waiting, waiting (for a ripe tomato)

I’m hoping some of my 2008 progeny will start turning red, but if not, I have a stash of green-tomato recipes. (For now I’ll hold onto them, as it’s not yet time to give up…look for them in a few weeks here, and enjoy the Oven-Roasted Tomato idea down at the bottom of this post meantime.)

But really, I marvel each summer-into-fall when I stock my freezer with the harvest turned to many quarts of sauce: How did I even get one ripe fruit, considering what could have happened?

No fruit. Only green fruit. Fruit with spots. Fruit with black bottoms. Fruit with cracks. Fruit eaten by marauders of every taxonomic order.

Tomato leaves spotted. Or dropping off. Or eaten and just plain gone (hornworms!).

Growing tomatoes has its challenges.

We gardeners can provide the basics of fertile soil, full sun, mulch, staking or caging, and also try to offset the heavens to create an even supply of soil moisture. We can also grow resistant varieties, and plant them really deep for maximum rooting.

But what’s perhaps the most valuable tactic against tomato troubles—rotating your crop on a three-year cycle—isn’t so easy if you don’t have three big-enough full-sun spots to alternate among. And rotation means no Solanaceous things there in the non-tomato years, either: no potatoes, no peppers.

Below is the barest minimum of explanation to