Change of plans

Hello friends!

We need to make an unfortunate but necessary change in our garden plan next year. It has taken us three years to realize what needs to be done, and it pains me to have to say it, but the consequences have become too great.

We need to plant fewer tomato vines next season.

I know, I know... what are we thinking? All this space, and all this sunlight, and decent soil, and... and all this space!

But the load has become too heavy -- literally. We don't have enough good, strong poles to stake the tomatoes and the vines collapsed the cages we made this year. The tomato portion of the garden is an absolute mess.

We were too busy/ignorant/distracted to keep up with fungus control, so they're all half-dead. The slugs eat any nearly-ripe fruit within a foot of the ground. Which is most of them. The sprawling vines have overshadowed -- and thus killed -- several basil plants, and are inhibiting the growth of several others.

And worst of all, even after all this destruction, we are still losing embarrassing quantities of tomatoes because we can't pick and/or process them quickly enough and they are rotting away.

Tomatoes. Rotting away. In my garden.

This has to stop.

We're going to try to can this weekend since we *both will be home for more than a few waking hours at the same time* and probably can salvage enough to put a few jars in the cupboard. I've been oven-roasting what I can, and we've got more than a gallon of amazing caramelized tomatoey goodness in our freezer. But it's still outrageous how much food -- TOMATOES at that -- we are wasting.

So. Fewer than two dozen plants next year. For real.

Which means some of you need to visit us in May to take all our just-in-case seedlings off our hands.

Tiff