The beginning of this summer hasn’t been great. I tore my MCL, I came down with an evil flu which, three weeks later, still inhabits my body in the form of a sore throat and an unrelenting cough.
I threw my back out coughing, so now I limp around, coughing, with my head turned at unnatural angle. I am...pathetic.
My
husband purchased most of the tomato plants in my veggie garden, and most of
them are growing quite nicely. Except
for eleven of them. Most of which are
Early Girls.
They look weird. They are short, stunted and hunched. Sort of like me, come to think of it. They are loaded with fruit. The loaded part is great, but they appear to have stopped growing. What is going on with these plants?
I
leaned painfully down, head cocked to the side, and read the tag. I saw one
little word that bummed what little stone I had left: “Determinate.”
So,
what we have are tomato plants that will stay small and die shortly after the
majority of their fruit ripens. Instead
of the INDETERMINATE TOMATOES that I normally plant, also known as vining
tomatoes.
(Indeterminate)
vining tomatoes grow and fruit happily and bountifully until the first frost
kills ‘em. They regularly outgrow their containers and get so big that they
appear to be reaching out to devour one of my dogs.
Who
would ever buy one of those stunted, hunchy, gimpy tomato plants?
It turns out there is a place for determinate tomatoes. They are fine for containers. They require very little staking, stay small, and produce a high yield. Then they croak, and tomato season ends two months earlier than necessary.
If you want to piss off your garden-obsessive wife, then by all means, buy these whimpy little determinate tomatoes for her monster vegetable garden. Then, wait to read the tag until it’s too late to buy more tomatoes….
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