Monday, October 20, 2008

Tomato Tree - Day 140, C'est Fini


Revenge is a dish best served cold.*

An unearthly creak.

It had to happen. Mother Nature waits for no man. Three frost warnings and a final night with a low of 30 degrees.

A muted thud.

I picked one last vaguely ripe tomato, the other three we'll try the brown paper bag approach with. I'm not optimistic.

A whispered groan.

The tomato tree experiment is over. It did OK, as Ceres predicted, it produced a lot of small fruit. The tomatoes did show up a little earlier than the "normal" approach, but only by a week. I'm not sure it was worth worrying about crashing stands or blossom end rot, but it certainly was worth a few blog posts.

Sooner or later you have to pay the piper.

So let's drop the curtain on this episode and bid a fond farewell to our Tomato Tree Stand. I don't know if it will be back next year or not; probably by next spring I'll be willing to give it another try, tune in and see.



*Crabby Quiz: Identify the source of the opening line along with it's author. Hint: It was not Ricardo Montalban in the Start Trek Movie, Wrath of Khan.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOVE the black and white fotos and the (presumably) yellow caution tape ... as if the tableau and the events leading up to it were a crime scene. You're a very entertaining blogger, Crabby, even when you're not giving us a recipe over which to drool.

www.crabbycook.com said...

That's the look I was going for Anon, thanks for noticing.

WineWizardBob said...

Quote is from Billy Vichysoisse? or was it Johnny Aspic?

Maggie said...

No idea on the quote but I love your tomato tree posts.

Aredub said...

Did they replace the tomato tree with the new model (which claims to have been "upgraded for greater stability")? If so, have you tried it?

www.crabbycook.com said...

Aredub, no they have not. The question here at Crab Central is "What are we going to do this year?

I'm leaning (pardon the pun) toward giving the original tree another go. Others, far more concerned with their safety than the greater good of furthering food production science, want to avoid the thing entirely. Stay tuned