The field is plowed
Fall brings a series of chores. If you're a farmer, that list of things to do is pretty long. In the suburbs, things are a lot easier. In our case, we have to cut down a few plants and clean up our tomato garden.
This has been far from our best tomato year. I wrote about our challenges in "The bitter tomato harvest" and "The world's ugliest tomatoes." It was far different than last year when I wrote, "A late season tomato surge." The one thing that is the same as last year is that our Mountaintop tomatoes have been supplemented by ones from our youngest daughter's garden in Cornelius, NC. Just like last year when I penned "The best tomato sandwich of the season," the best tomatoes we've seen have come late in the season and from North Carolina.
For several years I have not bothered to turn over the ground our my tomato patch. In effect I was practicing modified no-till farming. Each year I would dig a small hole for each tomato plant (The Spring Tomato Ritual) and leave most of the soil untouched. There are lots of reasons to do no-till farming, but on a commercial scale it often involves large amounts of chemicals to kill the vegetation. In my little tomato patch I'm not too worried about erosion since we'll likely cover it with mulch in a month or so.
What I am worried about besides deer is the disease that attacked our tomato plants, and turning the soil is a good way to expose the soil and air to sunlight and air. We'll likely add some manure, and probably turn it again. I've already decided to let the ground rest for a year or two. A couple of years ago we planted pansies for a cover crop. They were even more popular with the deer than the tomatoes. I know that the next time we plant tomatoes on the mountain, there will be a deer fence.
I turned the soil of our tomato patch with a four tine manure fork. It only took a few minutes which was far less time than it would have taken to get our little Mantis tiller running. I haven't used it for five or six years so the manure fork was definitely the way to go.
It's nice to see beautiful fall weather and some color in the leaves. It brings back a lot of memories being on the farm especially hauling hay and plowing fields.
In those days I plowed fields with a five bottom plow that turned over seven feet of sod with every trip. I have one picture from our days on the farm where the tractor and plow that I used is in the background. The picture was taken thirty years ago.
Next year my not so secret weapon to win the great tomato race will be switching my plantings to a different climate zone. The best I can tell my tomatoes will go from Zone 6 to Zone 8. That should help. I'm sure that I'll find some other challenges, but so far I haven't seen any deer, and I know that I'll be facing soil that hasn't been tilled. Time will tell if that ends up letting me get another elusive pre-Fourth of July tomato, but for this year the tomato patch has been put to bed.
