Volunteer romas
Sometimes I feel like all I
have to do is tell the farm that I need something, and it
provides. There's really nothing mystical about it --- you just
have to focus on what you want and then keep an open mind so you notice
the solution when it looks you in the face.
You'll recall that I
posted earlier this week about being
low on roma tomato transplants. While weeding asparagus alley Thursday, what did I find
but a big patch of healthy volunteer romas!
There are always lots of
volunteer
tomatoes in our
garden, but it's usually tough to tell which variety they are until
they fruit. Since we fertilize our garden with horse manure to
which kitchen scraps from someone else's household are added, volunteer
tomatoes could be just about anything. One year, I babied a
volunteer tomato, only to find out that it was some kind of grocery
store variety that won't get past the pink, hard stage before the
fruits rot off. So I swore off keeping volunteer tomatoes ---
it's just too much of a gamble in our setting.
However, Thursday's
volunteers were all growing from one spot which just happened to be
where the yellow romas lived last year. I'm 85% sure a fruit fell
there and rotted in the midst of the summer garden frenzy, which would
explain why there are so many tomato plants popping up out of the same
spot but none on either side. So I thanked the farm, then
transplanted those yellow romas into my empty tomato beds. I can
taste those extra sun-dried
tomatoes already!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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You really do have some sort of magic over there, I think. I've been reading you guys for awhile and I keep sighing with longing at all of the successes you share with us. I always feel like I'll never get a hang of growing food, so I feel like I will never be able to grow most of what I eat. Your land, your talents, and your luck is definitely magical in that sense. You've ached that little place where it works out beautifully for you time and time again. I hope that one day I can reach that same place. It does help that you also share failures, proving that my own are perfectly normal and that I can achieve your level of expertise some day.
Also, as an aside, I love finding volunteers. I feel like nature is giving me presents when I find them!
Canned Quilter and Paula B. --- I hope your volunteers and mine all turn out to be what we wanted!
Brandy --- Hang in there! It gets better (and tastier) every year. You just have to shrug off all the failures as learning experiences.