Bountiful and Bountifail (Garden) Part 3

Tomatoes! Cherry, Porter, Golden Jubilee, Beefsteak, Green Sausage, Black Cherry. Everyone knows how good home grown tomatoes taste. I learned this year the correct way to plant tomatoes for Tucson summers. You pick all the leaves off except the very top ones. Then you plant the entire now-bare stalk underground too. That stalk will grow roots instead of leaves, and your root ball is way down deep in the nice, cool soil. When the soil here heated up to 90+ degrees in June my tomatoes were just fine and still producing. The frustrating thing with these is they were slow to produce. I transplanted these in April and should’ve had some production by end of May or early June, especially with the cool spring we had. But they didn’t. They didn’t start producing til the end of June, which is usually when they stop their first production and wait until the monsoons come.  Then they will produce their second round into the fall.  I have 12 tomato plants, and all I have had is two handfuls of tomatoes (which were sooo delicious and make me sad I don’t have more).  I will probably get a nice fall crop. But to plant in February and wait until fall to get tomatoes? That’s ridiculous.  And I know I did everything right.  So this is very disheartening to me.  As far as a summer crop goes, this is bountifail.

To be continued…

 

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Categorized as Gardening

By Jenny Cain

Spunky musician, artist, seamstress and horticulturalist. More about Jenny...