Heart of the Garden

This is my tomato situation this year: I wanted to fashion rabbit fencing into 5 foot cylinders, but did not have time. So here’s what I did have time to do:

We jammed 6 stakes into the ground and I just wound twine around in zig zaggy webs. I will weave the vines around them as they grow. Hopefully there’s enough circulation in there when they are fully grown.

I finally had time to get some cacao shell mulch ($8 per 2 cubic feet! Ouch.) but it smells so good and it’s a beautiful deep red-brown, and it adds nutrients to the soil when it breaks down.

I threw some cherry tomato volunteers in pots because I was wracked with guilt over the millions of volunteers that I had to pinch from the cusp of life. Some people think it’s courting disaster to let tomato volunteers grow — a hort crime akin to planting tomatoes in the same spot the following season — you’re just begging for verticillium or blight.  But cherry (and pear) tomatoes seem pretty tough.

I grappled with a ganglea of rusted wire cages and almost lost an eye before I gave up. Who invented these things? Why are the conical? Who made them top heavy? Everything about them makes me mad. So I took another cue from Chanticleer and just stuck two stakes on either side and wove up a vertical twine web for them to climb. Hopefully.