I had such high hopes for this summer. I hoped to plant my biggest garden yet (albeit I’ve only ever had very small gardens, and this would have also been quite small. Nevertheless it would have been my biggest garden). I wanted to grow lots of potatoes and peppers and tomatoes and onions. This was summer I was going to learn how to can. I planned to can crushed tomatoes and spaghetti sauces, and salsa. I wasn’t going to have to buy any canned tomato products other than tomato paste (because that was not on my agenda to learn yet) for an entire year. Maybe I would have plenty to spare and share! Oh if all my plans came to pass. Alas, none of that happened. We decided to move and start on some other large projects. Needless to say this busy and uncertain season meant that we didn’t plant a garden like I had hoped. But that didn’t stop a few volunteers from taking root. And now as summer is ending I’m getting to enjoy the fruits of not-my-labor. One of our “projects” this year was tearing down our chicken coop. The soil under that coop is the richest, darkest soil. We had given our chickens kitchen scraps and they just went on and planted us some tomatoes in that lovely soil. We got, not one, but 2 large grape tomato plants. Now, for the past several years I have tried growing grape tomatoes. I struggle so hard to get them to grow. As much as I want a green thumb, I do not have one. Yet here without any care from anyone, just an abandoned area of my yard, grows a larger grape tomato plant than I’ve ever had.
Blooms are everywhere, little green tomatoes are everywhere, and they have just started ripening. Honestly I think my favorite part of the day is going out to check for ripe Tommy-toes, as we call them. Not only did I get these lovely Tommy-toe plants. My volunteer sweet potatoes have completely taken over my raised garden bed. During our “projects” we had thrown much of our gardening supplies into our garden bed. Then suddenly what was a mess of tomato cages and empty planters became a giant bush of sweet potato vines. I still have an entire box full of sweet potato slips from last year’s harvest that I had intended to plant, so here’s to hoping I can still plant them once we move. The sweet potato vines are putting on lovely purple flowers every morning. I’m eager to start digging for sweet potatoes in the next weeks.
