My little garden plot is in the foothills of the Black Hills, a semi-arid climate, where until this year I'd forgotten what humidity was. Also, the clay soil is better for making pots than growing anything.
But, that was then, this is now.
I've been dumping kitchen compost, rabbit poop, grass clippings, bags of soil and peat into foot-high raised beds, the last 12 years and that's helped. I've always managed enough tomatoes to keep wifey happy and to can just enough to get us to the next season.
But one of the problems of the past few years since I've begun starting heirloom tomatoes from seeds is that I've had a wide range of harvest dates. They ranged from 65 day varieties to 85. So I always had tomatoes but not like that big boatload where you could just set aside a day to can forty jars. It was a half dozen here, a half dozen there.
This year my boat came in. The planets aligned and all my plans came to fruition.
I chose my best varieties from over the past five years and kept them mostly in the 72-78 day range. Purple, red, pink, yellow. And I planted more of them (squeezed about 70 in). And the rains came. And the heat and humidity hit. And the tomaters exploded.
We've "put up," as my grandma used to say, about 42 jars of tomatoes, 10 of a tomato soup recipe the wife likes, and another seven quarts today of pretty hot salsa. And two flats of tomatoes are still sitting in the garage and more almost ripe ones waiting to be picked. (The big one in the photo went to today's salsa.)
As opposed to my years gardening East River, I've never really had extra to give away, because I kind of hoard my tomatoes. Want zukes or cukes and I'll hand them out on the highway. But tomatoes, take a number.
Looks like this will be the year where the tomato scrooge turns nice.
As the song says, rain is a good thing.
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