So I've had this tomato and pepper garden up front for this season. I planted my out-of-control seedlings just in time for the temperature both day and night to stay above the ones necessary for
fruit set. As a result, I've had an entire summer of healthy blooming with virtually no tomatoes. My Sweet 100s have produced two or three tiny, .05 oz cherry tomatoes now and then, but every other variety I've had in the garden has been virtually 100% tomato-free. However, in what I'm hoping is a wild change in trends, I saw my very first fall-season non-cherry tomato set today! I'm very excited. It was on my Better Boy tomato plant, and it's already about the size of the tiny cherries I've been ironically logging weight on all summer.
I'm also having somewhat of a crisis in choosing food-growth methods for the future coop. The entire point of a permaculture coop is to show people how to live with as little impact on the land as possible, preferably being a positive force for soil and habitat restoration. In pursuit of that, I've been researching different food-growing methodologies. In addition to a long-term permaculture plan including fruit trees and perennials, I had decided to do
Biointensive gardening. It's main advertised feature is high-density food production in a way that actually restores soil and doesn't require very much outside input (except labor) once it's established. It was specifically designed to help people grow foods and restore soil in hostile environments. It's a complete gardening system that tells you how to do just about everything. However, it has it's detractors and critics, among them a local permaculturalist for whom I have a great deal of respect. Any kind of gardening methodology requires a great deal of commitment, so I'm kind of hemming and hawing, my natural state of Action-Taking.
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