Expensive Tomatoes

I am not a gardener.  I love gardens, but I don’t want to do the work that they require.  No bending, no digging, no swatting insects, no getting drenched by hoses that apply more water to my shoes than my plants.  I want to sit among gorgeous, fragrant flowers, and eat succulent tomatoes from healthy, well-tended plants. I also want a full time, dedicated, talented gardener to manage this mini-farm for me, a fantasy similar to winning the lottery.

In the spring, when I was seduced by sunshine and cool nights, I phoned the wonderful young woman who shows up with her crew about once a month to weed whack the yard, and told her I had visions of a vegetable plot. After a long silence, she suggested beginning with a few containers [she knows me well], and within a few weeks I had tomato plants, herbs, a pepper plant, an eggplant , and a squash plant, all irrigated, fertilized and screened from bugs and birds.

[The screening was my idea so that I could further neglect the plants with ease.]

April and May brought lots of green growth, fruit blossoms and high hopes.  I even managed to spray [a product approved for organic vegetables] and fertilize the containers once or twice.  One evening, after reading an article that reminded me fruit blossoms need to be pollinated, I ran to the yard, opened the screens that surrounded each pot, and shook the plants wildly to emulate wind.  Within a few weeks, a green tomato showed up on one plant, and a small purple pepper on another.   The herbs were in herb heaven, growing into small bushes.  My gardening was good.

Then we went out of town at the end of May for two weeks.  What could go wrong?  Apparently quite a bit.  I came home to stripped stems, holes in the tomatoes, chewed leaves, and blossoms fallen off the vines, lying in piles in the bottom of the pots.  I rushed cuttings to the garden supply center and was told by one they were over-watered, by another they had a fungus,  by a third they had a blight.  I bought anti-fungus spray and rushed to the rescue.  

The pepper plant was a loss with only one tiny pepper to harvest, smaller than a lemon.  The squash and eggplants were totaled, the herbs stripped, and the tomatoes in a sorry state.  I ripped out, pruned, sprayed and fertilized again.  I removed the screens from the worst pots [what harm could bugs and birds do at this point?] but left one screen protecting the few tomatoes for which I still had hope.

It’s now the end of June; we’ve enjoyed one small Celebrity tomato, one little pepper,  and a few tiny Golden Mamas sliced with fresh basil, and they were wonderful.  But expensive.  New tomato plants and herbs are in the pots, and I’m starting over, armed with great respect for real farmers and unrealistic expectations for a late summer harvest.