Dana O'Driscoll What does one get when one plants eighteen tomato plants? Enough sauce and tomato soup for the whole year! At least, that’s the goal. After a year of work, seeing these tomatoes–and kale, and potatoes, and basil, and peppers, and carrots–is so rewarding! Today and yesterday I harvested about 15 lbs of tomatoes. This will be turned into sauce, tomato soup, and possibly salsa.
I’ve been reading up on seed saving and am saving my first sets of seeds this year. This year, I grew two kinds of tomatoes–Black Krim and Gold Medal. I planted them at different times–the Black Krim first, and the Goal Medal a bit later. This was to avoid cross-pollenation. I’m not sure if I was successful, but I will plant some next year and find out. I’m also working to save the seeds from purple spinach, some starter potatoes, and popcorn.
I’m not really sure if its just the heirloom varieties, or the fact that I have been growing these for six months–tending them, caring for them, playing my flute for them, pouring physical and spiritual energies into them–but they taste AMAZING! Wow!
In other news, I have two good friends who are interested in growing veggies. Although they live about 45 min from me, they are in an apartment and there is no place for a garden. So we are going to expand the garden so that they can have some space and grow some of their own food as well–and for others who may want it. The current garden is three raised beds, 4′ x 20′ each. The new garden will be more than double that – eight raised beds, 4′ x 20′ each. We are putting a deer fence around the whole thing–which will keep the groundhog, the peacocks, and the deer out–at least that is the hope! I’m not really into fences, but everyone in this area must have one due to our large deer populations :).
