The Tomatoes Are Coming!

The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale 

as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight 

of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such 

fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. 

—John Updike

Jetstars ripening on the vine. All photos are clickable thumbnails to see in greater detail.

Celebrities getting fat but not adding color yet.

Early Girls are hugely prolific, and fit the Updike quote above perfectly!

Brandywine, an heirloom variety, is known for its large, very flavorful fruit, averaging one pound each. I can't wait!

V E G E T AB L E    G A R D E N — In addition to the four varieties of tomatoes pictured above, I also have a Moskvich and a German Striped. I also have a second Brandywine for a total of seven tomato plants. The German Striped is the tallest so far, almost six feet tall, but so far only has one small green tomato on it. The Early Girls are the most prolific, with perhaps a dozen burgeoning fruit on them, but the Moskvich has actually produced the most ripe fruit so far.

You can see a few of the caged and staked tomato plants in this view, along with a climbing cucumber on the right, which I'll feature in its own post soon. A couple of the basil plants are just visible on the far right.

It's been a lot of work, but also a fascinating experience to plant and fertilize them (organic only of course, including a highly odorous, yet essential, fish emulsion liquid you mix with water) and to cage and stake them, water them, feed them and prune the lower leaves which tend to turn yellow as time goes on. Tomatoes want to keep growing laterally, and I find myself manipulating their stalks almost daily to keep the main shoots inside the cages until they reach the tops, then I'll let them branch out. We've spread newspaper around the bases of the tomatoes and covered those with weed-free straw and saltwater hay to keep the weeds down, and it has really worked. It looks really nice too, lol. And of course, where there are tomatoes, there has to be...

BASIL! Basil is one of my favorite herbs. I eat it like lettuce. I have six basil plants and I've been able to eat it everyday for the past month or so, with no end in sight. I have to keep picking the budding flowers on the tops almost daily to keep them producing leaves and not seeds, but I eat the baby flowers too, so it's all great! I have some very cool cucumbers growing all over the place too, but I'll post those another day. 

Basil! I couldn't imagine any tomato dish without it. I use it instead of lettuce on sandwiches and salads. I eat so much of it that I'm not sure I'll have any left at the end of the season to make pesto, which is what most gardeners end up doing. I'm not like most gardeners though, I eat basil like it's my job.

S P E C I A L   N O T E — I have to give Mary full credit here. I create the ads for her floral design business, Floral Affair (see Blog Roll for link)  and help with her website, and in return she takes me out to lunch a lot, she bought all of the vegetable stock for my garden, gives me multiple Dahlia plants every year and gorgeous cut flowers quite often.  She has been teaching me everything about growing and caring for vegetables too. I'm good with flowers, but I've never grown vegetables before. It has been quite a learning experience, and I couldn't be more grateful to my sister-in-all-but-name!