An Eventful Day

Today at our house there were two events of note: there was no rain and we finally harvested our first ripe tomato.

Readers not from the Central Jersey area should understand that usually local gardeners vie for the first tomatoes of the season around July Fourth. Someone will proudly present The Ripe Tomato at an Independence Day picnic while tossing off the comment, "Well, I just picked this from the garden as we were leaving. I figured you might want to slice it on some of the burgers."

Of course, at this point the other gardeners are supposed to admire The Tomato (no matter how grudgingly) before it is sliced.

But this year, with all the cool wet weather, the tomatoes are really late - if they exist at all.

So I am proud to announce that today we picked one ripe Sweet One Hundred Cherry tomato (about one-inch across), cut it in half, and savored it.

As for the weather report, suffice it to say that in order to get to the tomato plants I have put down extra compost along the vegetable garden paths so I don't sink into or slip on the mud.

Survivor: The Tomato Tale Continues

When we last saw the half-flat of tomato plants, they were settling into their new homes scattered throughout the yard – except for a few that had migrated to my mother-in-law’s yard.

Within 48-hours of their starting to put down roots they were visited by the neighborhood welcome wagon – doe-a-deer and her twin fawns and numerous rabbits large and small.

The plants in the fenced garden and the patio plants remained untouched, but the four next to the pots were each left with a stalk sticking up and one pair of leaves. The three on the far side of the house had their tops cleanly clipped off.

Some welcome!

It appears that all the plants have survived their premature pruning.

Meanwhile I have noticed that friends’ plants are setting fruit already. In a state whose gardeners pride themselves on having the first red, ripe, edible, garden-grown Jersey tomato preferably by July 4th…well, this is not a good thing.

Trying to remain an incurable optimist, I will continue to read the all-tomato cookbook and will remain uncharacteristically silent when other gardeners brag about their tomatoes.

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"...But deer sometimes do get a penchant for eating tomato plants, especially the new growth, and can cause extensive damage..." - Lawrence Davis-Hollander, "The Tomato Festival Cookbook", P. 48.

The Half-Flat of Tomatoes

Last week I stopped at Shop Rite and there in the middle of the Horticulture section [that’s the plants on the sidewalk in front of the store] was a bunch of tomato plants with a sign: “1/2 flat $5.99 with Price Plus card”.

Well, this year - with the price of food and the nationwide tomato-salmonella scare - buying the half-flat seemed reasonable. Just a few extra plants to supplement the vegetable garden.

Now, for the uninitiated, a half-flat is 24 plants - which didn’t seem like a lot…at the time.

Early the next morning seven of them went directly into the vegetable patch. That was simple and it was only about 9 a.m. As the flat contained assorted varieties, there were three patio tomatoes that went into three large containers near the patio and swing. Ten down, fourteen to go. Easy. Four more go into the ground next to the containers.

Darn, there are still ten left and the temperature is going up.

The basically unused far side of the house is always sunny; so three more tomato plants join the pachysandra groundcover and the Rose of Sharon plants along the chimney. I will have to carry buckets of water over there for the rest of the hot summer, but that’s no problem, right? Right? [Okay, this is where you are supposed to say “Right!” Geez, do I have to tell you everything?]

There are now seven left. Oh, wait! Six! Happily one of the little cells is missing a live plant! [It’s not often that I am happy to see that I didn’t get what I paid for.]

My significant other is now thoroughly sick-and-tired of tomato plants and steals away with four of them as a gift for my mother-in-law. Somehow two of them are unaccounted for, but I’m not looking too hard.

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Google "too many tomatoes" and you get about 14,300 hits. This can't be good.

Planning ahead, I went to the Hillsborough Library and took out a book containing only tomato recipes.