The Year of Lessons

My blogging hours have significantly dropped recently. This is because I decided it would be a good idea to work full time and go to school full time. Yeah. No one ever said I was smart!   So my blogs will be less frequent and shorter, but I will try to continue because I'm still gardening.....for now.

Herbs and peppers are doing well. That's about all I got.

One tomato plant is pretty much useless and we won't get anything out of it. Maybe 1 green tomato?
The heirloom plant will be turned into a bunch of fried green tomatoes (still not a bad result!)
And the cherry tomatoes are doing well but dammit they are taking so long to turn fully red!!  We're at the end of September so I am pessimistic about the timing here. We shall see.

I did, however, learn (and by learn, I mean, I changed my guess for the 4th time) that my black tomatoes likely come from putting my plants in pots that are too small and they are either drowning (not enough air in the soil to feed them) or starving (not enough soil to hold water to feed them throughout the day. And I don't water in short bursts several times a day - who has time for that??? This is a hobby not a farm!).  So, we will dub this "The Year of Lessons". An opportunity to learn how to garden on a small scale in containers. The other lesson this year? Don't start it at the end of June, halfway through the season. Gee, I wonder why my tomatoes aren't all bright red???

Here's a few progress photos in the last month.

Heirloom tomatoes. Still that damn green color.

Red AND green pepper!

We're so close!

Cherry tomatoes doing well - ate the 3 red ones you see. They were small bursts of wonderful home grown flavor! Then it was over.

The only red tomato on the Big Boy plant. He later shriveled and um, is still on the plant because I don't have the heart to pull him off which is probably killing the rest of the plant. I need to let go.

Hope grows.

Yeah. A bunch of water-logged tomatoes (according to the new guess-theory).

Success!!! Will be harvested and eaten soon.

On the left, a new strawberry. On the right (in the middle of the photo, really), that small shriveled thing? That used to be a strawberry and how all my strawberries seem to end up.  Grrrr...

Nuclear Power PLANT

I have been given a gift. This particular gift has put me to shame and caused significant humiliation, but it is a gift none-the-less. Christine, a summer intern at work, has a dad who gardens - Charlie. Charlie started growing things 3 or 4 years ago in his big backyard on Long Island and does both in ground and container gardening. The first (and only) time I met him I lobbed a ton of questions his way. Poor guy didn’t know what he got himself into.

I’ve been ferrying gardening questions to him all summer through Christine and would expect her to report back with the answers (wasn’t that part of an intern’s job description??). Halfway through summer, before we met but after a couple of questions and answers were exchanged, Charlie sent a gift my way via Christine: a zucchini. It was a beautiful thing and engendered no jealousy because I’m not growing zucchini. It was just a random act of kindness that I could enjoy. I thought I needed to share so I made zucchini bread with it and brought it into the office. 

At the end of summer, to celebrate Christine’s last day of work and her 21^st birthday, a group of us, including Christine’s parents, celebrated at a local dive bar. Christine met us at the office, bearing another gift from Charlie, whom I would meet in a few hours. It was a tomato. A beautiful, ripe red tomato. When I tell you it was huge, I mean it was HUGE. It must have weighed close to a pound. See? 

Almost the size of my entire hand!

Larger than my laptop's mouse pad!

Christine thinks that there is something wrong with her dad's garden - some sort of nuclear power source that makes her dad's vegetables of seriously substantial size. It's a nuclear power plant!! (Hehe, get it??) Christine would often show me photos of the products of her dad's garden, and I have to say - something unnatural may have been at work here. Do people really grow things THAT large?? He needs to enter a state fair.

Whatever the cause of the super-size veggies, I was showing everyone. 

"Look, look! Look at what Charlie grew!!"

 The typical answer was "Oh my god, that's huge!" 

A few minutes later followed by "Okay, Lindsay, we get it. It's a big tomato. Shut up." 

I was so proud of a fellow gardener and the potential of any home garden. It took me a few hours to really start thinking about his tomato as compared to mine. But eventually I got there. I was shamed and humiliated by my measly success with 1 small (but delicious) cherry tomato. When I brought the tomato home, Chris looked at it and immediately said, "Wow. What are YOU doing wrong?" Seriously!

Nevertheless, I intended to fully enjoy this gift. What do you do with such a big fruit? Make it the star! The easiest was to have a slice of tomato with some of my own home-grown basil, plus olive oil, salt and pepper. I would have added mozzarella, but I didn't have any, and it didn't really need it anyway. Deeee-lish! 

Nuclear tomato + home grown basil = absolute goodness.

So although I am humbled by this gift, what Charlie has done is show me the possibilities. He has shown me the potential if I keep at it and continue gardening and learning. Faith in my own abilities to grow something organic, natural and nutritious and I could one day have something like The-Tomato-That-Charlie-Grew. 

Okay. I'll keep at it. Thanks Christine and Charlie for the inspiration!