Dead Tomato Debacle 2014

Baby tomato plant smelling hands made me do it.

I had big plans for tomatoes this year. Big plans, I tell you. I got on the ball back in February and planted tomatoes and peppers from seed the likes my little basement grow lights have never seen. Twenty-seven tomatoes and nine pepper plants. Where was I going to plant all this bounty? Who the hell cared! It was February! I had months to sort all this out.

I diligently watered and spritzed and stroked and coaxed them along through March and April. At that point, I figured I should probably transplant them into bigger pots. But where was I going to put all these up-potted plants? Um, who cares! I'll just move them directly to the greenhouse later and transplant them directly! Brilliant!

May rolled around and I figured I should really start doing something about all these heat loving plant starts, so I moved them out to the greenhouse to transplant. So, off they went! Into the greenhouse! I diligently watered them. And watered them. And then promptly forgot about them.

Twenty-seven tomato plants turned into crusty, dried up little boogers before my very eyes. The peppers survived a little longer, but by now I was so despondent I ignored the horrible mass slaughter that had occurred in the greenhouse.

June rolled around and I figured I better do something to mitigate what was turning out to be a very empty greenhouse experience and went out and bought some tomato and pepper starts from my local nursery. Six tomato plants (3 Celebrity and 3 Roma) and a couple of Jalapeno, Habanero, Cayenne, Chocolate Bell and Ancho peppers to round things out.

I then promptly ignored all my new starts, but fear overtook me and I finally got off my butt and planted the tomatoes and most of the peppers. Needless to say, late June small start tomato plantings do not bode well for an early tomato season.

But! This weekend my first Roma tomatoes ripened and it looks like we'll have some plant recovery enough for tomato eating, but probably not much beyond that.

Have I learned anything from this experience? Probably not. I'm sure next year, in the grips of the Seattle darkness and rain, I'll plant far too many tomato seeds and water and spritz and stroke and coax them along. Just so that I have the smell of baby tomato plants on my hands to get me through the winter and early spring. It's like a drug. Damn baby tomato plants.

How about you? How successful are you at growing plants from seed? Or do you just dispense with it altogether and get plant starts?

How to ripen green tomatoes

Every year, I have the same dilemma. Since we generally don't have very hot summers around here, inevitably at the end of the summer growing season I still have a bunch of tomatoes left on the vine, but they are all green with no signs of ripening in their near future.

A few weeks ago, I went outside and clipped the 10 or so tomatoes that I had left and brought them inside. After doing a bit o' research I decided how I was going to not only store them, but also coax them into ripening. Since we don't have any newspaper on hand (since we cancelled the NY Times a while ago), I couldn't individually wrap them and store them in a box, like some people suggested.

One method that looked intriguing to me was to place the tomatoes in a paper bag with an apple and store them that way. Why the apple you ask? Well, the apple puts off ethylene gas, which helps the tomatoes to ripen. Since I had all the appropriate items for that storage and ripening method, I gave it a whirl (this is a little more difficult way to store them if you have a ton of them).

I placed the tomatoes in the bag with an apple for ripening, folded over the top and secured the whole deal with a binder clip. A week or so ago, I went to check the tomatoes and found that two or three of them had molded up - probably because they had some small bruise on them that I didn't notice. The rest were still green. Not green, turning red, but green-white. There was no hope in sight, but I dutifully folded the bag back up after composting the moldy ones and promptly went back to ignoring the whole lot.

Last weekend I decided to take a peek and make sure no other tomatoes were going moldy, and lo and behold! But, what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a big ole juicy, red tomato staring back at me! And, another one with a little red blush working through the skin. I peeked again last night and they are all almost ripe. So, here's to ripe, homegrown tomatoes in mid-November!

What's your favorite method of ripening green tomatoes off the vine?