The vegetables are invading. Our refrigerator is full, as you might expect, but it doesn’t stop there. They have long since taken over our waking thoughts and sometimes sneak into our dreams [last week I dreamed of harvesting bananas]. Now they are slowly filling the front room. It started with the potatoes. We are now digging mature tubers which are best stored unwashed and cool, but not cold. The front room is also the tomato staging area. Tomatoes are picked three times a week brought inside to be sorted and packed. If stored outdoors, even in the shade, they ripen too quickly in the warm weather and turn to mush. In the cooler they get mealy. So the Romas, cherries and slicers are stacked in trays in the corner, blocking access to the dresser. Good thing we can wear dirty clothes to work.
Because the majority of our tomatoes are fussy heirloom types, we pick them before they are fully ripe. They do not tolerate being schlepped around and sitting on the shelf waiting for someone to eat them. What this means for you is that the tomatoes you get in your share may benefit from a day or two on the counter. On the other hand, they may need to be eaten RIGHT NOW. Cherry tomatoes and Romas are more forgiving. Once ripe they should hold for a week or more. Tomatoes are easy to freeze. You may want to stockpile your Romas to make Aunt Ioni’s Bloody Mary Mix. We usually freeze them without blanching and peeling, choosing to leave the skins in the sauce or put whatever we are making through the food mill to remove them later.
Tomatoes are the most anticipated thing ever. Except maybe for Christmas, but it’s a close call. Tomato season is a cause for joy, and for me, a cause of great anxiety. Do you know how many things can go wrong with a tomato? Well I don’t either but I’m thinking three million. All kinds of things want to eat them, including tomato hornworms, pickleworms, fruitworms, stink bugs, leaf footed bugs and aphids (all of which we have). So far we have not had problems with rats, squirrels, raccoons, opossum, deer, coyotes and birds…. but the threat is always looming. I can’t tell you which diseases are at work out there because there are zillions of them, but hopefully nothing too lethal. Last year we had Early Blight but as far as I can tell it hasn’t resurfaced. And then there are the physiological problems: sunscald, end-rot, cracked shoulders and splitting.
In summary, tomatoes do not take well to our farming strategy of benign neglect. Tomatoes are a crop for the fastidious gardener. I do not think I have ever been described as fastidious in any aspect of my life, and certainly not out there in the wilds of the tomato patch. And not for lack of trying, mind you. The tomatoes are mulched and drip-taped, and I managed to trellis about two thirds of them. We have been waging biological warfare on the fruitworms and we have only accidentally flooded them once.
A large part of my anxiety is the mystery. What is going on out there? Last year we had a big problem with end rot. This year it is virtually non-existent. What did we do differently? Nothing. Nothing intentional anyway. I checked our soil calcium numbers and concluded that there was plenty available so I left it alone. Is it the weather? Did almost freezing them to death end up having a positive effect? Is it simply that we didn’t accidentally poison them with herbicide laced compost like last year? Maybe ten years from now we will look back as experienced farmers and understand. For now, it’s a mystery. Sometimes you get tomatoes, sometimes you don’t . Let’s hope this year is a “sometimes you do” kind of year.
