We’ve grown a variety of herbs every summer in the planter box at the Mazama hangout, which we (meaning Jacqui) use for cooking, snipped fresh and deployed immediately. They are typically cohabitating with a mixture of flowering plants. We get a lot of enjoyment out of our limited gardening plot, although it’s nothing compared to the riotous jungle of plantings at the Seattle hangout.
My role in “growing” has been to buy some plants, as directed, water them regularly, and occasionally prune, as directed. I need a lot of direction. My role in cooking has been to appreciate the meal.
This year we decided to be bold and try something daring: tomatoes.
Yeah, everyone grows tomatoes, but we haven’t tried since a couple of so-so efforts in the tiny courtyard at Seattle years ago. Not enough sun there, no surprise.
I have the palest white, least green thumb around, which I typically use in the “opposing” configuration to open things, or turn on a water faucet. So when it came to the tomato patch, I was put in charge of acquisition, which could have baffled me if I was faced with more choices. As it was, I picked out some Brandywine and Early Girl varieties (actually, pretty much all that was left), and got them to Mazama without damage.
We planted, we administered plant food, and watered throughout the hottest periods of the summer.
And they went absolutely wild, sprinting up past the tomato cages we had installed. I was kind of taken aback by tomato aggression, but also impressed by their enthusiasm. For a few weeks, they just strove to apparently emulate Jack’s beanstalk. Then something intriguing happened: blossoms appeared. We began to think there might be homegrown garden vegetables in in our future.
Our hopes (if not our bodies) were nourished when the first tiny green nodes started to appear — one, then a few more, than a cluster. Not knowing what else to do, I monitored their growth and, as always, watered.
Eventually green became orange and then, last weekend, red! I don’t often use exclamation points, which I consider overly demonstrative, but hey, a couple of them were absolutely red!
Now what?
It turns out that after all these years, we needed a tomato tutorial refresher, and guess where you can find those, by the millions: the interweb. It seems like everyone is either growing tomatoes, or learning how to grow tomatoes. Proper tomato cultivation requires constant attention, it seems.
Here’s the scary part, which we have creepily experienced before. We said “tomato” out loud a couple of times, and suddenly our social media feeds are inundated with advice, including a lot of visuals. I learned (according to some self-styled gardening mavens) that tomatoes can and probably should be harvested while green, then allowed to ripen off the vine.
The other big “have to” that we missed early on was pruning. I thought that “prune” was a pretty funny verb to use related to a vegetable, but I was the only one. In any event, we should have been pruning prudently, to allow the productive parts of the produce to thrive. I procured the pruners (not getting tired of that word, or the alliteration) from their storage space last weekend and tuned up the bushy tomato plants, following the breathless directives of our online instructors. They are stern, but they are supportive. I hope I didn’t overdo it. Pruning is addictive.
Then, I harvested — five red(!) tomatoes last weekend, late (according to some) but not too late. And they are yummy — tasty, juicy and really quite charming. As for the varieties, we lost track of which is which so I can’t compare — something we’ll remedy in the future as it seems they have distinct characteristics. Like people. I don’t have time to go into “determinate” versus “indeterminate.”
Aside from the gratification inherent in watching actual food come out of the ground, which joy many of you are familiar with, it was nice to know there is never a bad time to learn something new. I’m not much of an herb guy, but maybe I have found my sweet spot with tomatoes.
