Growing project updates

Im participating in three growing projects this year:

• I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
• I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
• I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project
  

Bramki

Lovely plant. Very sturdy; they've doubled in size since I planted them less than a month ago. Bramkis also went to my homeschooling project, a rainbow tomato patch for a friend (a red, a black, a gold, and a green), and the plant sale at Peterson Garden. This and the Ferris have some flowers started, which I've bagged.

Ferris

Again, going strong, nice big sturdy plants. I had only 30% germination on these, so all three that survived went into my garden. Unfortunately, managed to break the central stem on this bagging the first set of flowers. This will weaken the plant, but I guess it just becomes another part of the experiment. There are two additional plants as well.

Blondkopfchen

I have a possibly-bk plant, plus one that I picked up from The Yarden. Per Kelly, I'll save seeds from the Yarden plant for her.

German Pink (One Heirloom)

Planted out the Pink about a week ago, just before the insane heat. It's doubled in size, but unfortunately was not a strong enough, large enough start to really be proof against slugs. Working on some slug barriers for it until it can get bigger. If these folks do this challenge again, I hope they either just distribute seeds, or get it together to have much better or much earlier starts.

Swiss chard

These got a bit drowned by the 6 inches of rain we had in May and none of them came up, along with the other seeds I had in this bed. Think I'm going to need to build a raised bed for this spot next year.

Walnut ginger blondies with chocolate chips

2/3 cup ww pastry flour
2/3 cup finely ground walnuts
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg
3/4 honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup finely chopped candied ginger
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325°.
Mix dry ingredients, including ground walnuts and ginger pieces. In a mixing bowl with hand-held electric mixer on high, beat egg until foamy. Add honey and vanilla; beat well. Stir in flour mixture, then add the chips. Grease an 8x16" pan, spread batter with a spatula. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until deep golden brown. Cut into 2-inch bars; cool in pan. Makes 32 walnut bars.