The End of the Garden
I pulled up the tomatoes this afternoon. All day it looked like it was going to snow, and there I was out there in the backyard in a sweater and my down vest. I figure, if you’ve got a down vest on, it’s time to harvest all those green tomatoes. (Plus, I have to go to San Jose for business next week, and my brother was afraid he’d kill them all and I’d be mad.) As I was working out there, the weather got even worse, and I had to go put on my gore-tex shell for the first time since spring. I feel a hard frost in our near future.
So, I pruned away at the tomatoes, cutting off long lanky vines, trimming the leaves away in preparation for hanging bundles of vines, with green tomatoes, in my basement (I grew mostly cherry tomatoes). It was kind of fun since I hadn’t pruned them — I was just so happy that they finally grew like weeds that I let them. The Galina and Jeaunne Flamme were all entwined, while the Romas, Gold Nuggets, and Auroras, being determinite vines, were all compact and tidy.
I also harvested the Aci Sviri turkish peppers (from High Altitude Gardens) and hung them with the tomatoes in the basement to ripen. Next year, I have to remember not to plant the peppers among the tomatoes because they didn’t get enough sunshine and didn’t really ripen.
So now I have tomato vines hanging on the basement clotheslines. It’s kind of festive …
