We had a wonderful 4th of July barbecue with burgers and brats and A's incredibly delicious home smoked wild salmon and grilled corn on the cob and more salads than I can list. But the star of the show, by far, were the tomato towers. Now I realize that the Verti-gro people recommend planting determinate (fixed height) tomatoes in their towers as opposed to indeterminate varieties that can grow up to 10 feet tall, but let's get serious. Determinate varieties are all hybrids and why on earth would we consider planing those when we could just as easily plant our beloved heirlooms. The fact that they just happen to be indeterminate is beside the point. On the other hand, it's only the 7th of July. they're still growing and I think we're in trouble.
A is in the process of rigging up a couple of additional poles as a support system. We could just let the plants touch the ground where they'll root and head back upwards but that defeats the whole point of the towers and no plants touching the ground and no bugs to speak of. So we'll have poles and string and what have you and next year we'll make the towers higher because we know better. Right. But in the meanwhile, we watch the blossoms turn into baby tomatoes every day. We have our first red tomato, it's a Matt's Wild Cherry, which is a Mexican wild heirloom. We also have an Italian Gourmet and a Fushimi ready to pick. They're going into a western omelet on Saturday morning - YUM! And we have three zucchini to pick for tonight's dinner - they're going to be cut into matchsticks and quickly sauteed together with a hand full of matchstick carrots in butter, pepper and nutmeg. I LOVE my garden!
And just fyi, Travel and Leisure had a very nice article on heirloom tomatoes in their July issue. Read it and salivate!
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