Fenton Friday: Learning While Growing Tomatoes

 
Guest Blog by Miguel Zarate

At the beginning of the summer, the other interns and I were given a selection of vegetables to grow throughout the course of the summer. I chose the tomatoes as they had always been a subject of interest for me. 

 

I had constantly heard from my mother and grandmother how unruly and difficult to grow they are--needing specific conditions to grow. I decided to take on the challenge, we were growing from seedlings already started in pots. so the difficult task of getting to seed was already taken care of. 

 

On that first day, we took them to the garden to be planted. I also planted a marigold flower right at the edge of the tomato bed. This helps to deter certain pests and keep my tomatoes safe. 

 

With that, the plants were in their spots. I planted five varieties: 'Marriage Mazinera', 'Celebrity', 'Green Zebra', 'Sun Gold', and 'Wild Cherry' (currant). The Marriage Mazinera’s ended up not lasting very long. It wasn’t in the best shape when I planted it, so I wasn’t upset about the death of my plant, but I still had hope. I put it in the center, hoping that being in the middle would promote nutrient cross over from the others. 

 

In the following weeks, we developed a routine. After our weekly indoor meetings, we would head to the garden to weed, water, and fertilize. On weeding, this is definitely my least favorite part of gardening. We also had some aggressive Yarrow, which desperately wanted to be a part of the garden but I had to pull it out each time it grew and got close to the tomatoes. 

 

As a kid my parents would have me help them in the garden, pulling various weeds from the ground. I hated it, sitting in the sun and wrestling with plants wasn’t my idea of a fun morning back then. 

 

As an adult, I still didn’t enjoy it, but this time around it felt like I was growing for myself rather than being told to do it. If I didn’t, my tomatoes would die. 

On that subject, the first week of July brought my summer nemesis: blight.

My poor Wild Cherries were afflicted with the blight. I’m a relatively inexperienced gardener, so I did my best to trim the infected leaves but it didn’t go the best. The infection stayed with the cherries all the way until the end. Luckily, I got a few tomatoes from it before the fungus claimed the life of another tomato. 

Another thing I noticed about my tomatoes was their growth, they started about a foot tall and quickly grew, to just over two to three feet tall. This led to two things: one, they were all over each other which caused the blight to jump to other tomatoes, but removing those infected leaves was simple. The other issue was that my tomatoes were becoming unruly neighbors to my co-intern's Ian Ferris’ peppers. 

It was on me to wrangle these plants, so I used some string and tomato clips that mostly stopped them from stretching over boundaries. 

 

In the end, I harvested handfuls of small 'Sun Gold' tomatoes. For the harvest where we entered the tomatoes into the Montgomery County Fair, I was out of town. Kathy Jentz submitted them for me and they earned third place in the "orange, preserving (aka cherry)" tomato category, which wasn’t something I expected for my first tomato plant. I’m proud of them for growing so well. I will definitely grow more of my own tomatoes in the future. I’m so glad I had this opportunity with the Washington Gardener, definitely not what I expected for my summer when I switched to journalism, but the experience has been incredible. Growing a plant really teaches you about patience, which is something you need a lot of as a writer and reporter.

 

About the Author:

Miguel Zarate is an intern this summer session with Washington Gardener. He is majoring in journalism with a minor in sustainability. His favorite thing to grow in his mother’s garden, where he helps out, is mint, because it is so plentiful.