Tomatoes in their Pacific Northwest Biosphere

I just hope the neighbors are well invested, because I decided to gamble on tomatoes, despite the especially cool and rainy Pacific Northwest spring that may be harbinger for the same kind of summer. Even our good summers are so short and relatively cool that tomatoes are a crapshoot.

It’s on my bucket list to grow a tomato from seed someday, but for now I buy my starts two feet tall (preferably with blooms). This year I’m also planting them in black bottomless pots to radiate maximum heat, and I’m babying them from the rain under plastic hoops. Since I’m usually a “keep it simple” girl, that much intervention creates a pretty skinny line between “growing” a tomato and “manufacturing” one. But summer wouldn’t be summer without a succulent “home-manufactured” Sungold. So I’m throwing down with two of those, a Yellow Plum, and, of course, a Brandywine. I also wanted to try a Green Zebra this year, and I still might. It would fit nicely in the spot where the basil is failing to germinate. That’s another plant I can only reliably grow from starts.

Royal Burgundy Green Beans

Overwintered Sparkler Radishes

Pak Choi Before it Became Dinner

Gerald Darby Siberian Iris

Gerald Darby Siberian Iris—It started innocently with that deep purple foliage and before I knew it, Gerald had ingrained himself into my life. In the first post about Gerald, I didn’t know his name. By the second post, we were bosom buddies. That post accidentally touched the life of Judy Darby, who stopped by because her son who’d passed away was named Gerald Darby. After a lovely exchange in comments and e-mail, she has a start of my Gerald in her garden, and I know the sweetness of community through blogging and gardening. Happy New Year, Judy.

Sweet Heidi Cranesbill

Sweet Heidi Cranesbill—This was the first year I noticed how long cranesbill blooms and how little it needs from me—qualities that quickly make a plant near and dear to my heart. Sweet Heidi gave the Jolly Bee a run for its money but with smaller, pink petals. This fall I bought several other varieties so, if they survive the freeze in their nursery pots, hopefully 2010 will also be the year of cranesbill.

Broadway Lights Daisy

Broadway Lights Daisy—This Proven Winner demands nothing from me and danced all summer long with new blooms that open light yellow and become white. I divided my one plant into many, so hopefully I’ll have a nice drift of these next year.

Crocosmia & Blackberry Lily

Crocosmia & Blackberry Lily—I love the cheerful, elegant flowers of crocosmia and blackberry lily and stocked up on several varieties this year. Despite many painful hours on my knees with the camera, I never did get a properly exposed photo of that red devil Lucifer.

Sungold Tomatoes

Sungold Tomatoes—Yum. This was my first year to grow sungolds and little did I know what I’d been missing. I wish I could pluck that one and eat it, just to feel the sweetness of summer again.

Dark Orange Daylily

Dark Orange Daylily—Of all of my beautiful daylilies, the dark orange ones most warmed my heart this year, especially with the late afternoon sun shining through them.

Oranges & Lemons Gaillardia

Oranges & Lemons Gaillardia—I love the delicate form of this gaillardia. It was poorly sited with fierce sun and hardly any water and still it bloomed and bloomed. Unfortunately, it met a sorry death when it fell out of my transplant bucket this fall and lay in the sun for a week shriveling up like a prune. But I’ll get another one.

Pat Austin English Rose & Sedum

Pat Austin English Rose—I don’t buy roses anymore due to upkeep and deer, but this is one I will always have in my garden. Its thorns are as big as my thumb, so the deer (mostly) don’t eat it. And the complex apricot blooms tug at my heart. Unfortunately, I’ve had this one for three years, which is about as long as roses live for me, so I may be in the market for a new one.

Coppertina Ninebark & Bergenia

Coppertina Ninebark—If forced to pick my absolute favorite plant of 2009, it would be my Coppertina Ninebark. Every time I walked past it, it just made me happy, from one season to the next. Coppertina has an underlying wamth that my Diablo and Summerwine ninebarks lack. New foliage is golden in the sun and fall foliage turns from copper to fiery red. Of course, it’s going to be too big in that spot next year. But I’ll deal with that in the spring.

There you have it. The first fruits of my tomato labor. One sweet million. One sungold. One black prince. Not exactly bushel baskets, but there’s nothing like eating a tomato you grew yourself. And there are many handfuls more to come.

The sweet million was to hedge my tomato bets, and it tasted just like a red cherry tomato. Imagine that.

The sungold, which I’d never eaten before, was delicious. I can’t wait for more to ripen. There are scads of them.

My Cherokee purple is blushing pink but not ready to harvest yet. I don’t have the heart to tell it that it’s not quite purple, just like I didn’t have the heart to tell it that I miscalculated the forsythia’s growth spurt this year and accidentally planted it in dappled shade.

The black prince was a bit of a disappointment. The meat was mealy and low acid, so it didn’t taste much like a tomato. Maybe I left it on the vine too long and it was past its prime, but I don’t think so. I’ll see how the others ripen, but so far my prince is more like a frog.

As you may remember, I’m growing black tomatoes this year. This black prince is the first of my proud crop. Hooray for me. I grew a stinkin’ tomato in Seattle. Even if it’s black. Anybody got any idea if it’s ripe yet?

Over the weekend, I realized that I hadn’t bought my veggies yet and that I was running out of time to let them shrivel up in their pony packs for a couple of weeks before I plant them.

I don’t have a vegetable plot, so I usually just mix them in among the perennials. I like growing edibles for the same reason that I like being able to drive a stick shift car, start a hot fire, and hammer a straight nail—all handy skills in case the plug gets pulled on technology.

So I swung by the True Value to pick up some veggies real quick, but apparently everyone else in Duvall had also swung by to pick up some veggies real quick because the racks were nearly empty. Only the vegetables that no one really likes were left. Artichokes and spaghetti squash were particularly plentiful. But I got lucky and found one last zucchini hiding out with the basil, and two crookneck squash tucked away among the cucumbers—unless they were mislabeled and I’m in for a surprise.

What I really wanted was tomatoes, but the only plants left that were “of some size” were heirlooms. Tomatoes are hard to pull off in Seattle because they don’t exactly thrive in gloom. So unless you have a green thumb or a greenhouse, you need to cheat a little and buy tomato plants “of some size”—waist high usually does the trick. Cherry tomatoes are especially popular because they increase (but don’t guarantee) your chances of success.

Although we’ve lived here for 15 years, Mr. Sorry and I still mourn the ease of growing a tomato. We both grew up in the heart of the Midwest and spent our childhood summers eating huge, juicy red tomatoes warm off the vines in our grandparents’ abundant gardens. So it’s hard to accept that it’s difficult to grow a tomato. And despite that, there’s always a big run on them every spring, so you better get them when the getting is good—which I failed to do this year until only the heirlooms were left.

Now “heirloom” plants always intimidate me. I know it just means they’ve been around for ages, but they seem “special,” and special plants tend to have needs that exceed my sorry attention span. Heirlooms are also more expensive, and I feel a whole lot better when veggies wither on the vine if I only spent $1.49. Frankly, heirloom tomatoes also look a little shoddy and misshapen—and that’s on the glossy sign selling their virtues. So I can only imagine how bad they’ll look in my garden.

Nevertheless, I bought a couple of plants. One is a Black Prince, even though I can’t say I’m excited about growing black tomatoes. How do I know when they’re ripe? And I’m fairly certain that Mr. Sorry is not going to be impressed with the fruits of my labor when I lay a slice of juicy black tomato on his plate, even if I lovingly cite its heirloom pedigree.

The other plant is a Cherokee Purple, whose sign read like a history lesson. Apparently, it was grown by the Cherokee Indians and has survived in cultivation for more than 100 years. How long you wanna bet it lasts in my garden?