Those who know me well know that I don't like Tomatoes. Once they are cooked (pasta sauce, cooked salsa, etc), they're fine. Its the fresh ones that bother me. Not sure what it is exactly about the flavor, but I've never liked the flavor. Now I have another reason to dislike them. They are annoying to grow.
Jaime wanted me to grow some Tomato plants in the garden, so I have two plants that I started from seed. One is a big heirloom variety (Old German) and one is an open-pollinated small cherry variety (Isis Cherry). We also got a Topsy Turvy and a couple of heirloom seedlings to go in it from Jaime's mom. The ones in the topsy-turvy seem to be progressing fine and are starting to flower. The ones I planted in the ground are progressing more than fine.
I knew that Tomatoes aren't the sturdiest of plants, but I had a couple of 3 foot high conical tomato cages to support them. That should be good enough, right? Once it started getting warm, they began to grow rapidly and after they reached about 3 foot tall I realized it was time to put up the Tomato cages. A week later they were >4 foot and were tipping and bending the cages and threatening to fall over. I took 4 foot tall wooden stakes from the peas and tied strings to them to hold the Tomatoes up. I started to prune the new shoots so that they would stop getting taller and start making tomatoes. That didn't work so well. They are starting to grow fruit now, but they basically sent up two shoots rather than the one I had just cut. I have been literally pruning them every day to keep them in check.
Around this time, I put a few random pieces of info together and realized that Tomatoes are actually vines. They have no intention of supporting themselves and would be quite happy to fall over and grow along the ground. Not only that, but the stems will develop roots if they fall over and touch the ground.
Okay, so if they want to be vines, maybe I should let the be vines? The problem is that I have no room in the garden for them to do that. I have only allocated about 2ft X 4ft for the two plants. So maybe next year I could let them be vines if I grow Tomatoes again? A bit of internet research tells me that isn't such a good idea. Apparently the plants are less healthy and less productive if laying down, or as it was stated on one website: "By season's end, it will be an unsightly, impenetrable, disease-wracked tangle."
What ever happened to survival of the fittest?!? If a plant can't stand upright on its own, and can't reproduce well if it falls over, maybe it shouldn't be grown. I'm just sayin'.... At the very least, can't somebody please create a self-supporting Tomato breed?
Ok, back to the current problem. Given self-destructive 4+ foot tall tomatoes that seem to want to keep growing larger, how can I cheaply support them? Here's what they looked like this morning.
I stopped at Home Depot today and they were (of course) out of 8ft tall wooden plant stakes($5 each). I looked all around the store for a long sturdy object that could be used to replace the missing stakes. Copper pipes, steel pipes, PVC pipes, steel rebar, shovel handles, broom handles, wooden trim pieces, etc. All were either too flimsy or cost too much. I don't have the space or the desire to spend $25 each on their nice Tomato trellises. Finally, I found some 1"x2"x8' pine pieces ($2.60 each!). Together with velcro plant ties (which I highly recommend, BTW), the total cost was under $8. I had to cut the wood at angles at one end so I could pound it into the ground, but that didn't take long. The picture below shows what my support system looks like now. The Tomatoes are now free to grow upwards as much as they'd like.
Ok, enough about Tomatoes. Lets move on to a more pleasant topic like Potatoes. Here is a representative view of the Potato patch.
I've read that you can carefully dig around Potato plants by hand before they are fully done and get some baby Potatoes. I had half-heartedly tried rooting around one of the plants a couple times. I looked in a couple spots about 12" from the the stems, but didn't find anything. That seemed to be a bad sign. Today I decided to fully dig up one of the 10 plants to find out for sure whether the plants had time to make potatoes before dying off. I didn't find anything at first and I was starting to despair, but I finally hit the jackpot, right up against the stems. I found 6 respectable potatoes (all within a few inches of the stems). Now I'm excited. That was the smallest, most-shaded of the Potato plants and I still got almost 2lbs of Potatoes from it. I can't complain about that. Here are the Potatoes, fresh out of the ground. The seedlings seen in the picture are baby Brussel's Sprouts that will be transplanted into the area currently occupied by the peas in a couple weeks.
When looking at the roots, I did notice that there were several tiny baby potatoes (around 1/8"). I'm wondering if the plant was still trying to grow more Potatoes, or if that is just how it will always look. In the picture below, you can see a couple of the baby Potatoes. They are on the end of the thick roots that are closest to the stems. The other 3 thick roots used to be attached to Potatoes.
Even if the Potatoes are trying to grow a secondary smaller crop of tubers, I think I will let the squash take over, periodically harvesting the potatoes as the squash overgrows the area. The squash certainly needs the space more than the potatoes at this point. The last picture shows most of the day's harvest (there was also some beans and the tail end of the peas). Those Cucumbers are going to become pickles tomorrow.
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