I am desprate need of getting fired up to begin writing again. And when that happens I look for The Doctor in my stored music.tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQEwiWboKlg.
And one of things that gets me back to scribbling’ is thinking about the two patches of dirt right outside my window. I love gardening and as I pen t this I have about 30 different tomato plants reaching skyward with little yellow flowers that have set.
I’m not a particularly good gardener, but I believe that with a little bit of effort and education,
I get better every year. Over the last two years I’ve become a big believer in heirloom tomatoes. I love heirlooms because they tax a gardeners patience and in so doing create the need to learn more and do more to get big-lobed red beauties off the vines and into the kitchen.
there are heirloom and hybrid tomatoes. Heirlooms are original stock that are pollinated naturally. hybrids are often the result of extensive experimentation and modifications by agronomists who, most often, seek specific shapes, color, growing times or other attributes. Often, taste is a secondary goal with many hybrids
I like to think of myself as an old time guy when it comes to garden-- which is why I’ve grown to like heirloom tomatoes
Big Honkin Dinner Plate heirloom tomatos
Alas, I'm not a tomato bigot.I love a small scoop of hybrid cherry tomatoes in my salads and I’ve been known to brew up Sunday gravies for my pasta using hybrid paste tomatoes distantly related to San Marzano heirlooms.
I’d be a low down dirty dog liar if I said I had always been successful growing tomatoes. As a point of fact, some of my attempts have been humbling and very funny. My arch enemy in the garden is the burrowing cousin of the common meadow mouse, aka the much hated “vole.”
my arch enemy -- the common vole-- in front of his lair.
My absolute most humiliating experience was putting mortgage lifters in a plastic planer near my garden, going out to water one fine evening and seeing the vine twitching in its pot. a vole had gnawed its way through the bottom of plastic planter and was feasting on my vine’s roots.
I really do hate the little tunneling demons.
Over the last five years, I’ve had the most success with San Marzano, Mortgage Lifter and beefsteak heirlooms plus black cherry hybrid tomatoes. I got a gift certificate for garden soil three years ago and I’ve used the same supplier for the last several years. When I’ve used local soils and felt the need to amend the soil, I mix in several shovels of a packaged potting soil product called ”Bumper Crop.”
Rose Spring farm's black cherry tomatoes. Special thanks to Janey Young of Rescue, CA.
My gardening season begins in early March, lasts through early November so I have enough time and sun to plant several varieties of tomatoes throughout the season.
and to think this hobby began almost 60 years ago with the ultimate green thumb gateway plant, a $.05 package of globe radish seeds I pulled from an endcap display at the Azusa Feed and Grain.Jim “Dirty Hands” Forbes on 04/09/2015.
Comments