tomatoes from seed to salad

a year in the life

…because images speak louder than words sometimes, and these are some of my favourites from my first attempt to grow stuff on the land.

I was trying to grow more than just tomatoes, and in the image at top left (and below), you might be able to see some basil also rampant beneath the tomato vines. But bunnies ate everything else. One job for the winter months will be to install chicken wire around the base of the deer fence, or at least around the vegetable beds, which I plan to raise slightly as well. I’ll probably move the bee garden too, and spread those plants along the border of the fence.

Despite the disappointment of losing so many seedlings, it’s good to have learnt one thing: tomatoes do very well on the land with very little maintenance. The last time I checked, Matt’s wild cherries were a mini jungle, spreading merrily toward the bee garden. They seem to have only one predator: the tomato hornworm. Quite a beast. If you’d like to play a variant on the spot the worm game I remember from childhood (lowly worm??), then see how many hornworms you can spot in the picture below! (Click on it to enlarge.)

tomato jungle

If you need to know what a hornworm looks like (lucky, lucky you!), here you go:

hornworm doing what hornworms do

Just please don’t tell me they grow into the beautiful hummingbird moth. I will be devastated. (Lalalalalala, not listening!)

 

 

hanging on in a heat wave

It rained heavily two nights ago, but you wouldn’t think so to look at everything today. I use the weeds as a barometer as I walk along the trail towards the vegetable garden. If they look fluffed up and perky, then there’s been enough water. I really expected to see that this morning after the storms on Friday night, but they are drooping slightly, the way they were all last week after several days of 100 degree heat and no rain for weeks. And leaves are falling from the trees already – a crisp dry brown carpet lining the homestead site.

leaves are falling and it’s only July

Today was just meant to be a quick trip up there to check on things, and harvest any ripe tomatoes. But everything looked like it needed water, and I had to mourn the edamame plants that some critter has obviously enjoyed for dinner. Four or so are hanging in there – the healthiest looking one is in my veggie bed, and it’s growing quickly. But damn. I suppose I ought to sink chicken wire around the bottom of the deer fence. Or at least rig up a webcam and see who the culprits are.

The tomatoes look happy though.

tomatoes on the vine

A harvest of one tomato today, but I culled a bit of basil too, and voilĂ …

mini caprese with the first cherry tomato

A pre-lunch amuse bouche. (Feeling very French today, for some reason).

But here’s a success story: my holy/sacred basil (aka Kha Prao or Tulsi). I companion-planted it with “normal” basil around my tomato plants, and while the ordinary basil is getting all kinds of hassle from bugs and such, the sacred stuff is flourishing quite well. Just checked Jekka McVicar’s The Complete Herb Book, and I should either be offering bunches of it to local Buddhist temples, or cooking up a Thai stir-fry with it. “It was also used throughout the Indian subcontinent as a disinfectant against malaria.” (p. 169) Hm. Our mosquitoes aren’t malarial here, but, now I think about it, I haven’t encountered any mozzies on the land so far this summer. Sacred basil fumes wafting through the trees…?

ocimum sanctum: sacred basil (spot the little grasshopper)