Today was a short day in the garden - we only spent an hour and a half there, but there were four of us working on two different projects. Josie and I removed most of the tomato plants while Clara and her housemate weeded and trimmed the grape plant. Now that bed has only three plants instead of the seven that once filled it. Being packed so closely together, they were starting to accumulate mildew and it was time to pull them. I think if we had spaced them out more when they were planted and also gotten more of them in to cages when they were smaller, they might’ve been able to last for a bit longer. But tomatoes aren’t meant to be around forever.
At first, we tried to leave stuff that still looked good, any healthy-looking branches with flowers and green fruit. But many branches were withered and mildewed with a couple fruits clinging to the ends. It was all too tangled together so in the end it was simpler and less time-consuming to just pull out the full plants. There were plenty of tomatoes, both green and ripe, that got shaken off their branches and I cringed every time I heard and felt them going crunch under my feet.
After we were done I saw a sparrow perched on the ever growing compost pile. Hopefully the fruits might make a meal for some neighborhood creature and that all of this material eventually breaks down to make some nutrient-rich compost.
Now we’ve got even more open space in the garden. A lot of questions from last week’s entry still stand – what do we plant, if we plant anything at all? I think next week will probably be one of weeding and putting down woodchips and it’ll be a good time for brainstorming.
