About this time each year, new gardeners sign up for our community garden. All of them are optimistic and many express their desire to grow epic tomatoes: Better Boys, Romas Brandywines, or Cherokee Purples -- you name it. As a grizzled vet of the plot and a founding member of the Friends of the Scott Garden Compost Bins I recognize the optimism, but in my five years there I have learned that our community garden isn’t conducive to raising tomatoes.
One reason is that many of the plots do not get the minimum of six hours of direct sun needed for sustained tomato growth. Many of the tall trees surrounding the garden cast shadows throughout the day.
But secondly and more importantly much of the soil in our gardens (we suspect) is contaminated by the kind of parasitic root nematodes which causes tomato wilt. It’s devastating because it happens suddenly – practically overnight. One day you have a beautiful Brandywine plant* and BOOM! Nothing. The solution for tomato wilt according to Greg LeHoullier’s Epic Tomatoes or Jean-Martin Fortier’s Tomatoes: A Grower’s Guide is to avoid trying to grow tomatoes for years because these microscopic critters live in the ground have quite a half-life.
So, here’s the dilemma, should one tell the newcomers to the garden about our garden’s history or should I just avoid crushing their hopes into tomato paste and let them find out for themselves (part of a gardeners learning process)? Of course, one could be wrong. I recall a few years ago there was a woman had a super harvest of tomatoes. She is still a legend.
So please stop by our next popup booth at the Carter Center Freedom Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning April 19th and share your thoughts while browsing amongst the many books we have for sale.
* The Brandywine tomato shown in this posting came from my community garden plot. It was the ONLY tomato harvested before the plant was struck down by wilt. Sigh.