Farmer Cranky

Farmer Cranky

I am so proud!

What is it about a backyard garden?  Why do people waste their time and money trying to grow vegetables?

Professionals grow bigger better cheaper vegetables than most amateur gardeners can grow.

Still, farmer Cranky loves his tomato plants.  I check them out every morning, pinch out those unproductive shoots, tie them up as needed, and tickle the flowers.

To date I have spent about $12 on my tomato plants, an investment which so far with three tomatoes might not be considered a successful venture.  Four dollars a tomato is not a very good investment.  Of course, with any luck, by the seasons end, I may have a big enough crop to cut that per tomato cost to about 50 cents a tomato…except I only eat one or two tomatoes a week and I am not about to preserve the excess.

So, clearly growing tomatoes in my “yard” has no monetary incentive.  I think it is something deep in our DNA that makes it so satisfying to grow your own food.  It is the reason people hunt and fish recreationally.

I have no real property in our town home, so my plants, all five, are grown in a pot,

an upside-down thing,

Fun idea, but not real productive

and two on a bit of ground I have claimed as my own. 

I have been doing this for three years now and I have learned much about farming.

The first year, rabbits attacked my new planted tomatoes.  The internet showed me that sticking plastic forks next to the plants keeps the rabbits away.  It sounds really stupid, but it works.

I learned that tomatoes need water, but too much water gives the fruit bottom-rot so I now only make sure they get a short sprinkle if we have had no rain.

I learned that to get fruit you need to jiggle the flowers as tomatoes "self- pollinate."

I learned to call it "jiggling the flowers" and not "jerking off my tomatoes" when in polite company.

I add fertilizer at planting and when they start to pop fruit.  Too much fertilizer is not good.

Squirrels will steal a tomato right off the plant.  Take one unripe tomato and leave it on the ground for the squirrels…they really don’t like them very much but you have to give one up to teach them.

If you grow them they will come.  They, are tomato worms, real ugly green things.  How they find my random plants is a mystery of nature.

Stores advertise “vine ripened” tomatoes.  I found that vine ripening tends to leave them at risk of varmints and they tend to split in an unappetizing way.  I pick them as soon as they start to change color and put them in a paper bag to continue the ripening process.  I put them in a bag because the internet told me to…it was right on the rabbit/fork thing, so I follow its suggestions.

At the beginning of this post I claimed professional farmers grow bigger and better tomatoes than amateurs.  Actually, the tomatoes you find at the supermarket are bigger, redder and prettier, but they do not have the same flavor.  The tomato flavor in store-bought is not as intense.

A friend of mine who is smart, says the store-bought are genetically modified to look pretty but they don’t have the same taste.  They are currently trying to genetically modify the taste back in the tomato.  Until that happens, my tomatoes beat the heck out of supermarket tomatoes in the taste department.

I’ve heard the government sometimes pays farmers to NOT grow certain crops.

I wonder if next year I could have the government pay me to not grow my tomatoes…nope, not going to even try, I need to grow my own, it is in my DNA.