Too many plants

When I transplanted the young tomato plants outside, I tried to follow the guideline of leaving a foot of space between plants. Planting the tomatoes in staggered rows, two plants to a row, I accounted for this space on the diagonal between plants. In this pattern, I had two rows of plants that started closer to the back of the garden and one row started closer to the front in the center of the box. In between the spaces, I planted the basil to help ward off pests.

This pattern had the advantage of allowing me to zig-zag trellises through the tomato plants and avoid having to use cages around all the plants. It is easier to access the plants with their metal support closer to their center.

Well, at least it was while the plants were relatively small. To my imagination, the plants were not going to grow nearly as much as they have turned out to have. I spent the better part of Sunday morning disentangling the plants and trying to free the basil from being taken over completely. We have four basil plants, but one is totally subsumed in the tomato forest now. Essentially, the wire fence makes the raised bed look like a big green box.

It's dense in there, but the air flow should be enough to keep mold at bay. Finding the tomatoes in there, though, is another story. I almost missed two very ripe ones at the bottom of the box. We've harvested five in all so far, but many, many more are on their way. Not a bad thing.

Of course, the box isn't the limit of our tomato crop. We have a similarly-sized plant in the other box. I though we had lost it during a nasty storm this weekend, but it bounced back up and seems no worse for wear. There are also three smaller (thankfully) cherry tomato plants in the front of that box that are flowering. The plants we potted, though, are not doing nearly as well. Some have fruit, but not nearly the number of healthy leaves the ones in the raised beds have (deep or shallow). Clearly, the pots we used were just too small. Lesson learned.


I roasted the tomatoes above along with half a red onion on the grill last night. Everything then got chopped and added to about 2T of red wine vinegar and a bit more olive oil than that, plus salt and pepper, a teaspoon of sugar and chopped chives. I whisked everything together until it emulsified into a rough relish and used it on grilled flat iron steak. It was a nice complement to the smoky, chipotle powder and cumin-based rub I used on the grilled meat.