Come the Revolution

Archive for July, 2010

We’ve got a good crop of aphid-eating lady beetles in the garden this year. On the one hand, that means we have aphids. On the other hand, it means nature is doin’ its beautiful, balance-keeping thing.

The only thing that could make it better is if we didn’t have to drive home after late nights at the garden. Maybe next year.
I find myself thinking often of the farmer from the first farm I apprenticed at. He’s a vegetable farmer, but truly he’s a tomato farmer. I’m guessing 1/4 of his tilled acreage was devoted to the botanical fruit, and he was damn good at growing them.

This year the Garden of the Revolution has about 200 tomato plants. It’s a risk after last year’s blight, but 8 months of buying tomato sauce that is sub-par and shipped from who knows where is quite enough. If all goes well we’ll have sauce, salsa, stewed, sun dried, and soups soon. In the meanwhile, we have a lot of time to look forward to turning our hands yellow and black from the dust on the tomato plants.

Last night they needed some love. It was past time for suckering for most of them, but they were desperate for the airflow with the heat wave in New England this week. So after a full day of work for each of us, we drove up to the farm and suckered those tomato plants.

It reminded me of how nice it is to work in the garden in the evening. As we got to the last plant, the dusk was giving way to darkness and the haze that had rolled in while we worked had turned the air into a blanket of moisture. Glad to have finished right as the plants started turning wet from the haze, we packed up and headed home.