Second Floor Tomato Gardening

There are those of us who just can’t get used to the idea of growing tomatoes topsy-turvy, even when one’s container gardening must be scrunched within the tiniest footprint of a second-floor balcony. I’m one of those people.

Maybe it’s the fact that I grew up with a huge garden from whence luscious, home-grown produce appeared for breakfast, lunch and dinner as soon as the summer heated up. Breakfast might be a watermelon so ripe its juices leaked out with the first cut. Or strawberries mashed, then spread over waffles.

Almost every dinner included a platter of fresh, crunchy ears of corn, ten minutes off the stalk then quickly plunged into a vat of boiling water and spread with butter. We ate those first, before they got cold. The free-range beef or chicken that comprised the entrée was relegated to secondary status as a bowl of steaming green beans was attacked next, their summery flavor enhanced only with a sprinkling of salt.

Yellow summer squash was a frequent guest, as well, typically breaded and fried in the southern style my father preferred. I have to admit it wasn’t my favorite, cooked that way, and it took me until adulthood to grow fond of the vegetable and its delightful blossoms.

But it was always—always—the tomatoes that hailed the season, and we ate them morning, noon and night until the last plant froze over, finally, and had to be pulled. Fat, red beefsteaks, tiny yellow plums—there were so many of them that in our bounteous innocence we not only snacked on them, but used them as ordnance for tomato wars, flinging them across the rows in evil sibling rivalry to splat against a pair of shorts as they bent over to weed. The spillage, of course, would root itself into a volunteer four rows away later in the season.

So it is that two years of living in a city townhouse has elevated my frustration level to a point that I have thrown down the gardening gloves…er, the gauntlet…and will be growing a vegetable garden this year, all of it in pots and containers. No more scavenging the handoff produce of someone else’s plot. (Well, okay, maybe just a little…) But from now until the autumn frosts begin, I’ll be finding ways to grow everything possible in my little balcony garden patch.

Lots more to come, as the growing season is just beginning in the Northwest. I’ve just planted some lettuces, parsley and basil. Send me your solutions for container vegetable gardening!