The Latest House Tomato Plant Experiment

Babies see them? They are on the left and there are lots of them. The main plant on the right is from last winter. Note it is blossoming for its third time.

1. The first winter I grew Tiny Tom heirloom tomatoes under grow lights and all but a couple ended up dying from neglect in the summer. That was the first summer the grandkids came to stay. 

2. The second winter I cloned the plants and started some from seed to see the difference in growth.

3. The third winter is around the corner. Right around the corner as we are suppose to get down to 16 degrees F. mid this week. My new experiment for this fall and winter has been cutting the existing plants down and letting the scraggly things grow from a stub. The plants looked pretty sad due to neglect in August and September which is really a hectic time with trying to get kids in school, canning season, and getting everything ready for winter which never fully happens. The plants are presently under the grow lights since the sunlight hours is decreasing and the plants would simply begin to die if I did not. I tried leaving them in the window some plants in the window area last fall. Our sun hits our house from a lower in the sky from a southern direction in the winter months. Then it moves overhead in the summer months and the same winter plants that produced  in the southern window sills had to be moved to the back deck to get adequate sunlight.

 The plants after producing a total of 80 to 100 tomatoes per plant (40 to 50 at a time) died back with neglect. I picked the best plants and reduced the number. They are once more under grow lights as the sunlight decreases. I hear we won't have such a warm winter this year so I'm guessing grow lights is where they will remain  instead of the window sill.

It was not until recently that I started paying serious attention to the poorly neglected plants. I badly need to get some lettuce, spinach, etc. along with herbs growing. We miss the fresh produce and economically could really use them so I'm slowly working on getting things in production once more. Several of the tomato plants had come around and after showing a great deal of new growth were looking pretty sad once more but in a different way. Aphids took over. The cause I know was improper watering and the soil was depleted leaving the plants weakened. I hosed the plants down thoroughly with the water spraying off the kitchen sink, cut away much of the diseased area, pulled a good portion of the soil out from around the roots without completely disturbing the plants since they are blossoming, and rubbed my fingers firmly against the top and under side of the leaves to squish the bugs several days in a row. A week later, the remaining leaves looked pretty healthy.

 In their neglected stage, I had let some of the tomatoes rot on the plant and the seeds fell to the soil and new plants sprung up. As I worked over the parent plants, I transplanted some of the volunteers to smaller pots. Sometimes wonderful things happen all on their own. What a blessing! These new plants I will put in large pots around the south and west side in the windows or in front of them when the sunlight hours increase.

I love the fact that the tomatoes nurtured their own young. I've got more things to do than energy and time to do it. Our goal is to create a permaculture where nature does part of the work. Plants will produce their young or at least seed. Livestock will produce and rear their own offspring. We are finding it impossible to do all things ourselves in a self-sufficient scenario and is that really self-sufficient anyway?

A new experiment idea has sprung up from these neglected tomatoes. The plan is to clone a few of these tomatoes which I know is much faster than starting from seed. A past experiment showed that these cloned tomatoes are smaller than the ones started from seed. Handy when they are needed in the window sills.

 So far the plant size of the tomato plants cut back to nubbins and a few leaves is smaller yet but is it because of the depleted soil? I do know that nubbins, and cloned size works best under my grow lights. The started from seed plants reach at least 4 to 6 inches taller than the cloned and nubbin plants. My sun room plant stand has four horizontal shelves stacked high. It is the same type of shelves I use in the food room to put my canning jars on. Though adjustable, the height between shelves is limited.

My theory has proven correct that the plants started from the nubbins will produce more quickly than the cloned ones. Stands to reason since they have their root system established. Will they produce as many tomatoes as those cloned still remains to be seen. I did notice that even when taken care of the tomato plants after producing their tomato crop naturally die back.

Cloning tomatoes this year will have to wait as I lack room under the grow lights. The transplanted tomatoes, I plan on putting in front of the south windows later in the winter when the sunlight hours increase and they are too tall for the grow light area. 


My next hurtle is figuring out a way to keep this indoor garden going. I must coordinate when we need this garden most, when I an available to do the heavier work load times, and the cycle of the plants. That will be by far the hardest part of this self-sufficient project.

What Makes Beef Tough?

I have had to buy -- or should I say have chosen to buy some meat from the store lately. Roasts in particular as we are out and I refuse to buy lunch meat loaded with chemicals and a fake flavor. The scary thing is I bought some chuck steak to cook roast like for lunch meat and the stuff increased in size instead of shrunk -- scary! What are they putting in our meat these days? Since the fox cheated us out of some chicken, we have purchased a little of that also. We don't eat much store chicken anymore and interestingly our cholesterol levels are lower than they have been in many, many years. Makes me wonder what they put in them? Motivation to do our own crops up everywhere. Much easier when you are feeding 2 but with the grandkids here most of the week it is 6, making it a much more difficult task.


As I walk the isles on sale day, I notice the only roast in my budget are the tougher cuts. Good thing I like them and know how to cook them to a tender point. The cooking of tougher cuts of beef, pork, and lamb and wild game is the same. We have eaten lots of wild game, yak, and bison which all are cooked in the same manner.

I knew very little about meat and the various cuts until we began cutting our own. Before that I found the meat section of the store confusing. What cuts do you purchase to do what with? In this confusion you might have had a very chewy meat experience because the cut was cooked wrong. Yes, there is some meat that no matter what you do it will be tough but with this meat there can be a flavorful broth made. You just don't want to pay 6 dollars a pound and have something not chewable when you are done. My mom was a pro at cooking a roast to the tough leather stage. She cooked it at too high a temperature, without enough moisture and for too short a period of time. Of course it was a tougher cut of meat to start with.


https://www.angus.org/pub/beefchart.pdf is a great site to see just where different cuts of meat come from. What we learned when we started cutting up our own beef was that you could get different cuts from the same section of beef. Customizing is a great lure of do it yourselfers. For instance, pork chops is the cut from which Canadian Bacon also comes from. Either you cut a little of the section for chops and make Canadian Bacon from the rest or you choose between the two. 

If you look at a beef, the top center of the beef and top of the hip is where the choice cuts come from, the loin, rib, sirloin etc., most of your steak cuts. Prices reflect this. The bottom section is where the animal gains its locomotion, hence, locomotion muscles. This is the hip and shoulder where the legs propel the animal forward. The top of the shoulder is where my favorite tougher cut comes from, Chuck. Chuck has the most awesome flavor. It is my absolute favorite beef meat and I will take it over T-bone steak any day.

There are other factors besides locomotive versus support muscles (the muscles that aren't locomotive muscles) that determine the tenderness of beef. They are Marbling, Stress, Feed, Aging, Slicing Across the Grain, Marinating, and Proper Cooking.

Marbling may be something you avoid because of fears of cholesterol. It is marbling though that gives meat a perceived tenderness because fat acts as a lubrication when chewing and aids in the separation of fibers. Fat lubricates between meat fibers making the fibers easier to pull apart giving those molars an easier time. Fat also stimulates the production of saliva which further stimulates taste. Fat also helps protect against over cooking. Don't avoid fat, just be smart about it and don't over eat.


Stress tightens the muscles and produces tough meat. Most animals travel a long distance to the butcher and if they are not left long enough in pens in order to relax some, then you taste the results. Our livestock die where they lived so they have no travel stress or stress from being corralled in a strange environment. They are placidly eating grain and then dead. It is that quick.


Feed plays a part in that corn fed beef is usually more tender because it increases fat levels and the animal gains weight quicker so it is butchered at a younger age. Younger animals are more tender. Our animals are closer to 2 years of age instead of 18 months. Pasture fed along with hay and a small amount of wheat is what ours eat. The increase in age gives us more natural flavor and because of the relaxed environment, taste testers have all chorused saying the meat is tender. My cousin and her husband came and had steaks with us but complained about how large they were thinking they could never eat it all. To their surprise they devoured it. They buy a half a corn fed beef every year but had not tasted anything quite as good as our beef. Feed choices equates to different flavors and different people like different flavors. In lamb this is especially true as it feed makes a large difference in flavor.


Our favorite beef is Coriante but they are not fun to keep in as they are wonderers by trait and they are much slower growing. This means lots more feed to meat ratio and time, lots more time to get to butcher size. Unless you have mild year round weather so little hay is need plus lots of pasture, it just isn't real cost effective. We bought a good sized Corianted to begin with and may do that again one day because I'm craving it. We eat mostly Angus since it is readily available. That is what will go into the freezer this year and a Angus /Semental calf that will grow and do the same.
 

Aging, marinating, proper cooking, and slicing across the grain, all help to tenderize meat. There are two kinds of aging, wet and dry. We do only dry and our meat does not hang as long as traditional corn fed beef. Diet plays a role here as does time in order to be able to process the beef. We have to coincide our hanging time with days off in order to get the job done - not necessarily when it is best for the meat. Yet we have been blessed with very tender beef. Dry aging does not work well on pork, lamb, and veal as they do not have the marbling to protect the meat from rotting. Corn fed beef can be aged longer because of the increased fat levels. I have to say our pasture, hay fed are not any less fat but they are babied. Most of you don't process your own meat so I won't go into aging. Marinating and cooking I will talk about in another post.

That leaves slicing across grain. That makes a huge difference as it cuts up the connective tissues in the meat. Fibers in the meat run in a direction. You cut in the opposite direction that the fibers run in order to break up the connective tissue. We cube a lot of our meat, almost all of our wild meat. We have a cuber that has knives that cut through the meat tenderizing it. Unlike the butcher or store meat that runs the meat through once. We run ours through from top to bottom and flip it so it runs through side to side so it gets really tenderized. Great if you have sever TMJ like I do. I have no trouble with mine but the dentist cringes when he works on my teeth.