amazed the other day with how well they are growing. At the rate they are going, it looks like a super early bean year for us.
• We have planted three different varieties of sweet potatoes: Beauregard, Carolina Ruby and Vardaman.  Here is a photo of our sweet potato planting: The row at the right is a row of tomatoes; the rows to the left are the sweet potatoes.

The Bad

• The potatoes sustained some minor damage. On Sunday, Tom and I went to look at things at the farm and you could see new green growth coming from the potatoes so while they might have suffered a setback, the plants are starting to make a comeback.
• The tomato plants we had in the low tunnels out in the field were about half damaged. Interestingly, the side of the low tunnel that received some of the sprinkler water meant for the strawberries survived; the side that didn’t was a loss. Those tomatoes that died have been replaced with new transplants.

The Ugly

• The pawpaws sustained heavy damage from the frost.
• The apples sustained moderate to heavy damage depending on the variety and the location in the orchard.
• Tom looked at the peaches the other day and thinks that there might be moderate damage to the crop. However, we should still have some peaches.

Overall things are looking good. We all wish the frost hadn’t happened but we know that everything happens for a reason. Planting is continuing, we still have lots more to go. Keep on checking back for updates. You can see some more photos at my previous post: Sunday Stroll Around The Farm.

Although Magicland Farms has been around for a bit, we are always learning new ways to do things around here. Every year we seem to try something new, maybe a couple of things, and keep those things that work well and discard ideas that didn’t work quite so well.

This year we are really getting into using raised beds. Raised beds are basically strips of soil formed into 3-4 feet wide strips raised above the surrounding soil, usually about 6 inches. A frame around the bed is optional. There are many advantages to raised bed gardening:

1. Eventually soil compaction is a problem with farm ground.  The weight of heavy equipment compresses the soil, making it more difficult for plants to grow because the compacted soil is difficult to penetrate. Raised beds great reduce soil compaction since nothing is able to compact the soil. As a result, the roots develop with greater vigor – growing in a raised bed is like adding tons of compost to the soil.
2. Plants can be placed closer together in raised beds thereby increasing  productivity per square foot of bed as well as reducing weeding when the plants begin to mature. Since the plants are closer together, the canopy formed by the plants inhibits weed growth.
3. It is easier to control soil conditions on smaller raised beds than throughout an entire tract of land.
4. Raised beds tend to drain away excess moisture better than ordinary garden beds. After a day of heavy rain, we cannot often get into the fields because of drainage issues. Imagine how the plants feel! With a raised bed, the plant bed has better drainage allowing the plant to grow in a healthier environment.

Matthew used a few different items in his construction arsenal and came up with an automatic bedmaker. It has been a great help in creating the raised beds.

The vegetables that we are going to grow using the raised beds are: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, sweet potatoes and giant pumpkins. It will be interesting to see how this helps, both in the growing stage and the harvesting stage.

I’ll keep you posted.

Okay, it’s not really a stroll since we took the truck but we did get out and walk around!  Here are some pictures of how things look at the farm.

A view of the tomatoes in the high tunnel.  We planted them earlier than we have in the past,  so we added the extra protection of the low tunnels in case it frosted (which it did with no ill effects inside the high tunnel.) Below is a look inside the low tunnel – you can see the tomatoes growing under the fabric.

And look at the next photo. Some blossoms appear on the plants! I cannot wait for the taste of a fresh tomato. We go many months with any slicing tomatoes since we don’t buy any from the grocery store. I would love a nice tomato sandwich right about now.

The following picture shows a low tunnel with more tomatoes, a raised bed with radishes and part of the strawberry field behind the radishes.

After leaving the high tunnel, we went to check on the peas. Here is a view of the field. The plants look so nice and isn’t that a beautiful sky?

Finally here are a few photos of the electric fence we have surrounding most of the fields. The first picture is a long view of the fence, followed by one of the gates we use and our warning signs.

Hope you enjoyed our little tour! I plan on doing this most Sundays but you know how that goes. The best laid plans ……