waiting on tomatoes

I haven’t written in a while.  Call it being busy, call it writer’s block, whatever.  All I know is that the for the past few weeks I’ve had no desire to sit down and type once I got home from work.  Plus, not much has been happening at the garden.  I’m getting a little bored.  I stop by every day, or every other day, water, check on the plants, see if anything is ready to pick.  And really, there hasn’t been.  Two cucumbers, three to four green beans.  The tomatoes are coming in like crazy, but they’re still all green. 

I am getting so impatient.  I want tomatoes now.  My mom, who lives down in South Carolina, has been telling me about her big, juicy tomatoes for a month.  I’m still eating store-bought ones.  Other gardeners are getting ripe tomatoes.  But then again, their plants are much smaller and producing less fruit than mine.  Each of the plants have set a lot of fruit, with the exception of the brandywine.  Perhaps it’s slower to fruit than the other varieties I have planted?  All I know is that once they start to ripen, I am going to be overwhelmed.  I’ve also learned that one of the tomato plants I received on our first day of planting at the garden is not a beefsteak like the others, but rather a Roma plant.  They’ll be great for canning.

The cucumber plants are so big now that I’ve had to start pinching off the tops.  The plants also were given to us by the garden, but mine came with no tag, so I have no idea what variety they are.  I do know, however, that the cukes are long and thin and that they taste fantastic on salads.  Once more start coming in, I hope to pickle a bunch of them.

Otherwise, I’ve been picking lots of the herbs and tut-tutting over the rest of the plants.  I’m regretting not having more diversity in my bed.  I wish I had planted more peppers and beans, and some more exotic veg.  I’ve started some seeds at home – squash, beans, lettuce, spinach, and some flowers – which I hope to transplant once the temps drop below 90.  My hope is that these quick-maturing plants will have enough time to produce before it gets too cool for growing.  I’m going to try planting the spinach and lettuce between the tomato plants where they’ll be shaded.

How’s it growing?

Four day weekend.  It’s a lovely thing.  Enough time to tackle big projects while still allowing enough time to laze about and take care of everyday things.  I finally completed my desk reorganization.  I also spent a lot of time with the plants. I jogged down to the community garden each morning, getting my workout and my gardening in before the heat and humidity became too oppressive for outdoor work.  I’m happy to report that things are coming along pretty well.

lettuce

 The lettuce has really filled out.  I picked some yesterday and made it into a salad for dinner.  Food really does taste better when one grows it oneself.  Far superior to the clamshell container of store bought baby lettuces I have in the fridge.

The plants being grown from seed are doing okay.  I directly sowed beets, carrots, and radishes.  Some of the carrot and beet seeds have germinated, but there are huge gaps in the rows.  According to the seed packets, they should have germinated by now.   I’m not sure if the seeds failed to germinate, if I planted them incorrectly, or if a slug got them.  Next week I think I’ll sow some additional seeds in the blank spots which hopefully will result in a staggered harvest.

beet seedlings

The radishes, on the other hand, are coming up beautifully.  I planted these a week ago because I heard that radishes grow quickly and I am an incredibly inpatient person.   The seedlings are already bigger than the carrot and beet seedlings.  Yesterday I thinned them to 1 every 2 inches, per the instructions on the packet.  They should be ready to harvest in another 2-3 weeks.

radishes!

I murdered the strawberry plant.  My plot came with it.  On our first day of planting, I was told by another gardener that the plot’s former caretaker planted it last year.  I had absolutely no desire to grow strawberries and was a little annoyed with the thing because it threw off my planned garden layout.  But, the other gardeners insisted I had to keep it – it was beginning to produce berries and was a perfectly healthy plant.  Why wouldn’t I want strawberries?  Who would want to get rid of it?  Begrudgingly, I agreed and adjusted my plan to accomodate it. 

jerk.

I have grown to HATE this strawberry plant.  It took up a lot of real estate.  My plot is only 2.5′ by 7.25′ and there are lot of things I want to grow.  This jerk took up an entire square foot and it was getting bigger every day.  The tomatoes were planted closer together than they should have and now that they’re getting bigger, they’re way too crowded. 

look how cramped the poor babies are.

 The stupid strawberry plant has only produced one edible strawberry.  And you know what?  It tasted awful.  Like the most bland, uninteresting strawberry in the world.  All the other berries turned to mush before I could pick them.  Finally, last week I learned that snails and slugs were taking refuge under the strawberry plant’s leaves.  That’s the last thing I want.  So, this weekend I made the decision to kill the strawberry plant.  Considering that I only kept it to be polite and that it’s only made me and its fellow plants unhappy, I think it’s justifiable.  It felt so good ripping it out of the ground.  And, oh, the space it freed up!  My tomatoes have room now. 

I was worried that moving the tomato plants 3 weeks after planting could stress them out and cause them to produce less fruit.  But I was equally worried that leaving them so close together would cause problems as they grew.  I decided to take a chance with moving them, trying to move as few as possible.  Digging carefully around the roots, I moved 3 out of the 7 – the brandywine, and two of the beefsteaks.  The tomatoes recieved a good watering and seem to be happy with the new arrangment.  They certainly look better.

don’t they look happier?