First Published on 05/27/2015
Seventeen dad-blamed tomato plants. I wanted six or eight at most, but now there’s seventeen planted. Friend Mary’s fault. Hers and Sis’. Well, theirs and the folks who sell plants.
I wanted maybe two plants each of three or four varieties. An early red and a firm yellow for sure. Preferably a big fat slicer and maybe just good old reliable Rutgers for general eating.
Sis went to Winchester hunting garden stuff early in the season and I asked for a few tomato plants. She brought me two yellow Brandywines and a Mountain Gold. Then I stopped at L&H greenhouse in Moorefield and bought a pack of four West Virginia Tomatoes (being patriotic, you know) and four Rutgers. When you want two plants and buy a bunch of four, what do you do with the extra two? Plant them of course.
Oh well, you can always ignore them or give fruit away or something, whatever it takes to convince yourself it’s no big deal. That’s eleven plants in the ground so far.
Garden planted with everything I wanted in it this year except leeks. Tried them first time last year and liked them. Wanted more this year, but ordered them too late. Need to be planted early and I missed it. Ended up with two fair sized chunks of unplanted ground and nothing for them. Lack of planning, I guess.
Same thing happened last year. I talked myself into a broadcast wildflower mixture. Picture showed a patch of colorful blooms like you see in wild flower plantings along the highway. I like colorful blooms. Trouble is that I didn’t spray everything else dead before I broadcast, so up came every weed plus all the weeds I’d planted. What a mess. I weed-eated it and tilled it all under.
Last week Mary planted one of my open spaces to sunflowers. Four varieties, I think, planted in rows I can get tiller between. Might keep that patch sort of cleaned up anyway. Other open ground near garden center, was more worrisome.
Eight more hills of summer squash took part of it. If squash grows and borers don’t kill it all, I should have Zucchinis to give the community this year. But, other half of that patch still taunted me.
Close to lunch time, a quick trip up to Kerr’s Grocery for sandwiches and orange juice plus a tank of gas. I sent Mary to Jeff’s little greenhouse garden plant sales shelter. Told her to get something to fill that bare patch. I didn’t care what.
She went. Came out with four cantaloup plants and six Roma Tomatoes. Stuck. Bought em. Stuck them in the ground. Seventeen tomato plants started. More than twice the high number I’d wanted. I may have more tomatoes than squash this year.
And those cantaloups. Last year their vines got tangled up with pumpkins, gourds and watermelon. By the time I dug melons out of the mess, they were over ripe and I never got one to eat. This year there’s no watermelon pumpkins and no gourds out on the ground. Several gourd varieties are all trellised on groundhog fence or special built sixteen foot three panel trellises. This year maybe I’ll have a cantaloupe for dessert following a good meal of Garden Goopy and fresh tomatoes.
Seventy years old. Too darn much garden for an old man. Next year I’m going to have a couple four by eight foot raised beds beside Big House’s back kitchen door and to heck with the rest. I’ll be deaf to Sis and Mary and concatenate with plant sales folks. One with raised bed for tomatoes and for Goopy ingredients, squash and cumbers, onions, maybe okra whatever else there is room for. Not much Goopy next year. Not my normal seventy-two pints anyway. So. OK. Three raised beds.
