Tomatoes Get Somewhat Organized

Anarchy.

This spring, my tomatoes fell into anarchy. Normally, I'm known as a relentless pruner when it comes to taming that New World beast. But after allowing them to know such freedom, I couldn't bear to give them the mid-summer hacking. Practically speaking, they'd invested so much energy into those skinny, desperate tendrils. I feared cutting into their yield. So, I met them halfway.

The illusion of control.

I strung up what I could, leaving a dense, tangled mass at the bottom of the trellises. And it's a mess in there. Older leaves, yellowed with age, shading out young healthy leaves. None of the air flow I like in my tomato bushes, so I suppose they're more vulnerable to blight. But I've decided to show them a little more respect this year. Let them dream big.

I'm feeling generous after harvesting this very ripe tomato.

In the heat of the summer

The heat that started in early June has settled in. We can expect it to break sometime in October, which is generally when our first cool front hits. While others are experiencing bounty in their gardens, we are trying to nurse our plants through the rash of 100 degree days we continue to have.

Making my garden a little more challenging/out of my control this summer was a trip to Virginia. My family all lives out of town, mostly in the Shenandoah Valley. Due to shoulder surgery and wanting my kids to spend quality time with their grandparents, we were gone for an entire month. I left the garden in the hands of my husband and some friends who were housesitting.

My husband kindly weeded and mulched the garden. The mulching was essential to help retain the precious little water the plants get over the summer months. His other garden project was to tie into our irrigation system for the front yard and bury a pipe to the garden (about a 25 yard or so distance). My husband is a plumber by trade, so installing a faucet right next the garden proved to be no problem. This project was mostly inspired by convenience. He was tired of having to move the hose every time he mowed. This time of year, it isn't much of a problem, because he is not mowing the backyard at all.

However, we did suffer one plant casualty in the weeding and mulching. My husband's time in the garden is generally very limited, so he doesn't know the plants so well. He carefully left my dying nasturiums intact (they don't like our heat) and diligently pulled our struggling butternut squash plants. After being initially saddened by the loss of the squash, I recovered and was able to see the humor in it.

Our heirloom tomatoes are just barely managing to hang on and produce. The tomatoes are not examples of perfection. The stress of the heat makes it difficult for them to fight diseases and pests. I will need to cut bad spots off of these tomatoes, but I'm pleased that they are still producing despite the heat we've been having and the limited water. I have tried hard to stick to our city's mandatory watering schedule which limits watering to 2 days a week.

I will try to nurse my tomato plants through to the cooler weather. I talked to an owner of a nursery at our farmer's market on Saturday and he recommended keeping them alive so they will produce again in the fall. I can't plant heirlooms for the fall growing season because they are indeterminates. I need to stick to the determinates. Hopefully, at least my Good Germans and Cherokee Purples (my favorite of all the heirlooms) will make it!

Tomato damage, from an unlikely quarter

As I looked down on the garden from my second-floor bedroom window the morning of father's day I had a bit of a rude awakening in the form of damage to several tomato plants. We've experienced the damage done by hornworms, aphids, and other critters and creatures, but this was something new.

Sometime in the night or early morning hours the top of a sweetgum tree had come crashing down across our fence and landed on top of several beefsteak tomato plants. I let out a small sigh and thought, Now here's a garden chore I hadn't anticipated.

Here's what they looked like once I had cut up and removed the tree and straightened out the cages:
Fortunately the fence broke the tree's fall enough that the plants underneath were salvageable. The tomato cages also helped absorb some of the impact. Some of the plants did lose a few stalks and some small fruits but a month later they're all making a comeback and doing just fine. We're finally starting to get a few ripe tomatoes.

Caging the Beast

It's a good thing that once everything is well-established in a vegetable garden, there's not much more to do besides sit back and enjoy the harvests. However, I still had one major task to tackle today, thanks to my own hardheadedness.

Besides the squirrel thievery, the only problem I had with our first crop of tomatoes three years ago was the cages. They were ugly. So when I put the sweet new seedlings in the ground six weeks ago, I refused to add depressing steel-gray cones to the mix, figuring that if the cages were never there, the plants would grow strongly and be self-supporting.

Boy, am I dumb!

The plants were a tangled, sprawling mess. Many of the branches had grown completely perpendicular to the stem and were 4 feet long. I was loath to cut off the branches with blossoms, since I know how yummy those blossoms will be in a few short weeks. However, many of them broke off on their own as I was coaxing them into the cages. They were reluctant, to say the least. But I managed to get 4 out of 7 (the cherry tomatoes, which were much more unwieldy and disorganized) into cages. Then I ran out of cages. But the others (larger variety) will be all right, I think. I hope.

As an aside, some of the leaves on my squash plants, which are next to the tomatoes, have been turning a powdery yellow and wilting. Although Rob has pointed out that tomatoes are technically poisonous (this helpful website can elaborate) I can't find any warnings online about companion planting with these two. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

Forgetting the rules

Have you ever ignored your own gardening rules, even though you know they work?

I've long used a "wall of water" on my tomatoes every year through mid-July, when the weather around here finally breaks into dependable heat. But through some crazy combination of denial and optimism I took the things off my plants during a freaky-hot day in May (90, can you believe it?).

Then out of laziness I left them off all through the June Gloom, even though night temperatures dipped dangerously close to that tomato-leaf-curling zone of the mid-forties.

What brought on this destructive behavior?

So far I've been lucky - only a tiny bit of leaf curl on one tomato - but a windstorm a couple of weeks ago did blow over my brandywine. Luckily it's still short and didn't have far to blow.

Tomatoes!

Woo-hoo! Tomato season is under way! For weeks I've been watching my eight tomato plants get loaded down with tomatoes of all shapes and sizes.

Three varieties of tomatoes we are eating now. Only one SunGold is pictured because the others were eaten before the picture could be taken.

Last week we started eating our SunGold cherry tomatoes. Those little guys are definitely going on my list of tomatoes to plant every year. They are like little sweet fireworks in your mouth - the juice squirting out of their skins. Mmm... those aren't lasting long in our house.

Our three-year-old eats them faster than she eats the M&Ms out of her trail mix. We are working on teaching her which ones are ripe enough to pick. We've ended up with some rather green SunGold tomatoes! I keep intending to collect enough to make an arugula and tomato pasta, put alas, they are eaten too quickly.

We've also gotten a handful of Yellow Pear tomatoes. This is the first year I've grown them and I am still learning what color they should be when picked. The first we picked too yellow and I wasn't in love with the taste. However, the next three we picked were riper and the taste was much sweeter. I've learned that I need to keep my 15-month-old away from the Yellow Pear tomatoes. He thinks they are just the right size to squeeze in his little fist.

The Cherokee Purple is the first of our slicing/beefsteak tomatoes to ripen. We haven't eaten yet...it's on the menu tonight for supper with some of our fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil. There is no better salad.

We are continuing to watch our other varieties grow larger and larger and ripen; I think a good-sized Brandywine will be the next tomato on our menu.

Fresh tomatoes are so exciting!

Harvesting the cover crop

While sitting around waiting for the ground to warm enough for planting tomatoes, we decided to harvest the cover crop. We chopped it all up and put it in the compost bin. To be frank, it had gotten pretty ugly. It looked gangly, like an awkward teenager.

It turned out to be great family activity. Everybody got into the act.

Finally my compost is really starting to heat up. In the fall, I get tons of leaves from the neighbors. The carbon to nitrogen ratio is so high that my greens immediately burn up and disappear. Over the winter, the pile gently breaks down, more from worm activity and leaf molds than anything else. But now, it's finally gotten to that heat that kills weed seeds. And it makes a good seed warmer too!