wideeyedfunk

Tag: growing vegetables

  • Green tomatoes all over the place.

    Hoist with my own petard. That’s my tomato situation. Although to be fair and correct I wasn’t intending to harm anyone with my tomatoes. Ok, I might maybe have considered throwing the nibbled ones at squirrels and urban skunks so maybe I can use the petard thing. You know, I’m just going to.

    The healthy tomato garden.
    The healthy tomato garden.

    Last summer I planted five heirloom tomato plants: the garden peach and some kind of giant lumpy variety. They grew fast, blossomed well, and produced just a few incredibly aromatic, pleasantly textured tomatoes. The WideEyedSpouse and I made an event of each one because they were so few.

    This summer I decided on a tomato blitz. I tortured myself with descriptions of heirloom and organic varieties in the Fedco catalog. I agonized over which seeds to buy. I settled on a cherry variety, a dense purpley Cosmonaut, and the succulent yellow Garden Peach. I nurtured those seedlings under a grow light in my dressing room for months. It was inconvenient, sure, but we all dreamed of a tomato bounty. Baskets full. Frozen. Sauced. Canned. Salsaed tomatoes.

    Green cosmonauts.
    Green cosmonauts.

    Look at your calendar. It is September. My 15 lush, health tomato plants carry hundreds of turgid, deeply green tomatoes. I counted them.

    If only they were yellow, purple, and red as they are meant to be. Cursed cold Buffalo summer nights. Cursed green tomatoes. Next year I am shoving a couple of store bought Big Boys in the ground and calling it good.

    A sorry week's harvest.
    A sorry week’s harvest.

  • The garden is poised for action.

    Cherry, cosmonaut, and garden peach tomatoes. Hot peppers. Sweet peppers. Leeks. Easter egg radishes and French breakfast radishes. The WideEyedHousehold is doubtful about a breakfast of radishes. Lettuces. Carrots. Borage. Grapes. Sunflowers and two pear trees. And oh, blue coco pole beans, whatever they are, time will tell.

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  • Thinning seedlings: I think they scream as I tear them out…

    A row of baby little marvel shell peas. All unsuspecting.

    I think the baby plants scream when I ruthlessly pluck them out of the ground. I know it has to be done. It is my job as a gardener to be a creative, even divine force. The choices I make about which of the little seedlings get to swell into tastiness, into full fruit and seed producing maturity, are irrevocable. My choices shape the future of plants in my garden through pollination and seed harvesting. The lucky ones spaced properly apart for effective growing survive. The particularly lovely, big, and cheery looking guys make it. A lot of not-yet, never-will-be plants will die though, and their unique random genetic mutations die with them. It pains me every time I tug on their little bodies and feel their tiny roots rending.

    A pea sprout gets it.

    I have already this spring killed baby radishes, peas, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, eggplants….and it isn’t just the vegetables who get it either. Zinnias, poppies, nasturtiums, wild bergamot, calendula: no one is safe. My seedling book says that I am doing no one any favors by letting them live too crowded. The book says unthinned seedlings will be stunted and weak. But thinning. It has such a Malthusian feeling.

    The radishes. Screaming as they lay shriveling in the mulch.

    Yesterday I thinned the peas. The tiny roots of the rejected seedlings clung desperately to the soil. I thinned the radishes. And I must admit that in an act of god-like absorption, I ate those tiny baby plants (and again, Malthusian!). I hovered over the beets, but they are too small for thinning. I can’t yet determine which are weak, which are unsightly, which are destined for the compost. The whole row of beet sprouts sighed and shivered in relief as I stood and walked away.

    Hamish is concerned by all the screaming, and carefully monitors the garden as I work.

    I told the spouse about my worries. That I think the little baby plants shriek and fight to live. The spouse patted the dog and looked at me over the garden fence. He reached over and snatched a tiny radish plant from its tidy row. His teeth crunched a little on the tender leaves. “They’re just plants,” he told me, and wandered off with the weed trimmer. I looked at the empty spot where that radish used to be and now was never going to be again. I really thought I heard it scream.