The Great Tomato Race

My garden is an ongoing science project. I am always trying new things to see how to improve. Sometimes it is just to see the outcome of a particular goofy idea.

By default, this is the year of the tomato. Most people in the area claim we are too high in the Coast Range, have too wet of conditions this close to the Nehalem River, and that the hills on both sides of this little valley make the days too short to grow decent tomatoes. Well right there is the reason that this year my experiment involves tomatoes, lots and lots of tomatoes.

In January is planted some tomato seeds. Since seed packets are so small, I planted all the seeds in two packets into a starting flat with two seeds in each cell of the flat. All the seeds grew and I had to pinch off one plant in each of the 36 cells of the flat to keep the more dominant or healthier looking plant growing in the tray. I knew this was a lot of plants but I expected to lose some during the transplanting process or during the months of movement from inside to outside to capture the most sun and warmth each day.

After the second set of leaves formed on the seedlings, I transplanted them to 4 inch pots. A couple months later I again transplanted them to gallon pots. All this shuffling around and I did not lose a single plant (a first for me).

I ended up planting in the garden 2 pods of 5 tomatoes each and a row of 16 tomatoes in tires and gifted the rest anyone who would take them.

Now is the wait to see which of the three areas of tomatoes will be the first to deliver a ripe tomato.

In the meantime, one of my brothers stopped by the other day to visit and to take a little lookie-loo at my garden. He said that last year on Father’s Day he had his first ripe tomato out of his garden. “Wow” I said ” that’s funny, I don’t remember being invited to join you in a tomato sammich! I mean, wow, that’s cool!”

Back to my race, one pod has really good plant growth. One has less foliage but has a couple of tomatoes starting to turn from hard green to a tinge of lightening and the row of tires has lots of leaves with a few of the plants sporting several branches of tomato clusters.

No matter which plant in my garden has the first ripe tomato, I feel that I will end up the winner with great salads and sammiches the rest of the summer and be able to share the bounty with visitors also.