Even Noah only had to endure 40 days of rain
By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here
As I write this column there is a gentle, soft rain just outside my office window. It is a typical Oregon rain and a relief from yesterday’s hard downpour, but still it is rain adding to the saturated earth. As I look out, I can see puddles of water left from yesterday’s torrent.
It has rained so much this winter, that the other day when I ventured out into my garden plot just to survey things, I had to be careful not to crush earthworms under my feet because they had come to the surface for air.
Nice pickings for the birds, but it is an indication of a wet winter.
The weatherman said we have already broken rainfall records.
Even with dark skies and rainy days, it doesn’t preclude one from dreaming and planning. I have already received two seed catalogues in the mail and Burpee is enticing me with pop-ups on the very computer this column is being composed.
Ordinarily I would reach for the delete button when I see pop-ups on my screen, but when you get one that says, heirloom tomatoes, or hot peppers, or sweetest onions are homegrown, you have to
click on just to dream.
The tomato site caused me to drool, particularly after eating a Saturday hamburger with Roma tomatoes, the only tomato I could afford without taking out a loan. I like Roma tomatoes (these tasted more like cellulose than tomatoes) but Roma’s are for salsa not hamburgers.
Wouldn’t you know it, Burpee’s pop-up featured my favorite tomato, Brandywine, a heirloom tomato it said dates back to 1885 when the Amish first developed it.
In April 2005 William Alexander published his humorous book, "The $64 Tomato," or how one man nearly lost his sanity, spent a fortune and endured an existential crisis in his quest for a perfect garden tomato. In this book, Alexander singles out Brandywine tomatoes as "one of the best tasting tomatoes in the world." He also noted that it is difficult find at farm stands and certainly never at the supermarket. Reason: it is an ugly tomato and appears to be misshapen. But oh, the taste.
Read Burpee’s mouth watering description of the Brandywine tomato:
"The fruits have a very large beefsteak shape and grow on unusually upright, potato-leafed plants. The color is an appetizing shade of red-pink. The fruits set one or two per cluster and ripen late. But at summer’s end, Brandywine’s qualities really shine when it develops an incredible fine, sweet flavor. Fruits average 1 pound each."
I can never wait for the seed production, so I buy the head start
plant. Even so it is foolish to plant before my neighbor, farmer
Don Kruse’s magic one day in May formula. Even Burpee says it will not ship the plants until proper planting time.
I might sneak in one or two plants I buy from Territorial Seed Company in Cottage Grove, Oregon, into my tomato patch in April, knowing full well there will not be enough sun where I live to have the tomato do more that shiver down to its roots in the cold, cold ground. But then, who can wait.
The same restrictions keep me at bay for planting peppers, but by the time the soil is heated up enough for my usual 35 tomato plants, and dozens of hot and sweet pepper varieties, I will have already had cole crops growing because they like the cool days, along with all kinds of onions, garlic, leeks, shallots and of course scallions. Last year as I closed out my garden, I dug up all the herbs with the intent of doing a different herb garden after attending Janice Bunyard’s "Herbs From Start to Finish" lecture at the community college in Winchester. Some herbs defy the shovel. My garden inspection the other day found rosemary and oregano happily wading in puddles of water.
Patience is a gardener’s virtue and since the ground is too wet to plow, all I have left are those wonderful wish books called seed catalogues. I could curl up with one any rainy day.
(Bill Duncan can be reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470. A reader contacted him after his last column appeared and said there was no deadline mentioned for the address label contest. Let’s have all the entries submitted by March 15.)