The Big Garden of 2014 - 2015

What a disaster.  Last year our spring was so muddy we couldn't get even get into our ranch let alone our garden.  By the time things dried up, it was too late ...but I worked it as best I could and hoped for the best.  The best didn't happen.

Then, the ants ...I learned a lot about ants last year while I was, alternately, doing nothing and watching them eat every single thing I planted.  They even ate my rhubarb!!!  All of it!!!  They "killed corn ass-high" as my father liked to describe the destruction of things that were seemingly too big to fail.

I swore off gardening.

Now, however, in the deep of the Argentine winter ...I am beginning to peruse seed catalogs once again.

I begin to dream of gardens-past.  That leads me to dream of gardens-future!

I'm a rancher.  That's different from a farmer.  Ranchers laugh at farmers ...then they REALLY laugh when farmers fail.  Our animals plod along with no fixed schedule of harvest and they load themselves onto the trucks when the time comes to harvest the "calf crop."  There's an old Argentine (rancher) saying that goes something like, "Crops will bankrupt you ...but cattle will keep your homestead for generations."

But I've planted a few crops and a few gardens and, well, sitting by the fire perusing a seed catalog, and thinking of the green of spring and deliciousness of summer and fall ...that gets into your blood.  And since my wife and I are probably more vegetarian than most of you, the thought of colorful, sweet, crunchy, herbal veggies stretching up from the soil is just too much for me to abandon easily.

Rage, RAGE against the dying of the veggies!

After much research, I think I have just the thing to organically keep the ants at bay ...so I have set myself to endeavor again to garden.

I'll keep you posted.

One Millon Gardens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP_FpLJ5uuI

http://www.onemilliongardens.com  I like this.

The Marglobe Tomato

I've said it before ...and I kinda have to duck when I do ...but perhaps my favorite heirloom tomato is the Marglobe.

Among heirlooms, a shining star it ain't.  In fact, even with all the efforts to save disappearing seeds ...the Marglobe may be one that was saved, and then, will disappear again.

The venerable Seed Savers Exchange did a lot to rescue this variety from ignominy but no longer lists it for sale.  I saved some seed from a crop but they didn't germinate.

The reason for my reflexive defensiveness when praising the Marglobe is that it's not a grandma heirloom.  It wasn't one of the varieties that was handed down through generations on tiny plots in remote areas.  Marglobe is a commercial heirloom.

Ya get it?  I'm glad the Marglobe has chops because I need all the chops I can get when discussing the relative merits of Brandywines (Sudduth's Strain, of course!), Aunt Ruby's German Greens, Black Krims, Zebras, Ponderosas and Mortgage Lifters.

And it's tough on me because ...I love all those tomatoes and include as many of them in my garden as possible.  I love all of their deep sweetnesses and herbal complexities.  It's just that Marglobe tastes so ...TOMATOEY. 

If you love tomato juice (not every tomato lover does) the Marglobe screams to be juiced.  It has an acidity that many of the ...dare I say, exotic heirlooms (DUCK!) don't have.  Plus, it's a perfect tomato color and perfectly round, doesn't split open and is one of the original blight resistant types.  It grows and fruits and seems to beg to be left alone to do it!

Not that I care about those cosmetic qualities ...I'm here for the taste ...but it seems that for all it's unassailable heirloomness ...the Marglobe doesn't have the Street-Cred or Garden-Path-Cred of the others.

My mouth waters just writing this.  There's a big "Ratatouille" syndrome going on here, I'll admit.  Marglobe was probably the tomato that I ate as a 1960's kid in Indiana and, if it wasn't the tomato you grew up with in New Jersey during that time, it was definitely a forebear.  One of its offspring filled just about every Campbell's Tomato Soup can that you ever ate.

But it's not just nostalgia or tounge muscle memory.  On a great platter of assorted heirloom tomatoes at the height of summer, I like a slice of Marglobe every other one.  It clears the pallet.  Every other slice, it reminds me of a time when tomatoes, even commercial tomatoes, were still delicious and available to the masses if only on a seasonal basis THE WAY GOD INTENDED.  Sheesh, I'm getting old.

The best seed for it, I've found, is available in garden sections of bigbox stores and says Livingston Seed Co. somewhere in fine print on the envelope.  If you see some, drop me a line ...I still haven't found any this year.  Beware of Marglobe Supreme and other variants.

Try it yourself come tomato planting season!  I think you'll love it.  Save the seeds, they could be the last of their kind.