Margheritaville

Was Jimmy Buffet singing about 'Margherita' paste tomatoes? Maybe not. But he should have been.

A fan of square foot gardening, I normally grow 16 tomato plants in my 4x4' bed: eight paste tomatoes, four regular tomatoes, and four cherry tomatoes. But I didn't think I got as many paste and regular tomatoes per plant as I should have last year, so I decided to see if maybe the tomatoes were a bit too crowded, and growing nine instead of 16 would produce a better harvest. (I'm not sure why I thought fewer tomato plants would yield more total tomatoes. This is is why I was not a math major.) Anyway, this year I planted seven 'Margherita' paste tomatoes, one 'Razzleberry' tomato, and one 'Supersweet 100' cherry tomato.

The plants got really tall and lanky while I was waiting for the sugar snap peas to finish up their turn in the bed, and I ended up doing "trench planting", which involves laying the plants sideways rather than putting them upright in a hole, and letting just the tops of them stick out of the soil. Tomatoes will grow roots along their stems, and more roots theoretically equal bigger, healthier plants. It definitely made them harder to train in their cages; they went sprawling all over the place! And when the winds blew, the more distantly spaced cages seemed to tip over more than when they were jammed one on top of the other. But the plants did flourish.

I was a little worried when the Margheritas started fruiting. With most paste tomatoes, the flower gives way to a little pea-sized tomato, that eventually turns into something grape-sized, that eventually turns into something egg-sized. Round is the key concept here. I really, really wish I had taken a picture of my Margheritas when they first formed, because they looked more like little green Thai peppers—long, narrow, and pointy. No round to be found. They did fill out over time, but still maintained that elongated shape.

I lost a dozen or so to blossom-end rot, but that didn't put a big dent in their production. From my seven plants, I ended up with more than 35 pounds of very meaty, flavorful paste tomatoes. When I parboiled them in anticipation of processing them for sauce, the skins practically fell off by themselves—a non-issue for me, since I put everything through a tomato press anyway, but if I were canning whole tomatoes, this would have been a big plus. I canned 16 pints of sauce, plus had plenty of tomatoes for fresh salads, chili, and cheeseburgers in paradise...

Name That Caterpillar

Having just written a somewhat disparaging post about my Brazilian Bachelor's Buttons, I went out in the yard late this afternoon to discover two things:

• The flowers do seem to open up considerably more in the late afternoon. Perhaps I didn't notice this before because it's been too hot to go out in the late afternoon, and because I spend most days of the week in a cubicle. I really must do something about that.
  
  
• While I might have had second thoughts about my button beauties, the caterpillars are unanimously in favor of them.

The bachelor's buttons are at the end of a long row of butterfly bushes, so it should be no surprise that there are caterpillars afoot. I'm barely literate when it comes to identifying butterflies themselves, let alone their caterpillars, but I'm fairly sure that I've seen various monarchs and swallowtails fluttering about. Would anyone out there care to take a guess at what these little guys will become (besides lunch for the robins)?

Not Quite Cute as a Button

The new plant that I was the most excited about at the beginning of the year was Centratherum intermedium 'Button Beauty', or Brazilian Bachelor's Button. The photo in the Park Seed catalog was captivating:

The seeds did great in the cells. The plants did great in the garden. In fact, with the heat and drought now upon us here in Ohio, and even my native plants like echinacea turning brown and withering, my button beauties are as lush and green as if they were living in a rain forest.

If all I cared about was the foliage, I would be thrilled with this plant. But I kinda bought it because of the flowers. And at best, mine looked like this:

It's as if they're trying really hard to open up, but they can't quite bring themselves to do it. They're shy. Perhaps I should bake them some Powdermilk Biscuits.