The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Determinate vs. Indeterminate

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….

 

Gardening, Friendship and Martinis

My first lemon basil martini...yum.

When I need a break from reality, I go visit my buddy Jennifer.  Jen and I have a lot in common: we both have teenagers that drive us crazy, we both have husbands who drive us crazy, and we both like to drink martinis, taking brief breaks only to shop and eat. We love the beach and the sun, but most of all we both love gardening.  And, well…martinis.

Jen's garden

We used to be neighbors. We started a friendship over mommy stuff. The friendship grew over gardening, and it really took off after the discovery of our mutual affinity for vodka.

Jen's garden

Jen's putting green

Jen's Pool.

Jen, Gandolf, and Pixie relaxing between martinis.

And then she and her family just up and moved to San Diego. All she left me was her worm composter, a cruel reminder of what once was.

Cedros Gardens.

Oh, but there is a bright side. Now every few months I get to go visit my home girl in the Beach hood, where we gossip, eat, drink and stumble around various nurseries.

Cedros Gardens

Ah, sanity

margaritas and guacamole

In Search of Lotusland

I ran into an old friend at the beach. She told me her daughter is attending college in Santa Barbara.

First of all, that is where I want my kids to go to college. 

Is it a good school? Who cares? Education, shmeducation. 

It’s all about attending a place that I want to visit, isn’t it? 

I also like Cal Poly, because it sits smack dab in the middle of SLO County, another one of my favorite places. 

Or, Maybe I could ship them off to Hawaii? 

I digress. 

My friend and I got on the subject of, surprise…gardening…and she told me about a garden in Santa Barbara called Lotusland. It’s a public garden that operates in a private residential neighborhood in Montecito. 

Lotusland has a rich and colorful history, but not as colorful as it’s creator, Madame Ganna Walska. As part of her search for creative fulfillment and personal enlightenment, Madame Walska bought the 37-acre Cuesta Linda estate in 1941. She called it Tibetland.

After the dissolution of her sixth marriage, she changed its name to Lotusland.

So, I happen to have another friend whose parents happen to live in Montecito. 

You know who you are.

I plan to kidnap you, drive you to Montecito, pick up your mom, and zip off to Lotusland. 

Someday. 

Soon. 

Please comment if you’ve been to Lotusland. I want to hear all about it.

Green Fountain

My friend Jennifer planted her fountain and made this beautiful succulent sculpture.

It is magnificent. Think about it. Here’s a way to save on electricity and water. It’s a green fountain in more ways than one.

I saw something like this a couple of years ago at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. It was my favorite thing there.

Since then I was lucky enough to find my own fountain (for a small sum) to turn into living art.

My fountain scavanged off Craigslist next to my urn

I have tried to use it as a fountain but it leaks and splashes and the pumped get plugged up. Really the only ones that benefit from that fountain are the mosquitoes.

And we all know that they suck. Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself. 

So, this spring, guess what? 

Yep, I’ll be following in Jennifer’s footsteps and filling in the mosquito village with dirt and plants and maybe even an alligator head or two.

 

Why I Love Early Girls

O.K., I get it.

Heirloom tomatoes are da bomb. 

Some of this season's heirlooms

Every time I go into grocery stores—or to parties—I’m bombarded with these beautifully colored, interestingly shaped fruit.

The colors of the fruit can be pink, yellow, purple, or black. The fruit comes in so many different colors they look like fruity Easter eggs.

I try to be cool and hip, so I plant hip groovy heirlooms but they are hard to grow, so I end up being the dorky loser gardener. The plants get diseases, and pest infestations. And they don’t seem to produce much fruit. 

Heiloom tomato plant suffering from late season wilt.

Along with the difficult heirloom varieties I also grow the usual suspects like Better Boys, regular cherry tomatoes and my favorite: Early Girls. 

Early girls

Here are the reasons why I love Early Girls:

They are prolific.

They produce early and often.

They are resistant to diseases and pests.

You can’t beat their taste. 

While all my heirloom plants are dead, my Early Girls keep growing and producing.

This tomato is also well suited to dry land farming  or gardening techniques. This means that the tomatoes are not watered after they are planted, so they develop deep roots to seek out moisture. Because the plant receives little water the fruit becomes super flavorful.

Early Girls also do well in coastal gardens where the weather is cool and overcast during the growing season.

I love them. 

Think I’ll go pick some right now.

Un-urned—What to Plant in Your Empty Urns

My urn filled with Heuchera and potato vine 

I was forced to fill my urns with plants before my “friend” Kim stole another one.

Kim’s M.O. is to wait until I come down with a cold, get bit by a rattlesnake, have some bad accident, or get hit by a debilitating disease.

Then she comes over with her family.

While her children distract me, she has her husband pull up in his Prius to steal my urns.

Then she contacts me days later and says thank you. 

When I act puzzled and tell her I don’t remember giving my urns  to her, she tells me some made up story of how I insisted that she take them—and how she just couldn’t say no.

When I ask her why she stole my urns, her answer is always the same: “Well, you’re not doing anything with them.” 

Fine then.

I knew she and her family were coming for a visit. 

So I ran down to the local nursery and bought some plants to plant in my remaining urns.

The urns were by my front door in a shaded area so I used two different contrasting heuchera, one with a deep dark burgundy leaf and the other with a yellowish/green leaf with burgundy veins. I wanted something trailing so I used a potato vine in yet another shade of green.

I put all three plants into a larger plastic pot that slipped perfectly into the urn, that way I can change out the plants without getting my porch all dirty, well dirtier anyway.

That way, Kim will think I’m doing something with them. 

And leave them alone.

Hopefully