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Black thumb
I'm not exactly the world's most amazing gardener, and it doesn't help that I detest gardening. Which is probably why my property looks as if I employ bears for gardeners.
But one thing I do manage is growing tomatoes in containers. Although this sounds thrifty, by the time you factor in the plants, potting mix et al, it probably works out at around $5 per tomato. Who needs it, right? But the trouble is, there's no duplicating the taste of a freshly picked tomato. Especially my tomatoes, which are always Tasty Toms, a grafted breed specially grown to taste like tomatoes are meant to instead of like cotton wool. (Tasty Toms are also handy as they're disease-resistant: given my Darwinian approach to gardening this is just as well.)
Labour Weekend, the public holiday on the fourth weekend in October, is traditional tomato planting time in New Zealand. As a result, the garden centres are a zoo and I avoid them like the plague. But a couple of days later I happened to be somewhere garden centre-adjacent, and as I was walking through it on the way to somewhere else I spotted a little pallet of Tasty Toms, unlabelled and all by themselves. This garden centre had never stocked them before. Sometimes the universe aligns and forces you to put your gardening gloves on. I scooped them up and planted them as soon as I got home. (This is not because I was so enthusiastic but because I've learned from experience that if I don't deal with them straight away I never will.)
I have three poles holding my deck roof up, so I have nine pots of tomatoes. This gives us enough eating tomatoes, but sadly never so many I can make delicious chutneys from them. But what can I do, I only have three poles. Bitter experience has taught me that attempting to plant things elsewhere in actual soil will only end in disaster.
(The white house-looking thing in the background is my garage, not my neighbour. So very convenient having a garage separate from the house. What were they thinking?)
The pots in situ:
The other two sets of pots are currently only barely visible behind my mint and stuff, but by the end of the season, all the plants will be at the top of the poles. Please ignore my scraggly herb planters and the aphid-infested hibiscus by the back door. The bears haven't got to those yet.
Now I can bask in the familiar annual sensation ofa job well done OH THANK GOD I don't have to do that for another year.
But one thing I do manage is growing tomatoes in containers. Although this sounds thrifty, by the time you factor in the plants, potting mix et al, it probably works out at around $5 per tomato. Who needs it, right? But the trouble is, there's no duplicating the taste of a freshly picked tomato. Especially my tomatoes, which are always Tasty Toms, a grafted breed specially grown to taste like tomatoes are meant to instead of like cotton wool. (Tasty Toms are also handy as they're disease-resistant: given my Darwinian approach to gardening this is just as well.)
Labour Weekend, the public holiday on the fourth weekend in October, is traditional tomato planting time in New Zealand. As a result, the garden centres are a zoo and I avoid them like the plague. But a couple of days later I happened to be somewhere garden centre-adjacent, and as I was walking through it on the way to somewhere else I spotted a little pallet of Tasty Toms, unlabelled and all by themselves. This garden centre had never stocked them before. Sometimes the universe aligns and forces you to put your gardening gloves on. I scooped them up and planted them as soon as I got home. (This is not because I was so enthusiastic but because I've learned from experience that if I don't deal with them straight away I never will.)
I have three poles holding my deck roof up, so I have nine pots of tomatoes. This gives us enough eating tomatoes, but sadly never so many I can make delicious chutneys from them. But what can I do, I only have three poles. Bitter experience has taught me that attempting to plant things elsewhere in actual soil will only end in disaster.
(The white house-looking thing in the background is my garage, not my neighbour. So very convenient having a garage separate from the house. What were they thinking?)
The pots in situ:
The other two sets of pots are currently only barely visible behind my mint and stuff, but by the end of the season, all the plants will be at the top of the poles. Please ignore my scraggly herb planters and the aphid-infested hibiscus by the back door. The bears haven't got to those yet.
Now I can bask in the familiar annual sensation of