Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to talk about the tomato, and other things. You may remember me from such posts as “Shedding Light”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
There are still colchicums in flower. These are Colchicum cilicium. (Sometimes sold as C. tenorei, but there’s another colchicum, C. × ambiguum, sold under that name too.)
You may well ask why it’s Cyclamen cilicium but Colchicum cilicicum. Both Latin words refer to the ancient Roman province of Cilicia, now in southern Turkey. But having to check the spelling is annoying. (There’s also a snowdrop, Galanthus cilicicus, in the garden here.)
Colchicum speciosum ‘Album’ is almost open.
Both of these colchicums have been in the garden for about thirty years, but the white one has been very slow to increase.
Thanks to the rain, the first crocuses have appeared. This is Crocus kotschyanus ‘Reliance’. (Yes, it should be ‘Reliant’, which makes more sense.)
The goldenrod, Solidago ‘Wichita Mountains’ is in fully flower now. This is one of the guy I live with’s favorite autumn-flowering plants.
You can smell it and hear it from quite a distance away. It’s usually covered with bees.
And…the tomato.
A few days ago a neighbor gave the guy I live with a homegrown heirloom tomato, maybe ‘Purple Calabash’.
It sat on the counter for a couple of days, and then he sliced it and ate it.
I could tell how good it was by what he said.
Then he wondered why he was spending all this time growing difficult or rare plants to post on social media when he could be growing tomatoes. Not to mention plants hummingbirds love.
I would quote Yeats’ poem “The Fascination of What’s Difficult”, but you can look that up online.
So this edifice, which was going to be a frame for growing difficult bulbs, is going to have tomatoes in it next year.
The guy I live with said he’s still not too old to learn valuable lessons.
It’s in the hottest part of the garden so the tomatoes will appreciate that.
So that’s our news for the day. I’m very used to having the guy I live with change his mind constantly so I was able to deal with this quite easily.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
It will be fun to see what tomato varieties the guy you live with chooses to grow next year. Talk about a challenge and drying the sap out of your veins, with Colorado weather, but it is always worth it. I have not tried Calabash. Always a new variety to try. I am currently enamored with the beautiful fruit of ‘Blue Beauty’—many tomatoes on the vine—but also enjoy the heirlooms every year. ‘Black Krim’ does well here. ‘Arkansas Traveler’ is supposedly tolerant of high heat, but unfortunately this year I am getting exactly two fruits from that plant. It’s a mystery.
The guy I live with knows very little about tomatoes. He knows how to grow them from seeds, for sure.
He’s halfheartedly tried to grow at least one plant every year. His neighbor overproduced tomato plants and gave him two plants which he grew in the pots near where I’m standing, but he didn’t have any tomato fertilizer, since he gave the bag of EcoTone to his neighbor last year.
The plants produced two pathetic little tomatoes.
The best soil for growing tomatoes in our garden is by the back fence, but cold air drains down the creek from Mount Lindo so plants don’t set fruit well.
Come to think of it, the tomato he got may have been ‘Black Krim’. That was his first thought but then changed his mind. He could have asked, of course.
It is always something, whether cold winds, extreme heat, fertilizer, etc. Last year was not a good year—I over-fertilized and got lush foliage and little else. Learned my lesson there. I have less sunlight in the raised bed area now, so may grow a few plants in whiskey barrels with potting soil, which worked very well for me in a different garden. I have decided that the trying is the thing.
The guy I live with says if he commis to growing tomatoes in that bed maybe it will rain every day next summer. No tomatoes, maybe, but rain. His neighbors have a greenhouse so he can get good tomatoes that way.
When he and his wife grew tomatoes one plant was always set aside for “tomato worms” so there would be some of the big moths later.
Oh, it’s hard to beat home-grown tomatoes for flavour; simply the best. Now, that solidago is a topper also and I wouldn’t displace it even for tomatoes! Like you, that white colchicum is very slow to increase though the form ‘Old Bones’ seems very vigorous and increases well here.
The guy I live with’s neighbors give him tomatoes every year. They must have three dozen plants in their yard, at least. But now he wants to grow his own.
The solidago is probably Solidago speciosa; it’s a form found in the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. Flowers are very sweetly scented and it’s a magnet for bees. About a meter tall. Strangely hard to find in local nurseries now. It doesn’t set seeds here.
It would probably present itself better here if it weren’t surrounded by fallen-over cowpen daisies (Verbesina encelioides).
Nothing like a fresh tomato plucked from your own garden. I’ve got so many cherry tomatoes right now, I eat them fast enough. Here’s hoping the tomatoes are plentiful next summer.
The guy I live with said this past summer was just disgusting and hopefully next summer will be “more normal”, if that’s even possible.
His neighbors grow tomatoes on drip so they were okay.
But like the apple tree in our back yard produced no apples at all, and apples will tolerate drought very well. The guy I live with’s friend asked him if the neighbors’ tree, which last year was chock full of Granny Smith apples and they went over and picked a bunch, had apples this year, but there were none.
The only apple tree that had any was the one I saw the bear in. Same yard.
And then one day all the apples fell off the tree. Maybe squirrels did that.
The way this planet is heating up, we’re all going to be held hostage to less water along the Front Range and really should focus on planting more drought tolerant plants.
The guy I live with wrote a book about that. But now he thinks the whole thing should be revised (he’s not going to do that), because a lot of the plants that would grow and flower in a typical summer here may not do that these days.
Bulbs, most but not all, tolerate hot, dry summers quite well.
Guess what, though? It kind of poured rain here for about twenty minutes. My dinner was delayed because I was in my Upstairs Fort, safe from all the thunder.
Surprisingly it rained in NW Denver about a half an hour ago too. I didn’t object on speck!
The guy I live with said it was great.
“Film at eleven.”
So many Colchicumss still bloomin!! MEE-YOW WOW Mani an Guy! Tomato plantss sound furabuluss….one of tenantss heer growss eggiess an Cherry tomatoess an hee shared with BellaSita an some other peepss heer. BellaSita meowed to me they are THE BEST tomatoess shee efurr eated!!!! Now mee hungry…… **nose bopss** BellaDahrma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
There are a lot of colchicums here. The guy I live with probably shouldn’t look at catalogs…
He also said that a tomato and cheese sandwich, with mayonnaise, is one of the best things ever.
Growing tomatoes will give him something to do.