Tomatoes Tomatoes Tomatoes

The main plot at Riverside, where the interns have been spending most of our time.

Kia ora koutou,

The past few months as an intern have been pretty special. I mean, look at this picture of the main farm we work at, Riverside, just around the corner from the ReMakery. Nothing but the sky overhead, dirt under foot, and a playground of plants. How’s that for the office?

Growing delicious kai is varied and interesting work. It seems that every time I come on the farm I’m learning something new, trying something new, making connections and filling in the gaps. Composting, weeding, pruning, planting seeds, pricking out - the list goes on and changes every day. Among the variety, however, there has been one consistency:

Tomatoes.

I googled “too many tomatoes” and discovered that other people could not only identify with the problem, but they’ve even written books about it.

Photo from jamarattigan.com/2016/01/29/friday-feast-too-many-tomatoes-by-eric-ode-and-kent-culotta-a-recipe-4

Hannah was given a pretty grand task of producing something like 1000 kg of tomatoes this year. Riverside is therefore bursting with tomato plants in most nooks and crannies. And, you guessed it, each one has been tended to by an intern, keeping us quite busy.

One of the earliest tomato related tasks was to support the fledgling wee plants with stakes and ties. I think we all quite enjoyed the look of using long bits of cloth tied to something high overhead.

Georgia and Kate N tying up the tomato plants one by one, in late December.

I’ve only ever staked tomatoes, so I got a real kick out of this technique. The tomatoes are trained to twirl around the fabric. I’m not sure which technique I prefer, but I imagine each has its advantages. One advantage here was that after we’d built the overhead structure to tie the strings onto, it doubled as a frame to put the netting over, thus keeping out the birds. We call it The Tomato Tent.

Lydia in the Tomato Tent, holding some yellowed leaves pruned from the bottom of the plants. This is a couple months after Georgia and Kate N tied them up - they’re so big!

Besides tying, staking, netting, and pruning, one skill we’ve all mastered is delateraling. This is where you prune the new lateral shoots coming from the main stem, just above the leaves. You may be able to spot a few in the next photo. We mostly use finger and thumb to pinch out the little ones. Sometimes a neglected plant will have a whole new thick stem that needs a pair of secateurs to cut out.

Pop quiz: how many laterals can you spot??

The tomatoes are starting to ripen. We’ve got red ones, orange ones, some with zebra stripes, big beefcakes and tiny ones that are hard to harvest because I just want to eat them!

I’m excited to see what amazing deliciousness the ReMakery kitchen will turn these tomatoes into.

Roy slacking off.