Tomato Twister

           Growing vegetables and flowers on the high plains of Western Kansas requires eternal hope that compares to a child’s expectant belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Because we believe, we will harvest succulent, homegrown vegetables and fruits. Each spring gardeners across this region sift through garden magazines and seed catalogues and visit local garden shops with a gambler’s hope that this will be the year.

            Eleven years after moving to our limestone hilltop, payday has arrived.  Yes, Virginia, your garden will produce a bonanza harvest. 

Due to a combination of beneficent rains and chicken poop, we have a dream tomato harvest--this despite hail that totaled our roof and left tender tomato plants shattered and broken.  Even with the set back, our vines began producing at the end of July, only a bit later than they would have without Mother Nature’s challenges. Produce is an understatement.  The plants absolutely burgeon with softball-size, juicy fruits that taste like captured sunbeams.

            Here’s the dilemma.  We have a small, raise-bed plot due to our topsoil- challenged circumstances. Based on past plantings, I left plenty of room between seedlings so they could stretch, grow, and still leave room to harvest ripe tomatoes.

           This year’s timely, ample rains and the perfect addition of cured chicken droppings induced unbelievable growth. The intertwining plants are over three and half high by three and a half feet wide.  That is a minimal estimation since it’s hard to tell how tall the plants would be if they weren’t weighed down by large orbs.  I can’t get through my garden without playing the contortionist game of Twister.

            My visiting mother discovered huge numbers of ready- to-pick tomatoes.  Other than the fun of digging hills of potatoes, I don’t think there is much my mom likes better than finding every last ripe tomato on eight very crowded, over-grown plants.  She became a tomato General Patton as she stood outside the fenced  garden and directed the placement of my feet and hands so that I could reach every last one of the ripened fruits. 

            “More to the left, down a few more inches, don’t step too hard with your right foot, stretch, can you see it, oh look, there’s a great big one on  the other side of that plant, watch out, you’re bending that branch, oh can you get all four of those and pass them to me.”

 It was a form of garden “Twister.”  I was so contorted I barely kept my balance.  In the real Twister game, you don’t have to worry about destroying a producing tomato plant.  The worst you can do is bruise a fellow player or black an eye. 

           

            By the time I finished following Mom’s directions, we filled a five gallon bucket two days in a row.  Taking our harvested trophies into the house, we rinsed, blanched, peeled, and quartered them until I had six gallon bags of ready-to-turn-into-salsa frozen tomatoes.

            I must recover from my spine-twisting garden game before I can think about lifting the jar-filled canner from the hot stove. 

           

             

Assistant Pollinator

Watching bees and butterflies with their hairy legs clothed in gold pollen pantaloons as they buzz my garden fascinates me. While I do not want to let my leg hairs grow until they can collect yellow nodules of plant magic, I have joined the effort to pollinate my tomato blooms.

Last year, I optimistically planted 15 tomato and 12 pepper plants in our raised-bed garden. In the early, hopeful part of summer, I anticipated making quarts and quarts of salsa to fill empty pantry shelves to bulging. Sadly, I harvested 15 tomatoes the whole summer. The heat decimated my garden, leaving my jars and pantry empty.

This year, I risked early frost to plant six  carefully selected tomato plants as well as two pepper plants in early April  To further guarantee more than a 15 tomato harvest, I planted three rows of flowers—one each of zinnias, cosmos, and bachelor buttons—to encourage more bees and butterflies to visit my prairie oasis.

So far, my efforts have been fruitful. We have harvested dozens of tomatoes with more on the vine. The dilemma is the heat. It tends to prevent pollination and thus, a ongoing crop.

I have read about heat’s effect on tomato development. However, I have not determined whether it is a result of heat affecting developing tomatoes or the temperature’s effect on insects that fertilize blossoms.

To determine the solution, I decided to play pollinator. No, I didn’t let my leg hairs grow to collect pollen to transfer from one blossom to another. I robbed my watercolor box of its paintbrush. 

With watercolor brush in hand, I visit my garden in dawn’s cool temperatures. Moving from bloom to bloom, I tickle stamens and pistils of tomato blossoms to assist resident pollinators. I also give the blossoms a little vibrating shake to trick them into thinking I am a great big bee or butterfly doing its job.

My big dilemma is that I cannot tell if the reason I have more tomatoes is that I planted rows of flowers to attract more insects to my garden or if it is because I use a paintbrush to transfer pollen from one plant to another. 

I do know that it is as hot day and night this summer as last, so something I am doing has made a difference in tomato production. We have harvested enough ripe fruit to make fresh salsa, tomato soup, BLT’s, along with a dessert of salted and peppered sliced tomatoes.

My hope is that six tomato plants will produce enough fruit to can a dozen jars of salsa. More than that is an overflow of blessings.

Regardless of whether an insect or paintbrush filament is pollinating my six plants this, tomatoes dangle from vines like green Christmas balls. That beats the heck out of 15 lovely plants producing nothing but green leaves and tomato worms.