It is garden time… Spring… a time when things grow… flowers blossom…
It is time for the “first tomato of the season” challenge to begin… I am going to win…
I planted tomatoes in early March, before I left… (this is a blog, frequently about travel… if you don’t know where I was, look it up… I will wait, or not…)
I am in a climate which is tomato challenged… Here, near San Francisco Bay, it is not hot.. Occasionally cold, not “frost” cold (we don’t have frosts regularly, and the frosts we have are rarely “hard frost”) but too cool for regular tomato culture… It is just not quite hot enough here in San Mateo, on the San Francisco Peninsula for common tomato culture… (it is much better across the bay, in Fremont where I work, even better on the other side of Mission Peak, in the Livermore Valley… If it is hotter it is better)
But I like tomatoes… and I live in San Mateo, so, I will attempt to grow tomatoes in San Mateo.
Garrison Keller when discussing Lake Woebegone, talks of the “Tomato Dole”… the embarrassment of not having tomatoes in your garden and having to accept tomatoes from neighbors who have tomatoes, who apparently are better gardeners… the proof in the tomatoes, you have them, or you don’t… It is apparently a Lutheran church/Minnesota/Scandinavian thing… I am none of the above but I like to grow tomatoes…
I have used several tomato growing strategies over the years…
I start early… 5 of my plants went into the dirt in early .on March 5th, after the likely first frost, but before the weather is really right… If they don’t freeze, they will get a head start… The 6th will be planted Tuesday (April 3rd)… There will be a second bed with more plants… but they are not likely to win the first tomato of the season… They are for later… September, October, maybe as late as December…
I have built a new raised bed… in the middle of the yard, in full sun… less protected from wind, but all in all a good spot… Since the new bed is so “public” (usually I plant tomatoes in the side yard… not easily seen) I bought new tomato cages… in bright primary Googley colors… red, yellow, blue, and green… It makes the lovely Tina happy (she works at Google…)
The soil in the new raised bed is a mix of compost, topsoil harvested while building a new patio area and pigeon poo… I have lots of pigeon poo… I have 4, no, 5, no, 6 racing pigeons… If you feed them they poo… you have to clean the cage with some regularity… I collect the poo, and age it, and use it as fertilizer… it is as good as it gets… It makes tomatoes happy… and big… and green… You probably don't have pigeon poo... too bad...
I plant my plants deep… Tomatoes can grow roots from the stem… I get tall plants, trim most of the lower leaves, then plant them with 4-6” of what had been stem now underground…
I choose my tomatoes carefully… You can’t grow many popular tomatoes in San Mateo… Beef steak just take more heat than we have… so I planted a red cherry, two yellow pear cherry, a San Francisco Fog, an Early Girl (a Monsanto Hybrid… an old school hybrid… as much as I don’t like the idea of modern corporate plant genetic engineering represented by Monsanto, Early Girl is pretty reliable) and a Stupice, a Czechoslovakian heirloom… It is my secrete weapon (after pigeon poop… pigeon poop is special) My later patch will include other Russian and Eastern European heirloom tomatoes… seeing if any measure up… I keep notes… I will also try a purple and a green heirloom… they all seem to be better adapted to cold…
This year I will test a new weapon… My local nursery is offering grafted tomatoes… cold weather root stock with hot weather tops, promising to produce old fashion hot weather tomatoes like the fabled beef stake, in the foggy climate of San Francisco… We will see…
Last year I got my first tomato on June 15th… the second and third in late June, then the wave hit about mid July… This year, I am trying for June 1… I will report as things progress.
There will also be cucumbers, lettuce, onions, artichokes, potatoes, beets, carrots and green beans (maybe speckled beans, maybe peas) Swiss chard and basil, parsley, rosemary and thyme… (or maybe Simon and Garfunkel… Thank God Monty Python didn’t do gardening sketches…)
I will be doing the sunshine dance… If I was you I would run away, fast… it’s not pretty…
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