The Payoff Has Arrived

     I confess that I am not the most conscientious gardener.  I usually just do the bare minimum of what needs to be done to get a crop, but nevertheless just doing the bare minimum, still requires a lot of my hours.  All of the planting of seeds, trying to maintain the right growing conditions, and weeding take up a lot of time and still doesn’t guarantee that you will get anything close to the harvest that you dreamed about when you started.

    Well, I am happy to announce some of the rewards I had hoped for, have finally started to arrive.  Of all of the different vegetables I plant and tend, the most important for me are my tomatoes and potatoes.  I have yet to dig any of my potatoes, so I don’t know what is under the ground waiting for me, but happily, the tomatoes have begun to ripen in our greenhouse, and we have been eating the juicy red spheres.  

    I spent many summers in my youth picking tomatoes in my grandparent’s large commercial greenhouse in in their fields.  Nothing tasted better that those large succulent Indiana tomatoes, but I continue to strive to reproduce that taste.  I never really get it, but still the tomatoes I grow far exceed any of the so-called tomatoes I can find in the local grocery store.

    While I am on the subject of tomatoes; just this week scientists have announced that potatoes came from a mutation of an ancient species of tomato which enabled it to produce tubers in its roots.  Both plants were developed, grown, and prized by the Aboriginal people of South and Central America.      

    Scientists have always suspected some kind of link, but they never knew which plant developed from the other.  Both plants are in the nightshade family, which includes some toxic and poisonous plants.  This led to some hesitancy among Europeans when they were introduced to potatoes and tomatoes in 15th and 16th Centuries.   

    I love fresh tasty tomatoes and look forward to slices on my sandwiches, in my salads, and in the fresh salsa that we plan to eat while we have them.

You can take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca