The $64 Tomato

I've been reading The $64 Tomato for my 'before bed, get-my-brain-ready-for-bed' book. It's gotta be light and fun--usually 'story'. This is a fun book. I chuckled from the first paragraph, and beyond. I mentioned something funny from it in an earlier post.

This quote starts the chapter called "Cereal Killer" -

"It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."
- Chiffon margarine commercial, circa 1972

I do try and fool Mother Nature. I was told when we moved here that "you can't grow this...or this...or do that..." and I usually listen yet ignore and try tricks. We all have mini-climates in our yards and I take this into consideration. So I do have some plants that the books and people say I can't grow.

I get tomatoes because the plants stay in walls-of-water all growing season. Since tomato flowers will not set fruit if nights get cooler than around 55 degrees, the radiating warmth of the plastic channels of water, and being against a south-facing wall, gives me tomatoes. Most of my vegetables have beds covered with 'floating row covers' which keeps the soil from drying out, and a protection from intense sun in our thin atmosphere, and hail, and insects (which we don't have a lot of).

I also said in another post that I have some "comic-book" stories in connection to my garden experiences. One story goes...Knowing my beans were ready for their first harvest, my mouth watered for fried chicken to go with them. So once the chicken was in the oven (my 'fried' version which does come out crispy) I went to pick the beans. That year I was playing with 'companion gardening' (plants that like each other and benefit one another). So the beans were scattered about the garden. Well...the elk had been in and eaten every bean plant, nothing else (that time)(Now we have a big fence and they can't get in!)

Once I had peas planted in a block, rather than a row. As I was looking at the peas that were up a few inches and looking good, one disappeared before my eyes, leaving a clean hole in the dirt! Like in a cartoon, some 'wabbit' (or pocket gopher) was underground having it's meal.

We did read about putting a hose down a hole with the other end on a vehicle's exhaust pipe, to remove critters from underground runs. We tried it. Besides watching worms literally leap out of the ground, all we got was a hole in our vacuum hose! We've tried chewing gum, smoke bombs, water...but not a solar ground vibrator yet. Monte has followed the gopher hole underground like a dog by digging along it with his hands, but the resulting major excavation destroys the garden and when he gets to the end of the hole he is afraid we will get bitten by a cornered gopher. The one time it worked he punched the gopher, but my poor garden was never the same again that year. As with other pests too, so many wives tales haven't worked. (Or the check-out-man at the grocery store, telling me to have my husband go out and pee on the plants. I'd never talked to the guy before!)...soap...human hair...

When we want what we want we tend to get it, no matter the pain...We'll see about that!