Confessions of a Brown Thumb Gardener

Go ahead and laugh. This is the crop from my miniature garden this year: miniature tomatoes!
 
My garden is about the size of a hallway runner carpet, which is probably just about right for me. The more plants I try to nurture, the more plants will die. I'm not very knowledgeable,  I refuse to use chemicals and I never know when I may be crewing on the boat for a few weeks. 

And then there's the "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" factor: I'm inside, working at the computer or practicing music this time of year, and the garden is outside shriveling in the heat. I have a tendency toward tunnel vision, and I forget there IS an outside. Another routine I'm trying to cultivate is to get up at 5, go outside and water my plants, talk to them, fertilize and prune them and let them know I care.

Anyway, enough excuses... Here's the result of my five tomato plants this year. I put in grape tomatoes and jelly bean tomatoes. I wanted a lot of flavor for the size, and I didn't want to have to do the constant propping and staking required by big beefsteak tomatoes.


And intense they are! Everything I like in the taste of a tomato, reduced down to the size of a marble. But the purpose of this exercise wasn't so much to produce a bumper crop. I wanted to experiment with growing these varieties, and see what I could learn. An advanced gardener would find my efforts laughable, but I enjoyed every minute: counting out the seeds and popping them in their holes with the help of my little neighbor M, watching the tiny plants break through the soil, transplanting them into bigger pots, watching them bloom, and then the surprise when the first little green tomatoes magically appeared. 

That was about when I had to leave to go sailing, so I recruited Javier, the head gardener, to keep an eye on them. He not only kept them watered, but did some tying-up when they outgrew their stakes. When we got back to land, the first thing I did (after a shower) was go out to the garden and count ripe tomatoes. Every plant survived, though one has refused to yield a single tomato. Like the failed fig tree in the Bible, its days are numbered.


What I learned: Where I lived before, in Northern California, it was useless to plant outdoors until April. But this is Mexico. Next year, I should plant in January or February, this far south. The skins would be thinner and more delicate if it weren't so hot. Then maybe I could get baby lettuce and herbs too. And if I had it to do over again, I'd plant only grape tomatoes, forget the jelly beans. 


My more permanent plantings are looking pretty good, considering I'm a brown thumb gardener. My tapachine (aka poinciana) tree is actually starting to cast some shade, about the size of an umbrella. Everybody tells me tapachines are a mess to clean up after, but I can't wait to see the big red flowers and the long brown seedpods.

The garden was made even more fun when I invited my little friend M. to help with the seeds. Which reminds me: I need to take her a few of these tomatoes. She hasn't even tasted them yet!