Harvesting tomatoes suck. I would rather buy them at the grocery store. Why? Because they are all red, and you don't have to worry about whether they are going to ripen. Meanwhile I have guessed wrong on all the ones my parents planted, and it's pissing me off. I hate gardening, and I don't know why anyone would like to do this.
I think I have culled tomatoes four times, including the ones my parents laid out on the counter for me (which I neglected), until some time last week (Wednesday?), when I heard there was potential frost a morning after I thought there was actual frost and decided, fuck it, I don't want to deal with tending to these tomatoes anymore, I'm calling it a season. Every time there were tomatoes that didn't seem "right." At their best, their best, they needed some more ripening. But most of the time they were green tomatoes and I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do with them. I heard they could use some ripening if you just wrap them then put them in a box. I also read that you could freeze them green. I still don't know what to do.
So I split the difference in the last two waves of tomatoes. A week or so ago I decided that a tomato plant's leaves were wilting to the point that there was no need to keep them on the vine because the green tomatoes weren't going to get any riper. So I cut them, brought them inside, washed them and then dried them in the belief that they could sit around and hopefully they would turn red. But about a day and a half after I set them out to dry, they all, en masse, started to show spots and turn very squishy. Those are signs of spoiled tomatoes, but I am sure they were not exposed to one of the intervening nights of frost advisories we have had lately. Fuck if I know what happened; the only thing I could take from this is that once I get them out of the water and dried, throw them into the freezer. I'm sure my parents don't want green tomatoes, but as long as they're not spoiled, they have a chance to be used somehow.
By contrast the last wave of tomatoes I brought in suffered through one frost where I put a tarp on it. Well, tried to put a tarp on it; I came out the next morning (which had to be on a weekend, otherwise I wouldn't've come out the next morning) and saw the tarp blown onto the ground. So it may have already suffered some damage, but I left it out until the evening of another frost advisory. Soaked it and dried it, and instead of leaving them out, just now I took out the new Ziploc freezer bags I bought because I don't trust the ones that my parents left for me (ones which the best tomatoes, the reddest ones, are in) and filled up five of them to put into the freezer. A few of them were too bad to freeze; they're with the others in a Chipotle chips bag that I will throw away. But as long as they are not beyond redemption, they are now in the freezer. Not taking a chance.
So now all but seven tomatoes are either in the freezer or going into the trash bin. These seven are the ones that are red, and so I am going to try one last time to ripen them. They are in its own piece of ad newspaper in a box. Checked it just now: None of them are getting red, one seems to be getting spots, one of them is getting squishy. I am going to get back to these tomorrow night, and then I will either keep them or toss them. I just now that they're not going to go the way I want them to go.
---
Is it me? Did I do something wrong with them? Obviously the first tomatoes would have been good if I didn't just leave them out on the counter. There were some that I left outside too long, as indicated by thick dark scores on the tops of some of them. There may have been some that I took too soon, as indicated by the plethora of green tomatoes. And maybe I did not treat them well once I brought them inside.
So I guess this could be a lesson to not do next gardening season. But after a winter and spring, I know I'll forget. I'll forget everything except that I fucked this all up and I hate it all. And then I'll have to worry about when to harvest them and how to deal with the frost. It's all too much; I have work and the rest of my life to worry about, I have no time to worry about raising your own tomatoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment