Tomato Lust ... Awww, Yeah

Well folks, I have gone and done it. It's April 25th in my zone 6 garden, and my first round of tomatoes is properly planted and watered. I am super excited, and the early pangs of maniacal tomato lust have begun.

If you are not a gardener, you are saying to yourself, "Lady, you are a FREAK. Tomato lust? Seriously? Besides, what's the big deal, anyway. I can get in my car right now and go to the store and get an organic tomato. I have a Whole Foods."

If you are a gardener, you are saying to yourself, "Lady, you are an IDIOT. You're going to lose those to frost, or at least stunt their growth. Everybody knows you don't plant summer crops until at least mid-May, and even then, Mike McGrath says June 1st is better."

To that I say the following:

1.) Whole Foods - well goody for you, but I am not impressed. If you are eating a tomato in April in New Jersey, it is likely not grown in New Jersey, picked green, ripened in-transit with gases, and even after all that, winds up being a variety that doesn't taste that great. AND even if it was grown in New Jersey and picked ripe, it was in a greenhouse, and it's still not the same. If you love tomatoes, and I mean LOVE tomatoes in a somewhat inappropriate way, you must must must grow your own, pick them perfectly ripe, and eat them straight from the vine. Which leads me to my next topic.

2.) Tomato Lust - There are two kinds of tomato lust: the kind that ends in -itis, and the kind that ends in -ism. Tomato Lustitis is a summertime temporary virus. It starts in July and August with the onslaught of the "Jersey Fresh!" signs, and the popping up of random farm stands. You hear your tires squeal at you swerve to the side of the road, hop out of your car, and start buying them by the bushel. Tomato sauce, tomato slices, tomato salad, tomato SALSA, SUN-DRIED Tomatoes, FRIED GREEN tomatoes, T O M A T O I C E - C R E A M!!!! And yet the instant your tomato frenzy reaches a fever pitch, it violently recedes, leaving in its tsunami-like wake nothing but a few leftover skins, and the dull realization that if you see another tomato you will literally throw up in your own shoes.

Tomato Lustism is something quite different. A cross between religion and affliction, Tomato Lustism is a quiet dark force lurking far beneath the surface of many completely normal looking human beings. You might THINK you're having a conversation with someone about current events, but that person is off in his or her own world thinking, "Will my San Marzanos produce enough this year for canning, or will I be stuck with the Romas? And is the cage I built strong enough for the Brandywines? And why won't this person stop talking about Darfur when I have mulch to refresh?"

Not only do these victims think obsessively about tomatoes, but they also possesses a need to grow more tomatoes that ripen earlier, take up less space, and taste better than anyone else's tomatoes. Taking a page from the Book of Dennis Leary, tomato lustism does not lead to other vegetable addictions, but to carpentry (see above image). Only 2.5 people reside in my house, yet a minimum of ten tomato plants will be planted, eight of which will be indeterminate heirloom varieties plus the two token early hybrids, just so I can brag about having garden frnesh tomatoes in early July. Did I lose you at "indeterminate"? It's OK. That means that you are free from the above mentioned illness, and should remain so ... unless you keep reading these posts and find your mind wandering...

3.) In my final point, I speak to other gardeners. Just how do you plant tomatoes in April in a zone 6 garden? Why, with Wall-O-Waters of course! This is my favorite tomato trickery. I start seeds under lights in the basement in February, put out the WOW's in the raised beds in March or April, and ta da! The WOW's warm the soil so you can get your plants in early, and then protect them at night from chilliness. Of course, for best early tomato results, you should put in an Early Girl, or some other super early hybrid, but at the moment I've got 3 San Marzanos, 2 Sugar Snackers, 1 Brandywine and 1 Purple Calabash ready to plant. So maybe none of these guys will be producing in June (my ultimate tomato goal), but my caprese salad is going to be the cat's meow. Now, if only we could get a handle on the homemade mozzarella cheese...but that's another day, another blog entry.

Cast of Characters: The Humans

Due to the fact that I will be referring to the same folks repeatedly, I think I should take a moment in do some introductions...



Tom, devoted husband - also, executive chef of our house, manual laborer, and professional eye roller. For example, "Tommy, I just got done reading my free copy of 'Hobby Farms' magazine - let's get chickens!!!" (insert dramatic eye roll). Tom has various sub-personalities, which I have also taken upon myself to name. Tom/Francois is the self-taught French chef who once asked me, in complete seriousness, "Do you need anything brined?" Tom/Hurricane Bob exists mainly during the fall, when he enjoys speaking to me at length about the relative wind speeds and trajectories of various tropical storms brewing in the south. And then of course, there's Tom/Ray Romano, which I think all husbands seem to channel at different points in time. When you find yourself having a fight that's straight out of a sitcom, it's time to blog. Why not? It worked for those freak shows for ten seasons.



Sophia, dear daughter - also, four year old, destroyer of flowers, confuses all raised beds with sand boxes. Sophia is my garden sidekick, in the sense that I drag her around in her wagon trying to weed, while she howls and gestures wildly to her swing until I give up and prepare myself to sing "Six Little Ducks" for the 4000th time. Since Sophia is a woman of few words but extremely expressive eyebrows, I will be translating her signs and dirty looks Sunny Baudelaire style, depending on the situation. Sophia's sign for "where?" often is better described as "just what the frig is going on here?" or "why must I persist in dealing with these complete morons?"



Brian, the bug guy - One of my best sources of news and information of all the goings on in the entomological world. Brian is our Ehrlich rep, and no, Ehrlich is not organic. Organic gardening? Yes. Organic management of wood eating critters invading my home? No can do, sister. That bug be GONE indeed. But Brian is a good soul who abides by the "good bug vs. bad bug" rule of organic gardening. And, no matter what weird shit is going on at my house, he makes me feel reassured that it's completely normal. Me: "Brian, yesterday my front door flew open and a parade of 200 stink bugs dressed as Mummers marched around my house playing 'oh dem golden slippers'. They scared the crap out of my cats." Brian: "Oh yeah, yeah, they're going around. Everybody's got 'em at this time of year. You should see some of the outfits though, quite spectacular. Not much you can do about it. I'd just get a lawn chair and a beer."



The Captain & Tennille, kitties - OK, so they're not humans. But as indoor cats they reside entirely in the world of humans, and have human personality traits (meaning they are as annoying as most human beings are), and in the battle of me vs. outside creatures invading my garden, they are generally on my side. But they don't eat stink bugs, which is unfortunate. At the very least, the cats could take away their godforsaken banjos.



Are these all the characters in my garden melodrama? Oh no. I haven't even gotten to the outside critters yet. There's Frank, Sisyphus, James Bond and his Bond girls, Ma'am & Sir, the Mancusos and many more to come. I'll post their histories as time allows.



For now, it's time to look outside at the unfinished/unstarted projects in my garden on this beautiful 68 degree Spring day, and think to myself "Hmmm, I'll get to that crap later. I need more coffee."



Happy garden procrastination to yous!

Is Organic Gardening Funny?

Well, no. Not exactly.



Organic gardening is a lot of things these days. For some it's a part of a spiritual belief system that includes nature as a life force. For others it's about getting the highest quality and best variety of food possible. And in today's "greener than thou" culture, it might even be considered trendy and a potentially good business investment. However, very few conversations start with "I planted peppers today, and it was hysterical! Ho ho ho! Just thinking about it cracks me up - hold on, hold on, I need to sit down. I think I just peed a little."

OK, so maybe the act of putting a plant in the ground is meaningful, and not funny. But you know what is funny? Slowly losing your ground while straining to hold up a toppling cage of 2x4's housing your prize heirloom tomatoes, hoping beyond hope that your husband will notice your absence and just LOOK OUT THE FREAKING WINDOW!!!! Or finding yourself shouting obscenities after a groundhog, who is waddling away at full speed in his attempt to shake the crazy lady in mud boots and parachute pants (please find yourself a groundhog and shout at it in order to see just what 'waddling at full speed' looks like). Or taking large amounts of time to set up your new expensive anti-critter-motion-detector-water-squirter-thingy...and then forgetting to shut it off before you go in the garden. Or giving human names and elaborate life histories to the variety of creatures who frequent your vegetable patch (if my high school AP English teacher Mrs. Timms finds herself reading this, that's a little bit of anthropomorphism for you, lady!).



Let's face it. Even for a good gardener, taking a small patch of earth and remodeling it after your own vision is nearly impossible. Mother Nature will light up a clove cigarette, put on her ergonomically sound shoes, and happily stomp all over your parade. Add to that issue a gardener with a tendency towards laziness and procrastination, and when things actually DO work, it's mostly a happy accident. But I'm all about the happy accidents and am willing to lose to Mother Nature most of the time to get them. Plus when stuff doesn't work, well, that's just another funny story for you at my expense. And YOU are welcome!