Home-Grown Tomatoes

I ended up planting out all of these Heinz seedlings,
once they got bigger.

I opened a half-pint of home-grown catsup yesterday, in which to dip my grilled cheese sandwich, and then moseyed out into the orchard to finish watering and mulching the 160 or so tomato plants I have been putting out for the past three days. The catsup is made from the Heinz variety, which is one reason I planted ninety of the little darlings. 

A second reason is the marinara sauce that I opened up the other day, this one processed with basil and garlic from the garden. I was adding it to my chicken cacciatore, after starting off with a quart of homegrown, cold-pack Ace tomatoes, the third reason I am enthralled with home-grown tomatoes.

There are numerous other reasons why the total number of tomato plants will exceed 160 this year, but the one at the top of the list is that working the soil is good for the soul, if not the soles. March was a daunting proposition, it being devilishly hard to work soil when the ground is frozen and covered in snow.

Shoveling the pile on the right, to the pile on the left...

There were alternating periods of sunshine and gloomy weather, so when it was nice I pounded away. During one such pleasant stretch I ambitiously started four trays of Ace, Heinz and a selection of cherry tomato seeds. If you have never tried to start your own tomato plants, then you do not know that the seeds you use, are not the seeds that you see and taste when you eat a fresh tomato.

No, the seeds are so minuscule that the only way I could complete the process was to use a tweezers. One seed at a time, I transferred them from the little dish I had put them in, to my trays filled with potting soil. The indentations in the potting soil were either one-quarter inch or one-eighth (!) inch for the cherries. 

Getting started, before extending the rows...

As a carpenter, cutting to within an eighth or quarter-inch measurement with any of a variety of power saws, is as certain and elementary as brushing your teeth. But trying to determine just how that translates to soil? Dirt and a one-eighth inch measurement is a guess-and-by-golly proposition from the word go. 

For an individual who functions 99% of the time in a manic mode, the use of a tweezers is already agonizingly challenging. I was putting all of my energy into this task for the simple reason that I was highly motivated, no pun intended. Without the bong and its steadying influence, I would never have even tried it.

Alas, the sad tale continues. Though I covered each tray with its own greenhouse cover to further heat matters up, we did not get a long enough stretch of sunshine to germinate the seeds. I maintained the trays faithfully through the next prolonged cold stretch until it warmed up again, and actually did get a dozen or so seeds to pop.

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As quickly as I could report the grand news to Gluten-Free Mama, earwigs or some other varmint, had pilfered the little seedlings, leaving me frantic. Of course, I could get more seeds and simply start over; there was ample time. The reality was, I couldn’t start over because of that pesky fork sticking out of me: I was done.

Rather than beat myself over the head with  a sack of potting soil, I appealed to the powers that be, and BossLady made it happen. Though I criticized myself savagely for my shortcoming, GF Mama would have none of it. “You do what you can and you don’t worry about the rest.”

BossLady is BossLady because she can germinate tomato seeds. I’m just a guy who likes to get his hands and feet dirty, working the soil. I got the trays of little starts from HeadSodBuster, and up-planted them immediately into four-inch pots, and plodded away at preparing the eight rows.

I turned the soil over with my pitchfork and extended five of the rows about twenty feet, after which I distributed thirty wheelbarrows of home-grown compost over the eight, fifty-foot rows. I added the organic amendments and worked the soil a second time, to integrate the additives to the original soil. Having done a cover-crop over the winter, I had also worked the dead organic matter back into the soil.

I planted and mulched, and am in the process of making cages made from construction wire, the kind they use in forming slabs with six-inch squares. Tomatoes must be supported to avoid coming into contact with the ground and though I used commercially produced metal cages last summer, I’m gunning for an upgrade. 

In extending the rows, I unearthed these rocks,
what I am convinced are petrified wood. 

Each season is a learning experience and taking the knowledge I gained from the previous summer, helps me plan the next year more effectively. I planted fewer pants this year, giving them more room between each, because I want the fruit to be correspondingly bigger. My Heinz tomatoes last year were not the much bigger than cherry tomatoes, and that needs to be corrected.

I already adjusted the amount of water they were getting and I broke the watering up into two segments, twelve hours apart. I am trying to keep the soil moist to avoid blossom-end rot and dividing the watering in half will help.

I have a theory about the gophers and their cumulative effect on the garden: If the plants are hardy and robust, the gophers can’t kill them. If the plants are weak and not properly watered, they are fair game and cannot withstand what they normally could if all were well.

All done except for the rest of the cages.

I’ll keep you posted on how my theory pans out. What I am not going to waste my time on is trying to snare them in traps. I faithfully moved five traps around the orchard last year, corresponding to tomato plants being killed by gophers, and came up empty-handed.

Ellie Mae, the dog, already showed me up by presenting me one of the little buggers the way a cat would bring a mouse. No, I am going to try preventative medicine this year and see if that doesn’t eliminate the problem.

And if it doesn’t, I’ll always think it should have.