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Arnold Dyre
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For a good number of years, I have been trying to achieve a ripe tomato by Memorial Day.
Until now, my quest for Memorial Day tomatoes has always failed, and I have been lucky to have tomatoes by the Fourth of July.
MSU INFLUENCE
My Mississippi State friend, Mike O’Brien, manages to regularly produce tomatoes by Memorial Day. The tomatoes I grow almost always come from Mike. He starts them from seeds in a little mini-greenhouse constructed from some old discarded window units.
When the little plants are up and going, he gives me five or six of them and plants the rest himself. He usually has blooms on his before I have gotten around to transplanting mine out of the little pots.
By the time I have blooms, Mike has green tomatoes. As Memorial Day approaches, Mike starts asking me how my tomatoes are doing.
TROUBLE AHEAD?
My Mississippi State friend says he is afraid he is going to get in trouble for continuing to give me tomato plants – that, surely, it is against the law to give a healthy tomato plant to someone educated at Ole Miss.
Afflicted with the Ole Miss curse or not, my little plants eventually come around, and I do generally manage a ripe tomato by Independence Day.
But this year was different. It happened that, on the eve of last year’s first frost, I noticed a couple of volunteer tomato plants that had come up in one of my patio containers.
I transplanted them into separate pots and put them in a shelter. On pretty days of sunshine throughout the winter and early spring, I moved those two pots outside and religiously put them back under shelter at night. It turned out that those two plants are both cherry tomatoes and both plants are loaded. I picked the first ripe one several days ago and will be picking several more before Memorial Day.
MIKE WILL WIN; OR WILL HE?
Mike’s tomatoes are doing good and, despite my success with the volunteer tomatoes afforded the head start, my Mississippi State friend still beat me in the tomato race. Mike had two large ripe tomatoes a full week before I picked the first little cherry tomato, but the good news is that Mike and his wife Julie were away on a trip. Mike asked his Ole Miss friend to attend to his tomatoes while they were gone. I sure attended to those two big ripe tomatoes!
Again this year, Mike gave me the usual allotment of tomato plants that he had started from seed, and I have them going pretty well. I expect I might get a tomato off of those Mississippi State plants by the Fourth of July!
adyre@comcast.net
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