Fresh heirloom tomatoes at 9000 feet in February!featured

My beautiful child and I have been enjoying fresh homegrown heirloom tomatoes since January. No one has been more shocked than me. From everything I know about gardening, this shouldn’t be working, but it is and we are thrilled. Here’s what happened:

In February 2022, I was revisiting my happiness and thinking through things that really made me happy but that I had stopped doing some time ago. Two of the big things were gardening and baseball. (In 2022, I thoroughly enjoying baseball via internet radio including Bob Uecker and the Milwaukee Brewers. If you’ve never listened to a broadcast by Uecker, you should do it once. He’s sharp, amazing and entertaining. He’s 89 years old.)

I was incredibly excited to begin gardening again. I researched high altitude varieties and ordered seeds. I bought warming mats and full spectrum grow lights. It was on. The little seeds got planted in tiny

grow pots atop the warming mats and under the requisite hours of grow light. It was a success, but there were way too many seedlings which were growing rapidly way too early to put in the ground. Did I mention that we’re at 9000 feet in the Colorado Rocky Mountains? It isn’t safe to plant until nearly June. And, I couldn’t bear to thin any of the seedlings that had worked so hard to germinate. Time for bigger and bigger pots.

I set up a makeshift grow house on a long table upstairs. Full spectrum lights and warming mats. I had to order more of each. My thinking was that I would transplant some of them to the garden/emerging greenhouse (which still has no roof) and keep some on the deck in big pots.

Well, I transplanted 6 plants into the garden and they produced admirably for us from late July until nearly October. One large pot with a hearty Black Krim plant who we named Felix, produced especially well outside. The rest of the indoor tomato plants became too intertwined and the pots too heavy to move. So, we grew tomatoes indoors as well as outdoors.

When the frost finally hit, I still had a huge tangle of tomato plants inside which were ceasing to be productive. One day in late October, I started to cut the vines back and sadly remanded most of the plants to the compost pile. There were two plants in very large pots which I couldn’t bear to pull out. So, I cut them way back (think 6″) but kept them under the lights and on the warming mats inside (along with the petunia plant my child had given me for Mothers Day as well as the rosemary and oregano plants I dug up and potted from the garden). I wasn’t expecting any of them to do anything except stay alive. And that was questionable given how cold that spot by the windows can get.

I watered them and experimented with various types of organic feeding methods (including the banana peel in water method which actually worked).

I was trimming fresh rosemary and oregano to use in our soups and sauces. The little petunia plant was doing great. The tomato plants were growing vigorously and started making flowers which I hand pollinated.

In December 2022, There were tiny Black Krim heirloom tomatoes on the vine! I couldn’t believe it! I figured that I would get a couple of cherry tomato sized fruits and be happy to have the divine flavor of an heirloom tomato in the winter. To my ongoing shock, the fruits grew to full size. I picked the first one in mid January and it was divine! We ate it straight with salt and pepper. I’m not sure that a tomato has ever tasted so good. Bonus – the little petunia plant started making beautiful pink flowers. Lots of them.

As I write this, it is February 9, 2023. This morning it was 4 degrees outside and will rise to a balmy 27. There is snow on the ground. I will pick a Sioux tomato and share it with my child on our lunch plates. We have at least a dozen fruits on the vine and dozens more flowers. I’ll keep hand pollinating and fertilizing them. Oh, and the petunia continues its joyous flower display. Happy 2023!

PS. I’m waiting until April to start seeds this year.

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