Rural Heritage October/November 2025

Tomatoes grow in a demonstration greenhouse.

In the String and Clip System of trellising, suckers in the upper plant would have to go. With too much nitrogen plants will stretch. Tomato size is determined at pollination. When pruning the plants, keep foliage over the tomatoes. Make sure that the fruit is covered. When it’s growing, the plant determines that it can make X number of tomatoes. But if it doesn’t receive enough nutrients, it can abort a tomato. The bottom leaves should be trimmed out to let the air get underneath the leaves and fruit. The improved air flow is important. If you reach under the leaves and fruit at midday and it’s damp, this presents an ideal condition for disease. A magnesium deficiency can cause tomato blight and eventually lead to the death of the plant. When the plant runs out of magnesium, it pulls this mineral from the oldest leaves, usually at the bottom of the plant, and uses it elsewhere. Robbed of magnesium, these bottom leaves are where blight lands, so trim them off. A sign of manganese deficiency is light and dark patches on the same leaf. Outside the greenhouse both sweet and storage onions were growing. Onions start bulbing based on the length of day. Every leaf is a ring on the onion. Onions require 140 to 150 units of nitrogen. Planting time is the second week of April in Grand Haven, Michigan. In Ohio and Indiana, planting is in late March.

Onions can take freezing down to 27 to 28 degrees, but not night after night. If you eat an onion and then you can taste it for hours afterward, this is caused by pyruvic acid, a result of adding nitrogen and sulfur too late in the season. More minerals like potassium and calcium lower the percentage of nitrogen. Yellow tips on the leaves in May indicate a nitrogen deficiency. You need another 15 to 20 pounds of nitrogen through the drip line. When 50% of the tops dry down and fall over, you’re close to harvest. Push down the rest of the leaves with your shoe and let the onions dry for a couple of days. Beware that rain is the enemy of harvested onions. Lay the onions down in a row with the leaves covering the bulb of the previously pulled onion. Clip them to 1 inch when you take them inside to dry. The same harvesting advice goes for garlic when 25% of the tops dry down and fall over. Nearby, there was a small field of corn about 4 feet tall, in tassel with the silk showing on the ears. This wasn’t HPD corn. Gary said that more and more sweet corn is being grown that’s short, with the ears close to the ground. This facilitates mechanical harvesting and reduces the amount of corn plant that’s left behind after harvest. Your eyes will tell you a lot if you know what to look for. Many in the audience were bi-lingual Amish. Both Leon and Gary agreed that it’s to your benefit if you also learn to understand “Plant.”

October/November 2025

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