| Mrs. Murfreesboro: Despite experience, vows, hope/insanity continues |
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Posted: Sunday, July 26, 2009 7:53 am
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Have we had great weather or what?
It has been such a pleasure – and surprise – to walk out of the house in the middle of the afternoon and not be blown away by a heat blast and to have such “normal” humidity.
And to have this refreshing rain, right when we needed it so badly, was just wonderful. Lucky us.
Then there’s the garden.
Albert Einstein said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Substitute stupidity in that equation for me.
Every year I write that I’m not going to plant one more tomato plant. Every year.
I followed that principle early on. I made it until late May, passing up the huge tomato plants that Kirby McNabb says are the secrets to producing good tomatoes fast.
Yes, I passed those up, remembering my vow to myself and the six tomato plants that returned possibly six tomatoes last year.
But by the time June got here I couldn’t stand it. Those healthy looking peat pots were begging me to try them one more time.
I bit the bullet with one Cherry 100 and planted it in a little section of my garden.
That wasn’t enough.
On subsequent visits to the growers, I had to have a couple more. The Bonnie Select variety –“the one Bonnie employees buy” – called my name along with another Bradley. I bit the bullet and they were mine.
For each plant, I dug big holes, filled the holes with water, let the water drain, then planted them down to the leaves. I then filled the hole up with dirt, following all the hints I knew.
Now I’m just waiting.
They are all growing. Enough, in fact, that I bought tomato cages to contain them.
One has almost filled up the whole cage but only has three yellow blossoms on the whole plant. Those have just showed up this week. I heard a farmer at the market say his were coming in late, so I haven’t abandoned hope yet.
The bush variety is, well, bushy. It is growing out but not up. It has two yellow blossoms on it to date. Perhaps it’s stunted by the one squash plant I have left. That squash is taking over its space.
My cherry tomato has yet to produce one ripe bite size morsel (that one went in early in the spring). It’s leggy and skimpy, and I’ll be lucky to get $2 worth of tomatoes from a $3 sprout.
I did buy a “six pack” of crookneck squash this year. Of the four I planted, only one remains. The plant has produced beautiful yellow blossoms but each and every one has fallen off the plant and never fruited. The lone survivor is covering about six square feet of space. I even saw a black and yellow bee buzzing inside on of those blooms that makes me think lack of pollination is not the problem. I’ll have to learn how to fry squash blossoms if this keeps up.
I heard a lady ask Walter Clarke of Rainbow Hill Farm why her plants weren’t producing. She said she’d done everything she was supposed to do, reading instructions and following them to a “T.”
Walter said if he knew the answer to that, he’d be a lot more successful as a farmer.
If Walter has similar issues, I am in good company.
I’m going to try to balance Einstein’s admonition against Walter’s hope next spring.
Wonder which one’s advice I’ll heed? I suspect you have a clue.
‘Til next week.
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