Growing Tomatoes Indoors

I like growing tomato plants inside my apartment--because the plants are such weeds that they'll grow despite the utter lack of an environment appropriate and beneficial to them.

These "Super Bush" tomatoes I grew from seed I got from Renee's Garden were flowering over two months ago. Now, I have okay-sized tomatoes plumping out on my plant. The plant itself is fairly compact--not as spindly as the tomatoes I grew last year, but probably not as compact as the plant is supposed to be. They don't get the intensity of light they need, despite getting five to six hours of direct sunlight each day. They do well enough, but it isn't as if they're thriving.

These are the only two tomatoes growing on the plant right now. The other couple flowers on this clump fell off, and I missed fertilizing another set of flowers--I saw them almost ready to open, then I found them all withered a week or so. Another set is coming up, so maybe they'll open and I can have more tomatoes that will ripen in, say, November. I have been way too busy with various things this year. I would like at some point to be able to focus on the plants!

But, again, the "plant it and pretty much forget it" attitude is why tomatoes are awesome to grow indoors, as long as you get an amenable variety. "Super Bush" seems chill about it. It doesn't complain too much, it doesn't have the spider mite problem I had last year, and its tomatoes are significantly larger than the ones I got from "Ace Bush" last year, which took until November to mostly ripen on the vine (and several stayed red and firm off the vine until January, because for some reason I didn't eat them all and kept them around forever).

I do have weird spots on the stems of "Super Bush," but they're really only visible when I take a picture with flash. I wonder what it is? Maybe the tomato is just trying to be cool, like the Ledebouria socialis leaf peaking out on its left.

DC State Fair: The Aftermath

It has been an interesting ride this past two months planning the first-ever DC State Fair.

Yeah, that's right--Jenna, Amelia, and I pulled it off in only two months (less, actually; it was just about seven weeks from the first meeting to the event this past Saturday). That really is no small feat, but it's because the DC community demanded to be involved--and we were more than happy (in fact, quite pleased!) to have them!

When we first announced what we were doing, there was some skepticism: DC State Fair had no history or any credibility as an organization. Trying to find a location to host pie and vegetable contests (we wanted just a table or two on a restaurant patio, for example) was difficult, until I hooked up with the organizers of Columbia Heights Day to secure a tent. Once we had that detail (time, location, some sort of legitimacy!), people started knocking down our door to be involved.

The response from the DC community was astounding. Overwhelming. The three of us continually touted that "DC State Fair is a need DC has"--and that was proven true countless times when organizations, businesses, and individuals stepped up to support us in so many ways. So many organizations and businesses were generous with donations and incredibly happy to be involved in the first-ever event, and the support from community members was never-ending. Local (and even out-of-"state"!) bloggers helped spread the word about us and how to enter our contests. TV and newspaper reporters sought us out to interview us and get the word out, as well.

It was like an avalanche. A tiny shout led to this huge outpouring of support, creativity, and energy that carried DC State Fair through to its amazing inaugural showcase of DC talent in baking, canning, photographing, growing, and brewing. DC State Fair grew much larger than any of the three of us anticipated in its first year, and we hope to get only larger in coming years!

There were way too many “favourite parts of the day” for me to list. Instead of a single instance to call my favourite, I value most the overwhelming sense of a job well done that permeated the event. Everyone--contestants, attendees, judges, sponsors, and volunteers--expressed so much gratitude and excitement that DC State Fair was happening and was going so successfully. Although Jenna, Amelia, and I were running around like crazy all day, the preparation we had done beforehand (planning how judging would go, creating entry drop-off and judging schedules, giving our vendors and volunteers information beforehand to know what to expect) really helped the day go fairly smoothly. Of course, there were snafoos--we needed an extra table for all of the cupcake entries, and the cupcake and pie contests judging took a few extra minutes--but we ran almost exactly to schedule. That is no small feat!

Personally, I appreciate the amazing help we received on the day of from our volunteers. We had about a dozen people come out to help set up the tent area, check in contestants and their entries, collect donations, run samples from entries to the judges, and even run to the nearby Giant and CVS to buy water and other supplies. My involvement in several local volunteer organizations makes me have a pretty soft spot for the folks who donate their time to help make something a success--without those volunteers helping sort cupcakes, slice pickles, and interact with contestants and passers-by, the three of us organizers would never have been able to handle keeping the schedule and ensuring that the day's events went as planned.

Volunteers are the lifeblood of events such as DC State Fair, and in that I am also counting those people who volunteered their time to blog about DC State Fair, to tweet about us, to create posters for us, to e-mail their friends or neighbours saying "Oh, you should enter that huge pumpkin you have growing in your back yard!" That's part of community engagement, and that's what DC State Fair is to me: community. A way to share, a way to educate one another, a way to meet your neighbours who share the same hobbies as you. I have made so many new friends and colleagues whom I never would have met other than through organizing DC State Fair, and I learned an incredible deal about what DC has to offer to the home cook, home brewer, home gardener, and everyone in between.

It feels weird to say this, because when I moved here, I complained incessantly about how I reviled DC, but... I love DC now. Thank you, DC State Fair and everyone who made it happen!

Speaking of making it happen, here are some snapshots I shamelessly stole from the Facebook photo album of Bryan of FoodNewsie. Bryan was a tireless supporter, graphic designer, official photographer, and all-around awesome dude. There are a lot more photos on the aforementioned Facebook photo album, as well as on the FoodNewsie website, and everywhere on the internet, from Flickr to the Washington Post (although some details are inaccurate, I like the part that says we were "the area that drew the most people" to Columbia Heights Day).



Here are Kelly (right) and Ali of Glittarazzi, one of our wonderful sponsors, posing in front of the fabulous two-foot by eight-foot banner I threw together. They got the chance to be first-round judges in the cupcake contest, as well as judging tomatoes!


The cupcakes were one of the most hotly contested, er, contests at the first-ever DC State Fair. The level of creativity DC baked-confection-makers have is astonishing! The arms you see here are of our volunteers and sponsors, who were able to be first-round judges for the cupcake contest to narrow down which ones would be tasted by the final panel of judges.


Here's me (center) handing out first-round judge forms to volunteers for the cupcake contest. Oh, they were so excited about their volunteer duties! Amelia (left) also got the chance to sample some baked delights. I, however, only got some frosting on my finger--and it was damned good frosting, too!


Here are the jam judges. Shakti (left, sitting) of Smörgie is a general sponsor of DC State Fair; Screwy Decimal (center) and BAT CAT are DC Rollergirls, our roller derby home-team. Why would Rollergirls be involved in judging jam at the DC State Fair, you may ask? It's not that far a stretch, as they explained to us on the DC State Fair website. The cameragirl in the blue skirt was Sara Kenigsberg of TBD. She was there interviewing us and recording the happenings, which turned into a very nice video piece. To her right are Jenna and Amelia, sporting the ghetto-clever DC State Fair T-shirts that I made the night before. (We got some Columbia Heights Day DC flag shirts, and I used tape and spraypaint to get "DC State Fair" on them. My nose hairs were white and I was a bit loopy for a bit--I did that in my bathroom with no ventilation!)


Our judges had their hands (and mouths!) full throughout the day, tasting and scoring. This was the pie contest, with Marshall (left) of Scofflaw's Den; Nick (center) of Fat Man After Dark, one of our amazing sponsors who donated both money and a contest prize; and Olga of Mango & Tomato.


While judging the Funkiest-Looking Vegetable contest (a contest I convinced Soupergirl to sponsor with a prize because I wanted it to happen!), Mary of Girl Meets Food holds up the third-place winner: "Barrots." These are regular carrots, but they were grown next to beets, so they have an intense red colour. To her right sits Courtney Robinson from WJLA, who also judged the Funkiest-Looking Vegetable contest and officiated the drawing for prizes.


Kathy Jentz of Washington Gardener magazine sponsored the Biggest Vegetable category and so got to officiate the weighing and measuring of the vegetables. This was the contest otherwise known as "Everybody Wins!" Few gardeners entered our competitions, and when you have a three-way tie for second place for heaviest vegetable, well, that really does put a lot of people on the winners' list!


Bryan took a nice photo of me and the friendly WJLA newsreporter, Courtney, after the drawing prizes were announced and before she dashed off to officiate Columbia Heights Day's cupcake-eating contest. Wish I could have watched it, but it was at least 50 feet away from the DC State Fair tent!


DC State Fair, you rocked my socks!

DC State Fair Today!

It's the big day. I'm pretty sure we have everything prepared. It's all just going to happen, now! (Gosh, I'm tired. Need more coffee.)

If you live in DC, feel free to pop by and enter your veggies into our contests. If you don't, pop on by and say hi!

Trees In The City

Not quite as fun a title as it would have been with what my Ornithogalum caudatum was doing with my beard trimmer, but I still find it funny. (At least one person does!)

Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably know that I'm somehow involved in DC State Fair--most of my tweets have been about it for the past month! This post is, in part, my way of saying "I'm busy because I'm organizing DC's first-ever State Fair." I think Amelia (another organizer) said it best in her post that could have been titled "Why I’m Not Posting To This Blog Very Often These Days." Jenna (the final member of our organizing triad) has actually been posting quite regularly on her blog, which is an amazing feat with the amount of work we're putting into this endeavour!


My regular readers may have picked up that I'm overly involved in a variety of activities here in DC; I have my thumb in a whole lotta pies. But it isn't until one starts organizing something like DC State Fair that s/he truly becomes aware of the wealth of businesses, organizations, and people in the area who have so much to offer to the community. Casey Trees was one such organization that I knew about but hadn't really explored until organizing DC State Fair hooked me up with them.

I contacted Casey Trees (among many, many other organizations and businesses) to see whether they would be interested in being involved in DC State Fair somehow. DC State Fair isn't about agriculture only--we hope for it to be a showcase of all DC talent, in arts, crafts, gardening, baking, brewing, all those skills one needs to survive in the post-apocalyptic future. Part of that survival will be building and strengthening community, which is a huge goal of DC State Fair--and one of Casey Trees', through its community outreach, volunteering, and education programs (y'know, beyond their ultimate goal of planting an ever-greater number of trees to increase the urban tree canopy, which will reduce heat-island effect, improve water and air quality, and reduce energy use--and just make things prettier).

Although I have known of the nonprofit for years, I only recently had my first real experience with Casey Trees--I attended a maple tree identification course at the National Arboretum a few weeks ago. I have always been a fan of maples, and learning how to identify trees has been on my list of things to do for a while (albeit close to the bottom), so I thought "Hey, why not finally actually learn something?" In just two hours walking around the Arboretum with Casey Trees' volunteer coordinator Carol Herwig, I learned an amazing amount about maples and how they came to the DC area, where they grow best, and what specific concerns there are for maples in general and certain species in particular (in terms of care, pest problems, and the like). I really enjoyed learning about the seemingly endless species and varieties of maples. My favourite overall was Acer palmatum, Japanese maple, for the sheer variety of colour and fun shapes of its leaves. But my favourite specimen shown to us was an Acer platanoides "Crimson King," to the right. I just have a thing for purple foliage. And now that it was pointed out to me, I am noticing it all around town--it seems to be a popular variety to plant in the shade-tree game.

So after having such a good experience learning about maples, imagine my pleasure when Casey Trees agreed to be a Table Sponsor for DC State Fair (on my birthday, no less, while I was on my lunch break). They'll be discussing urban tree care and their programs at the DC State Fair canopy on 28 August at Columbia Heights Day, which is hosting us. So if you have tree questions or are interested in their programs or volunteering with them, y'all should fly down here (or metro, if you live nearby) and come to the Fair!

I did e-mail Casey Trees to get more information from them for this post, and whoa, do they have an amazing wealth of information about taking care of urban trees! Their website is loaded with awesome facts, programs, event listings, and interactive tree maps. Some of the information provided to me via e-mail was good information for any person caring for any tree, and some bits were more DC-area specific. For a general-care example, when tending to a tree in need, hire a certified arborist! (You can find one here.) While in Master Gardener training, I learned how to prune properly, but even having been trained in basic tree care, I wouldn't feel up to the job of ensuring future prettiness and health of a tree (let's just say I have a proven record of being better at killing plants than keeping them alive). I'd hate if what I did to a tree killed it or made it less pretty or less vigorous--and those without training can do a whole lot of damage to a perfectly healthy tree!

Casey Trees offers an amazing amount of information on its website (for example, a nice list of trees that do well in DC, with a shout out to trees native to the area [such as serviceberry, the only edible one on the list {I mean, there's hackberry, too, I guess}]), but their true wealth, I think, lies in their educational and volunteer opportunities. The organization does a lot of training and outreach (example: DC State Fair!) and plants a whole ton of trees every year with the help of volunteers. They also have other programs by which homeowners can request a tree planting or do it on their own with some advice from Casey Trees.

But I know the burning question in your mind: what fruit trees do well in DC?! As mentioned above, the locally native serviceberry is one Casey Trees plants regularly and has seen success with. And although their mission is less about food and more about urban reforestation with shade trees, I was told that homeowners have reported positive results with cherry, peach, pear, apple, fig, and pawpaw (a fun fruit, and also native to this region!). Citrus, on the other hand, not so good. (My dwarf lime in the window is sending out a lot of branches lately, however, so I'm hopeful that it's doing well.) Although it wasn't included in the list Casey Trees gave me of fruit trees that have reportedly done well in DC, mulberry is an obvious one--Amelia posted about it last year, and I see them everywhere in DC, now.

For those of us without outdoor space (or even a balcony), we can go out and get our hands dirty volunteering to plant (or myriad other opportunities) with Casey Trees. Who ever said one needed to own land to care about it and the community it supports?

Shooting Blanks, Mostly

Although I tried to get Ornithogalum caudatum to fertilize itself last time it flowered, it never took.

This time barely took, either, but I used my beard trimmer instead of a Q-tip or paintbrush. The vibratory method worked with my lemon basil and my Renee's Garden "Super Bush" tomato this year, too. That beard trimmer really gets around. I'm starting to get jealous of it. It leaves its little stubbly hairs all over my plants, evidence of its lack of shame at makin' babies with each and every one of them.

So, although O. caudatum makes babies (hence the name "Pregnant onion") asexually, there's just something about starting a plant from seed that really gets me. Not enough to forgive my beard trimmer for its sexcapades, but almost enough.