Tomatoes Redux

Last year I complained about my sorry tomatoes. ("Trouble with Tomatoes," 3/19/18). This year has been a completely different story. We've been having sweet, red tomatoes for over a month now. As a former Master Gardener getting it right should have been a no-brainer for me, but it's taken me only about 25 years to start geting the hang of vegetable gardening in sw Florida.

I suspect that the main difference was much earlier planting. I also used better potting soil and a bigger pot, and positioned it close enough to the hose that it was easy to water. I bought an "Early Girl" start, and fertilized it with slow-release pellets. At the moment the plant is looking rather sorry, and apart from its last ripening fruits, has just a few flowers. There may be something wrong with it, but more likely, it may have run its course.

 Even though it is resistant to both fusarium and verticillium wilt, "Early Girl" is not listed as particularly well-suited to south Florida by the University of Florida, IFAS. However, it was recommended to me by an experienced gardener here, and I was familiar with it from earlier gardening days in Georgia. So far there's been no damage from birds, but the Grackles show up in force in late winter and spring. I suspect them as the main culprits. Insect activity also picks up with warm, windy and dry spring weather.

"Early Girl" Watercolor and Colored Pencil

Last week I planted 2 more tomato slips, and they already have produced small green tomatoes. It will be interesting to see if they have time to ripen before the weather gets too hot. Ditto for the lettuce and sweet alyssum seeds I planted along the rim of the pots.

I'm doing an online course in colored pencil with Wendy Hollander, organized by Karen Abend. It's just a little task each day, and so far I've been more or less able to keep up, despite a frustrating elbow injury. Along with the colored pencil technique itself, it's also a review of basic drawing skills, which certainly is not wasted on me. I'm very pleased with what I'm learning, if not by what I'm doing. I've got a long way to go with colored pencil, as my tomatoes below show. I was trying different colors for shading, and got much too heavy-handed with the dark sepia in the tomato on the left. In fact, two of the tomatoes look more like apples to me.

"Early Girl" - Colored Pencil

I still need to contact Harry's Tasty Tomatoes (see my 3/19/18 post  ). No matter what seeds I may get from him, I think I will keep "Early Girl" on my list of Florida favorites.

I also have beautiful kale under the Fiddlewood. (I need to do a post on that wonderful plant. It provides just the sort of dappled shade under which so many plants thrive, and is a favorite perch for the few songbirds we get here). I'm picking it young, so I can braise it with plenty of garlic and some broth, and then add it to sauces or stir fries. To my way of thinking, a lot of recipes underestimate the time it takes to cook "greens." That includes baby kale. I just keep checking until I think it is tender, regardless of the cooking time given. I don't mind a bit of crunch in most vegetables, but undercooked greens to me are about as chewable as grass clippings, which doesn't mean they have to be cooked "dead," either. The bigger and older the leaves, the longer they need to cook.

Kale Mix from Burpee

The wonderfully textured and/or crinkled leaves are endlessly fun to draw, as long as I don't grimly attempt to get every little curlicue right. This sketch started out as ink (Pigma Micron #005) and watercolor. I made the mistake of using yellow for the highlights, but that made the leaves look sickly, so I tried to brighten them up with watercolor pencil, which didn't work too well, and colored pencil, which worked better. Some of the varieties are very blue-green, which I didn't capture here.

North Carolina Interlude

 The first of November I spent a lovely week in the mountains of North Carolina with two of my sisters. The mountains were even more beautiful in fall than in summer and spring, my usual times to visit. The absence of summer haze meant a clear vista of slope after slope after slope, and the fall foliage was brilliant.

The famous plantsman David Fairchild titled his autobiography The World Was My Garden. Still, it would be a stretch to claim the mountains of western Carolina as an extension of my near-sea level back yard! I bought a new sketchbook just for this trip, so I'll review it here.

Over the past few years I've read a lot of rave reviews of the Stillman & Birn  sketchbook series, and I finally bought one. They come in various weights and finishes, and I dithered and dithered over which one to buy until I just took a deep breath and bought a Zeta, heavyweight (270 gsm), super-smooth, high-white paper.

For years my sketching standby has been Aquabee Super Deluxe Mixed Media paper (150 gsm), and the slickness of the Zeta took me by surprise. My pencils and pens seemed to slip  and slide all over the paper. Moreover, the  Zeta series paper doesn't immediately soak up moisture, and puddles of pigment tend to sit on the surface and take a good while to dry. However, this does make for some very interesting mixing on the paper effects, and wet in wet causes no breakdown of the surface, which can happen pretty quickly with other sketchbooks. There was some buckling of the paper where I got really sloppy, but that was mostly evident on the back side, and diminished some over time.

I did and still do have problems laying down an even wash on this paper without prewetting it. That could be me as well as the paper, though. So far, which isn't that far into the book, I still have problems hitting just the right amount of moisture. The sketch of the Japanese maple leaflet below shows my problems with washes.

Uneven Washes

Once I stopped fighting with the paper I really began to have fun. The top leaf in the next sketch is a sycamore, but I don't know what the other two are. The good old inner critic whom we all know and love, convinced me to give up on the bottom left leaf.  I couldn't get the beige-yellow of the beat-up old leaf correct, and I gave up in frustration. Once I got home I decided that regardless of the inaccuracy of the color, the sketch wasn't that bad, but I no longer had the leaf.

 I had more patience with my second attempt with a Japanese maple leaflet. I used multiple glazes of Winsor &Newton permanent rose, Daniel Smith quinacridone gold, and W%N quinacridone red, waiting for each layer to dry before adding another. The paper took all those layers, and likely would have taken more, without buckling or breaking down. I'm delighted with the clear, brilliant results I got.

Zeta is listed for mixed media, and back home I've tried it with both Prismacolor and Faber-Castell colored pencils. Despite the Zeta's lack of tooth, colored pencil goes on beautifully. Again, I had to modify my technique somewhat. I had to use hard pressure to make the pigment smear at all. Graphite, especially the softer grades, will smear if I'm not careful, but that is the nature of the medium.

The Zeta takes ink beautifully. The sketches above are done with  Pigma Micron, but I  have used a dip pen #104 at home with no scratching, skipping, bleeding or feathering. Even the juicy line of my medium nib Lamy Safari pen doesn't smear unless I deliberately and quickly get my hand or finger on it while it is still wet.

Now I know why other sketchers have raved about Stillman and Birn, though most seem to use the Alpha series. The main drawbacks of S&B over other sketchbook brands is that it is relatively pricey, and not as universally available.While it seems made for ink and watercolor wash, I don't know whether it would dry quickly enough for quick watercolor sketching on the go, especially for painters who like things wet. That might not be a problem in less humid areas.

The Zeta is very bright and very slick, even smoother, if possible, than Bristol plate. The most comparable watercolor papers to it that I know are Sennelier and Fluid hot press. It is ideal for the finely-detailed botanical illustration that I do back in the "studio," my dining room table. I am anxious to order some Zeta by the sheet, because even at this early point I like it better than Bristol and some watercolor papers.

My original plan was to start either with the Alpha or the Zeta, and work my way respectively up or down the series. I thought I might even try the roughest finish to train the frustrated landscape painter inside me because a rough finish would force me to deal in shapes instead of details. Stillman and Birn has recently come out with a sketchbook with toned paper, the Nova. I am so pleased with the clear, crisp images I can produce with multiple washes and patience on the Zeta, though, that I will have trouble keeping to my original plan!