ALBANY PARK — You say potato, I say po-tah-to; you say tomato, I say failure.
It's astounding to me that the tomato, which originated in the South American Andes, spread to worldwide fame. Because it is impossible to grow.
Doesn't like the cold. Doesn't like the heat. Can't tolerate drought. According to one gardening website, "Even the best-cared-for plants can be plagued by problems."
Patty explains how her tomato problems MAY be over on the "Garden in the City" podcast:
And yet, every year, like a stupid moth attracted to a deadly flame, I plant tomatoes.
Twice now, I've been burned. My tomato crops have been done in two years running by all manner of pestilence, extreme weather and, admittedly, blundering on my part, including insufficient watering and excessive pruning.
For fear of jinxing myself, I must say, the third time appears to be the charm. So far, knock on wood, our tomato plants are thriving, which caught us completely off guard and unprepared.
Our vines have become so bushy and tall, so heavy with blossoms and burgeoning fruit, that they've busted, Hulk-like, out of cages ill-equipped to contain their bulk.
We turned to a master gardener for help — as master gardeners happen to volunteer weekly at Global Garden, wandering from plot to plot precisely to answer questions like, "Do we need to wrangle these tomato plants or just let them keep on doing their thing?"
The answer was more complicated than we had anticipated.
Turns out, we have "indeterminate" tomato plants, a term you totally can Google if you know it exists, which we didn't.
Determinate tomatoes, the master gardener told us, grow to a specific height (three to four feet) and produce a single crop of fruit. Indeterminate plants can reach up to 12 feet and continuously produce fruit throughout the season.
How do you know which kind of tomato you've got? Well, those plastic tabs, the ones tucked into seedling containers, will say "indeterminate" or "determinate" along with info like "needs full sun." You just have to know to look for the descriptor. Which we didn't.
I was pretty pleased to learn that I had unwittingly stumbled onto exactly the type of plant I wanted, but now we needed to play catch-up in terms providing the plants sufficient support.
Heavy-duty stakes, that's what was called for. So we headed to a Menards in Ohio, because it took less time to drive there than Humboldt Park (particularly since we were visiting family in Toledo).
We also picked up some tomato twine, yet another invention we were unaware of.
Our tomato plants are now comfortably residing within an enclosure of six six-foot stakes that we wrapped in a web of twine. For good measure, we also nourished each plant with a healthy dose of organic fertilizer and compost.
If that doesn't lead to a bumper crop of tomatoes, next year I'm moving to Peru where I hear the darn things grow wild.
Listen to previous episodes of "Garden in the City" here:
