My $75 Tomato

When I was growing up in West Virginia, there was always a garden to eat from. My grandparents lived on a farm and had the most wonderful garden. One year my dad rented the lot behind our house and put in a huge garden that fed us through the winter with the corn, green beans, and tomatoes that we canned and froze. While any garden is a lot of work, it seems much easier to grow things in the moist, fertile soil back home.

My former husband and I bought our first house on two acres and I set out to have the garden of my dreams. I planned everything out, browsed the garden catalogs, and plowed the area myself with a borrowed John Deere. Since the growing season in Colorado is much shorter than that of West Virginia, I didn't plant until after Mother's Day. I planted long rows of corn, beans, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, onions...you name it, I planted it. I fertilized, watered, tended, and prayed over my little plants as they started to emerge from the rocky soil. I had to run 150 feet of garden hose to get out to the garden in order to irrigate it. Things were going well and I left for a trip with my daughter to go see my family back home. Al called me with the sad news that it had dropped down to 23 degrees and all my plants were dead. This was the third week of June! When I got back, I tried again and managed to get a good deal of beans, but the tomatoes were another story. I went out in late August to see how they were doing and the deer had taken a bite out of each green tomato! When the next spring came and it was time to plant, the deer were lined up for the buffet and I decided the Farmer's Market would be a much more cost effective solution for fresh veggies.

When I got divorced ten years ago, I bought a sweet little house and I was determined to try my hand at gardening again. One of my neighbors had moved and left me a hot tub that didn't work, but they swore they'd be back to get it. When they didn't come back, I decided it would make a perfect little container garden. I filled the bottom half with old wood, stumps, and rocks and filled the rest with topsoil. I rigged an irrigation system connected to the automatic sprinkler system. We enjoyed veggies from that little 8 x 8 garden all summer long. I was a farmer!

Dan and I moved to a house in the suburbs of Denver a year and a half ago and my green thumb got the itch. I saw an infomercial about the "Topsy Turvy" planter where you stick your plant in the hole in the bottom, fill the planter with dirt, water it from the top, and voila...bushels of tomatoes. I bought two so I'd have plenty of tomatoes to share with my family and friends! This spring I went to the local garden shop and bought two of the biggest tomato plants I could find. Then I needed two bags of good potting soil.

It took two of us to plant the tomatoes. There is a small hole in the bottom of the Topsy Turvy that was about 5 sizes smaller than the large root ball surrounding my tomato plants. I took one out of the pot and rolled it around till it would fit in the hole. With the plant being about 4 feet high, one of us had to hold the planter out about head high and the other had to pour the dirt in. Now, imagine holding a planter with twenty-five pounds of dirt in it, head high! I had bought two hooks for hanging the planters from the old swing set in the back yard. We both tried to reach the top bar holding a now 25 pound plant but there was no way we could reach it. So one of us held the plant while the other lifted my grand-daughter up to place the hook. One down, one to go. This time, my daughter thought it made more sense to thread the tomato plant through the hole from the inside so we wouldn't disrupt the root ball. She threaded and threaded and after breaking off several of the branches, we had it in and commenced to pouring in the dirt. We finally got them both hung and I gave them the good soaking that the directions ordered. I took my hubby out when he got home from work to show him what his loving wife had done with her day. There, lying on the ground, was one of the planters. With the weight of the soil and the water, the hook stretched out and the whole thing came crashing down, breaking the tomato plant in half! We tried to salvage it but to no avail. We put it away and placed all our hopes on the remaining plant. It has grown well, has lots of pretty leaves, and......one solitary tomato. No other flowers, just this one lonely two inch tomato growing for all it's worth.

One tomato.

Two Topsy-Turvys........$40
Two tomato plants............$20
Two bags of soil .................$15
Total cost.............................$75

The ribbing my husband is giving me from this latest episode.....priceless. I'm looking at recipes now to decide how to serve this little delicacy!

Be good to each other!


Ginny