Gardening makes people weird. Or weird people garden.
Either way....
And I think vegetable gardening must bring out the most eccentricities. Particularly raising tomatos. I have seven remaining tomato plants that I'm nurturing along, pouring rainwater carefully on their tender little roots. They get only the best tomato food, worked into the soil, balanced with the perfect mix of nitrogen and phosphorus to help them flourish. They've been dusted with Sevin, like so many little tea cakes, to keep the grasshoppers away. When the weather looks a little inclement, they get covered and guarded.
There are three little tomatos, so far. I coo over them and measure their growth daily. Sometimes twice a day. They are firm and healthy, and I have pictures of B.L.T.s dancing in my head.
Something about the smell of tomato leaves just oozes summer, doesn't it? Especially in the mid part of the day, when they are all warmed up, soaking up the sun. I'll walk past them on my way to weed another flower bed and run my hands over the tops of them to release that smell. Then, as an added joy, I pet the basil and rosemary. I can see why cats love to roll in herbs.
The grasshoppers are eating everything but the tomatos. The leaves on most of my plants, flowers and vegetables, are lacy and drying. The hoppers prefer hollyhocks and beans, so far, and steer clear of peas and lettuce. That's odd to me, but maybe they are just having appetizers before the main course...
How does YOUR garden grow?
4 comments:
I do love the smell of tomato leaves! My garden is running a little late, but things seem to be coming along okay, and some zucchini is blooming...lock your doors, people! Actually, unless we have an absolutely crazy supply, I try to use it up or freeze it. I have no tomatoes, yet, though, so I'm jealous! We have been eating lettuce from the tub, and could pick a couple broccoli "trees." What I would like to see is Angus' pea um, bush? Do you have a picture?
Can't you put the Sevin on the other plants, too? That is honestly a question, not a suggestion. Here's the extent of my gardening experience. I usually buy two grape tomato plants, which I put in the ground just below where I water my deck flowers, so I can dribble some their way without any hassle. At some point in the summer (August?) the kids say, "I see red. Can we eat them?" And so they do. I just realized last week that I forgot to buy any, so no red snacks in the yard this year.
Reading your tender gardener's heart blog, I think I'm definitely the weird one. But BLT's do sound good. Can I come when they're ripe?
I'm sending Isaac to you. You are two peas in a pod. He checks his tomato plants HOURLY. I'm not even joking.
I'll get a picture of the pea shrub, Marisa! I think it actually might bear a pod or two.
Shannon, you're not the weird one! My mom was just like that. She'd put in vegetable plants because it was the thing to do, then be so completely ambivilant about them that I could never see the point. But I saw a magnet today that said, "If you're not killing a few plants, you're not stretching your gardening boundaries" or something like that. Come over for BLTs! (Bring Alice-with-a-little-a, we'll have tea and crumpets, too.)
SEND ISAAC TO ME! Right away, Denise, send him soon!
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