{"id":844,"date":"2013-07-01T03:58:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T11:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=844"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:05","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:05","slug":"tomato-angst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/tomato-angst\/","title":{"rendered":"Tomato Angst"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOMATO ANGST<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I grow lots of plants \u2013roses that leap to new altitudes every year and daylilies in ever-expanding clumps.\u00a0 My hellebores regularly give birth to numerous offspring and the hardy geraniums thrive.\u00a0 If I believed in green thumbs, I might justifiably say that I have one.<\/p>\n

But no matter what I do, I can\u2019t grow tomatoes.<\/p>\n

Other people do it with ease.\u00a0 Within a two block radius of my house I know of many individuals, including a few under ten and a few more over eighty who grow bumper crops.\u00a0 These people eat tomatoes all summer and the ones who are old enough to reach the stove cook up gallons of sauce for the next winter.\u00a0 Some of them have so many tomatoes that they give them away to friends and family.\u00a0 My neighbors\u2019 soil is no better or worse than mine.\u00a0 Our tomato cages are the same design.\u00a0 All of us do battle with the usual array of suburban plant predators.\u00a0 The whole problem is puzzling.<\/p>\n

I have tried to grow standard hybrid tomatoes like \u2018Big Boy\u2019 and heirlooms including \u2018Brandywine\u2019.\u00a0 As a lover of all things historical I was particularly upset several years ago when my \u2018Brandywine\u2019 plant yielded a total of four tomatoes.\u00a0 The year before last I swore off tomatoes completely, vowing to support local agriculture by buying my weekly quota at the Farmer\u2019s Market.\u00a0 I had plenty of tomato sandwiches \u2013the best possible summer food\u2014and tomato salads, quiches and pasta dishes.\u00a0 Still, I felt unsatisfied.<\/p>\n

This year I renewed my vow to abstain from tomato growing, but a funny thing happened at one of the local plant sales in March. \u00a0A couple of cherry tomato plants found their way into my basket.<\/p>\n

They are not just any cherry tomatoes, but Sunsugar hybrids, which bear golden yellow fruit.\u00a0 The picture by the tomato plant display made them look both gorgeous and delicious.\u00a0 No tomato will ever give me the euphoric rush that I get when I buy a new rosebush, but when I saw the little Sunsugar plants, I couldn\u2019t stop myself.\u00a0 I bought them.<\/p>\n

When I got them home, I potted them up in large containers, thinking that I would keep my infant tomatoes safe from raccoons by growing them on the back porch.\u00a0 After a suitable amount of time, they set blossoms.\u00a0 I was elated.\u00a0 Then the blossoms wilted and no tiny fruits appeared in their place.\u00a0 Clearly pollination was an issue, despite the fact that m y tomatoes were surrounded by an array of blooming annuals.<\/p>\n

There was nothing to do except lug the containers down the back steps and set the pots amid the roses and catmint in the back garden.\u00a0 I thought the catmint might deter the groundhogs, not to mention the nimble raccoons, all of whom are so ingenious that they could easily send their offspring to MIT.\u00a0 I repositioned the jazzy blue tomato cages that I bought to complement the golden fruits, watered faithfully and waited.\u00a0 The plants produced even more blooms and I finally saw my first tiny tomato, round and green and hanging from a branch.\u00a0 It has been followed by a dozen others now, and I am eagerly awaiting the day when the first one will be ready to pick.\u00a0 Maybe this year my wait will be over and I will find myself up to my eyeballs in cherry tomatoes come high summer.\u00a0 Then, like a diehard Boston Red Sox fan, I will know that the curse has finally been lifted from my tomato growing efforts.<\/p>\n

While I wait for the ultimate outcome of this year\u2019s tomato adventure, I remind myself that I am perfectly able to grow edible crops.\u00a0 The basil on the porch has already yielded enough leaves to make a small batch of pesto and the blueberry bush is holding fast to a bumper crop of immature fruit.\u00a0 I never harvest leaves from the creeping thyme in the front, but it is creeping in fine fashion and certainly counts in the edible plant tally.<\/p>\n

I suspect that I just don\u2019t value tomatoes the way I value roses.\u00a0 At heart I am an ornamental gardener.\u00a0 These days that kind of assertion garners sneers from some of the more smug home vegetable growers, but it is true.\u00a0 I am sure that if I could find the inclination to wax rhapsodic over \u00a0tidy vegetable beds and compose odes to two-pound zucchinis, I would also be able to grow so many tomatoes that I would have extras to lob at Mr. Antlers when he strolls through the garden.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t foresee that happening.<\/p>\n

Still, perhaps the Sunsugar tomatoes will prove me wrong.\u00a0 I check them and water them every day and throw every bit of available used cat litter down the groundhog hole to thwart any evil designs the groundhog might have on my crop.\u00a0 While I wait, I thumb through the rose catalogs.\u00a0 After all, I have a few sunny spaces left in the garden and they are NOT crying out for pepper plants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOMATO ANGST \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I grow lots of plants \u2013roses that leap to new altitudes every year and daylilies in ever-expanding clumps.\u00a0 My hellebores regularly give birth to numerous offspring and the hardy geraniums thrive.\u00a0 If I believed in green thumbs, I might justifiably say that I have one. But no matter what I do, I … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[592,591,593,461],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-summer","tag-cherry-tomatoes","tag-growing-tomatoes","tag-sunsugar","tag-vegetable-gardening"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}