We don't really know what we are doing when it comes to vegetable gardening in general, and particularly in Central Florida. However, each February the veggie muse demands we try.
When we lived up north, all our energies went into maintaining perennial beds for flowers we simply cannot grow here. We thought we were successful gardeners, wise and gifted. Then we moved to Central Florida, which boxed our ears and scolded us harshly for our northern conceit. Quickly we learned we knew nothing. We surrendered to the heat and humidity, and figured out what flowers would or wouldn't grow. Veggies are definitely beyond us, though.
Having said that, we try tomatoes each year. We live in hope. Occasionally we get a tomato or two, and we had good luck with cherry tomatoes one year. Last fall, Tom stuck a tomato plant in the ground. I knew it was too late to plant, but I said nothing. If he's happy, I'm happy. It grew, thrived even. Best of all, it overwintered and didn't die.
Today I noticed one of the tomatoes is starting to turn red. Joy and rapture. Notice how unhealthy the bottom leaves look.
Nothing tastes quite as good as a tomato fresh from the garden. Remember not to refrigerate.
ReplyDeleteHope springs eternal. May you harvest a tasty tomato.
ReplyDeleteI'm hopeless when it comes to gardening so I have no advice. Enjoy your tomatoes, Colette!
ReplyDeleteMy tomato leaves always look like that by the end of the season, worn out. Hope it survives:)
ReplyDeleteSo glad to see that tomato turning red. Homegrown tomatoes are the best! (NewRobin13)
ReplyDeleteI am a 'survival of the fittest' gardener. I put it in the ground and the rest is up to the plant.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your tomatoes! Darwin would be proud !
That must have been quite a challenge, totally rejigging your gardening know-how for a radically different climate. We don't have a vegetable patch, we're too lazy to maintain it, but home-grown vegetables always taste wonderful.
ReplyDeleteMost instructive.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that deep at the roots of my detestation of all forms of gardening is that I lack faith. Even when things go moderately well and flowers bloom I am not encouraged. Next time, I say to myself, this will not happen. Faith with the same meaning as the faith that a benevolent geezer sitting on a cloud in well-laundered robes (Dan Rather with a beard) is guiding all our destinies towards a happy ending.
Me, I'm more pragmatic. Yes, I've lived to a great age and if I had faith I'd attribute this to the old geezer. But not on your nelly (and there's a new phrase for you). What old age has revealed is that the rapidly crumbling structure I call my body is now much more prone to all sorts of ailments. And that my abiding skill - the one that gets me out of bed in a morning - in short the ability to string three words, thirty-three words or a thousand and three words together to make sense, will self-dissipate into a jelly and I'll become gibbering wreck in some shabby old building that is Hereford's equivalent of a Floridian condo,
Meanwhile I scribble and see if I can make myself laugh. Alas I'm batting light (.238), a gawky Englander misplaced at short-stop for a team that languishes in the bushest of bush leagues. Sustained by the memory that once - but only once - bathed in intellectual light, I participated in a double-play that sent Joe DiMaggio's grandson back to the dug-out.
Too long, too long. I suspect you'll get no further than the second para.