playing n the dirt

In a little over a week Fort Lupton Colorado will celibrate it’s 100th annual Tomato Days Harvest Festival.  Actually, somewhere along the way, the name got changed to Trapper Days, but it still started out as Tomato Days.  I am in the mist of celibrating my own Tomato Days.  I have never had a crop like this and am begining to get buired in tomatos. 

I have decided that whatever I pick today and tomorrow I will take to work on Friday and any and everyone can help themselves.  A good friend and fellow gardener tells me that by sharing my crop I will be putting out into the universe good tomato karma.  I think he is probably right.

This spring was the first season for me to try green house gardening.  As a whole it was a big success.  I started with peppers and tomatos, because just north of Denver, Colorado the growing season is not much more than three months.

I did learn a few lessons, actually I kind of got a little greedy and forgot lessons that I already knew.  My biggest mistake was not thinning my seedlings enough.  So while I have lots of plants they are closer than they should be.  Being so close normal air flow is hindered and it does make the spread of pests easier.  I am also trying to get used to the green house being more humid.  Usually the natural weather is kind of on the dry side.  I’m not sure, but I wonder if the humidity made the pest problem worse.

I will try and remember these lessons and I am already looking forward to planting in the green house this fall once all the tomatos and peppers are harvested.

Slowly but surly the vegetable garden is making a come back to the front yard.  As I think it should.  This year in Boulder, Colorado a gardener and business man leased front yards, tended the gardens and is selling organic produce at the local farmers market.  Good job.

In this time of high food prices and ever smaller water supplies why are we watering front lawns that nobody can eat? 

Thankfully I don’t have a home owners association to deal with, but I do need to make sure it’s not against any city code and then my front yard will be turned into a vegetable garden.  I plan on using raised beds with mulch in between the beds with a nice fence around it all.  I think it will look very beautiful.  It will certainly look as good as any lawn.

I don’t plan on selling my organic produce because then gardening would kind of be like work, but all my family, friends and neighbors will share in the bounty.