and I missed it all summer...
that "warm tomato plant" smell...
the early morning search for ravening tomato worms...
the hide-&-seek with the pole beans in the shadows...
the "keep-an-eye-on-the-zucchini" game...
[aka pick it before it looks like a baseball bat...]
& the bounty of home-grown veggies...
which always taste better...
so as I had begun to "twitch"...
needing to get my hands dirty, gardening...
I made my way to OSH, as it was "no sales tax" weekend...
I know...there's never sales tax on veggies...
but I needed a bit more...
finally finding a parking space & securing a broken cart...
I found the 1 gal tomato plants...
most were "red cherry"[no thanks...]
but my sleuthing under & behind the bench...
netted me an "Ace"...
[parent of "Tomato-saurus Rex", see previous post...]
and a "New Girl"[?]
which has leaves like my favorite "Brandywine"...
[there were none of them, anywhere, sigh...]
perhaps a hybrid of "Early Girl"...
now, just because I don't want "red cherry"...
doesn't mean I don't like cherry or grape tomatoes...
I'm just picky...
and more digging found for me, one each...
of "yellow pear", "sugar sweet" & "sweet 100"...
yum !
I also found 3 likely specimens of "Big Beef"...
and a "Lemon Boy"...
when I prepare the raised beds, I'll try to leave room...
for a "Brandywine" & any other Heirloom varieties I may find...
[I just love the flavors of the heirloom ones...]
then, a sign that my garden "was to be" this year...
"Blue Lake" pole beans...
I don't like bush beans...but that's what most people want...
so if you aren't in the right place at the right time...
good luck finding the elusive pole beans...
but today...there they were...
12 in the 4" pots & 6-packs[I got 2...]
since my "bean box" needs about 24 plants...
it was really a search...
but I finally found [in the back...] zucchini...
[they were next to the pole beans...]
and my favorite summer squash, yellow crookneck...
and I couldn't believe my good fortune when I found...
Armenian cucumbers...
you can often find all sorts of others...
but not this one...
so having found all the veggies...
I went looking for my favorite veg.fertilizer...
and, of course, the shelf was bare...
[where the bags should be...
there were boxes on the top shelf...]
a 16 lb bag is $9.99...a 4lb box is $4.99...
so to get 16 lbs in boxes would cost $20.00...
another lady & I were discussing various fertilizers...
and she climbed up to haul down boxes...
from the top shelf for us both...
still unwilling to pay twice as much for the boxes...
I went to ask if they had any more bags in the back...
the guy I spoke with, said,"no"...
in the mean time, the other lady asked a different guy...
who went looking...& returned with 2 bags !!
one for each of us...
then he went back to get the last bag for her, as she needed 2...
we happily put the boxes back up on the top shelf...
and parted company, wishing each other happy gardening...
I got my purchases home & into the back yard...
where they got a drink & I surveyed the job ahead...
the next chapter ?
prepping the ground for planting...
more on that in my next post...
4 comments:
Oh, rats, I am so jealous - can't put in my tomatoes yet, Thursday is supposed to get back down to 31 degrees. We just can't seem to give up and have Spring here. Since you seem to know your 'maters, what would be a good kind to grow in an enormous pot...around 24 inches in diameter. I have two that flank my annual flower bed/birdbath area, and have bought varieties in the past supposedly good for pot growing, but am not impressed. Do you think heirlooms would do better? I saw Brandywines at the hardware yesterday.
...now I'm jealous...haven't found the Brandywines yet...
my mom would remind me that you can't put tomatoes in the same ground for successive years & expect a decent crop...[nematodes]
more important is the amount of direct sun...a big pot is good if you don't let it dry out, but they hate getting their feet "hot" & dry...[don't forget to amend the soil...]
varieties are so regional...just remember that the heirlooms taste wonderful...but have very little disease resistance...that's why they created the hybrids...
it is suddenly hot here...
in a couple of weeks, it could be cool & overcast...you never know...
good luck & happy gardening...
The good thing about pot gardening is that I can dump out all the soil and replenish as required on a yearly basis. It all gets put on a large tarp and mixed with fresh soil, slow release fertilizer and amendments, then repotted. These are big pots, and hold a lot of soil. Since the pots are that foam-y resin fake pottery sort, they have the added benefit of insulating value - the roots don't get too warm. I have had great yields in the past, but the last two varieties of plants didn't perform as expected. I could go back to Better Bush, which is good for cooking but not as good for eating raw. I don't know. And they amended the end-of-week forecast by a whole 10 deg warmer for the lows. I am definitely preparing pots next weekend and planting next week.
...we're supposed to get up to 96 today... then 94...79...69...67...
typical for April/May here...where we can have weeks in the summer of 100+
:P...that's why pots are hard here...
things in the sun get dried-out real fast...I love the flavors of Brandywine & Pink Caspian...but I also like the "better beef" too...
love those big meaty slices...yum !
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