Q: Where do we start?
A: Plan where you are going to plant things. If you’ve had, say, beans or tomatoes growing in a certain area for more than two years, you want to rotate those crops within a new area so that you avoid pest and disease build-up and depletion of the soil. In other words, you would grow beans, say, and tomatoes (just as examples) and have those two years on an area and then three years off. They would go somewhere else for another cycle. And on the ground that you just got finished growing those on, you're either doing a cover crop–letting the soil rest for a year or you are planting other types of vegetables on that area. So it’s a constant process of moving crops around so you don’t overtax the soil in one given area.
Q: If a person is just starting out and they have plowed up fresh dirt and have a bunch of our East Tennessee clay, they have a lot of work to do to get that soil ready for a food garden, do they?
A: First of all, for clay soils there’s nothing wrong with clay soil, it’s rich in nutrients and it’ll also hold moisture, but it will also bake into bricks in the summer. So composting is very, very important. Adding good organic composted material to that soil and working it in. You keep doing this over time and the texture of the soil will totally change. Plus, you’re adding good nutrients to it. So it’s a constant process. Always adding to it. It reminds me of eating. You know, we have to eat three times a day, and that garden needs to eat too. It needs nourishment to feed the crops that are planted in it.
Q: So much of the life of the garden is really underground?
A: It’s a big cycle. If you drew an illustration of it, you’d have the carrot tops above and carrot roots below, and you’d see all the organisms in the soil at work. And the more you add compost to that soil, the more you’ll attract worms, beneficial insects, and beneficial qualities to that soil. It makes a big difference in your gardens.
Q: For a Springtime Garden, do you like to start seeds inside or direct plant?
A: It depends on the size of your garden. Now if you’re doing, say, raised beds, or just have a small area, I like to just direct seed that. Or, if you can only, say, have room for ten or twelve lettuce plants, you might just want to buy those at your garden center and put them in. But if you are growing a good amount, I think it’s great to use trays. What we use at the farm–we have these black seeding trays and we’ll buy a sterile seed starting mixture. It is not soil-based, it is completely sterile so there are not any pathogens getting introduced to the plant when it’s seeded and comes up. And once those get up to six or eight inches tall, if they are lettuce you begin to set those out into the garden. You can do the same with parsley or any herbs that you want to grow. It is much easier to start those in a sterile setting like that than it is to try to sow something as fine as oregano seed out into the open soil. You have total control of it. You’re not fighting weeds or any other conditions. It's kind of like when a baby is born in the hospital, it’s in that totally sterile environment until it’s ready to get out into the world. It’s the same with those plants.
Q: Where do you find Heirloom seeds?
A: The Granddaddy of them all is the Seed Saver’s Exchange located in Decorah, Iowa. They’ve been around since 1975, and they have a vast range of different varieties. Tomatoes, beans, squash, pumpkins, peppers. I think their catalog has about eight pages of just color photographs of tomatoes alone. All of these are open pollinated varieties. Anything you buy from them, you can save the seed of. Now, another good one for the Southeast region is the Southern Seed Exchange.
Q: John, we were both born and raised here in Sequoyah Hills in Knoxville, Tennessee, and when I was little, we all knew that after April 16th, there would be no more frosts. But that has changed. When do you think it is safe to plant?
A: It has changed tremendously. Totally unpredictable. An old farmer told me once -
“Plant it when you want, boys, but it’s not going to do anything until that soil warms up.”
In other words your days are steady; as far as warmth goes, your nights are not too cold. And the soil itself is warmed up. That’s when it’s time to get those plants out. The exception to that is spinach, lettuce, spring onions, your cold weather crops. You can have those out earlier. But your general crops – beans, tomatoes, squash –, you’ve got to have good warm days, warm nights and warm soil.
Q: John, here we are in the early part of the year. In planning for future tomato sandwiches, when do you start those seeds?
A: You don’t want to start those plants inside too early or they get long and spindly. They won’t hold up when you put them out in the garden. The stalks are thin and weak. You want to start those seeds in seed trays right about now when you can have strong plants with thick stalks that are ready to place into the ground after the ground has warmed up. Around here, that is about mid-May, when the ground is good and warm. That is a good time to get your tomato plants out into the open soil.
Q: What types of tomato seed do you recommend for the best tomato sandwiches?
A: Several varieties make for excellent tomatoes. It depends on your taste. You want to go with an heirloom variety, say, a Cherokee Purple, or the German Pink are a couple of recommendations. I would recommend finding your seed from Seed Savers Exchange for a variety of excellent slicing tomatoes for your tomato sandwiches. Of course they also have pages of other varieties for making tomato sauce, and for cherry tomato varieties for salads and snacking tomatoes.
Q: How you like your tomato sandwich?
A: That is one of the pure delights of summer. A good, ripe home-grown tomato heirloom tomato, oh, maybe a Cherokee purple, plenty of soft white bread and Duke’s mayonnaise. Only one time of the year is the soft white bread really good and that is for tomato sandwiches.
John Coykendall is a frequent contributor to West Knoxville Magazine, and we welcome you to send your gardening questions for John to Amy.Campbell@CityLlifestyle.com. We will do our very best to answer your questions in upcoming articles.
“Plant it when you want, boys, but it’s not going to do anything until that soil warms up.”
John Coykendall is a Knoxville native, Farmer, Seed Saver, and Master Gardener at Blackberry Farm in Walland, TN. John owns a farm in Bybee, Tennessee, and is passionate about saving and sharing heirloom seeds and stories of the people who have saved them. In addition to farming, John is a talented artist and story saver. He has decades of journals with stories and drawings of the people and places he visits.