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Sacrificial tomatoesThere is absolutely nothing better than a fresh tomato from the garden in the middle of July. I like mine mixed with some fresh basil and mozzarella cheese. It is just heavenly. But I am beginning to worry that all of my tomatoes will be coming from the Farmer's Markets this summer. I have made one of those pivotal mistakes that, with hindsight, seem so stupid. It all started way back in February. Right now it may not seem like February has a whole lot to do with tomatoes in July, but you might be surprised. I was going to grow onions for the first time. Being a young gardener, I am still at the stage where I need to grow things just to prove that I can. I've also found it much easier to teach others when I have done it for myself and can speak from firsthand experience. So the onions were planted right around Valentine's Day. My grand scheme was to plant the onions right at the edge of the garden and the tomatoes would be planted later directly west of the onions. This would provide some shade for the onions as they were maturing and when they were pulled out it might be a cooler spot for some greens in the early fall. The onions were growing and growing because I was feeding and feeding them. The goal with onions is to produce a lot of top growth: the better the top growth, the better the onion. About every 2 to 3 weeks I was adding a handful or so of nitrogen. Nitrogen after all is the nutrient that sparks green vegetative growth, and growth is what I was getting. I was a P.O.G.--Professional Onion Grower. The onions have since been pulled out of the ground. They are nice. My husband and I have created a new way to describe really good produce that comes from our garden. We refer to it as 'restaurant quality'. And in this case we grew 'restaurant quality onions'. I am now able to say that I successfully grew a crop of onions. The problem is that those onions came with a very dear price, and unfortunately this is how my tomatoes came to be called the sacrificial tomatoes. My tomatoes are now standing at about five and a half feet tall; very large and impressive if I were growing the plants for the leaves, but I prefer the fruit myself. I keep waiting and waiting for the fruit to come. There is an abundance of blooms, but they just sort of shrivel and fall to the ground. Then it hit me--the tomatoes are feeding on the excess nitrogen I applied to the onions. This is the trick with tomatoes; they want fertilizer to grow, but not too much. If the plant is over-fertilized the vine will simply grow and grow. The principle reason that plants produce fruit is the same reason humans have offspring; it is to procreate the species. Therefore, if the plant has plenty of food and plenty of water there is no need to produce fruit--it thinks it will live forever. The plant may think it is going to live forever, but if it doesn't snap out of it soon, it is going to be living in the compost pile. In order to counteract my rookie mistake, I have attempted to stress the plant by cutting some of the roots. This can be done with a shovel. Just make a few vertical slices through the soil about a foot from the main stem of the plant. It is yet to be seen if this has worked with my plants, but I'm hopeful. I think they can be described as tomato vines on steroids. The lesson to be learned is to visualize the big picture in the garden. Consider each crop's specific needs and how those needs interact with other areas of the garden. And so it is that my tomatoes became the sacrifice made in order to grow 'restaurant quality' onions. It goes to show that there is no better way to learn how to do something correctly than by doing it incorrectly. 7/14/08 Date: 7/3/08 Advertisement
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