The DRAMA Queen

WILT from the DRAMA QUEEN

Every garden has one. So does mine. I am not immune. The top portion of this tomato plant featured to your immediate right came to my garden this year with the title of "Sandwich Slicer." I am of the opinion that the name of it should promptly be changed immediately to DRAMA QUEEN. What tomato plant doesn't enjoy about 12-hours of direct heat and sunshine? This one, apparently.

Look at that thing! Just the sight of it will send a signal that it needs a good, long drink of cool, clean, water! Except, it got one this past Sunday. An exceptionally long drink of life-sustaining water from a hose set on a slow trickle. The plant, and the soil around it, was positively drenched with water following that 30-minutes of watery attention.

Other plants in the 2024 Tomato Garden look positively wonderful after receiving similar watery attention this past weekend. I took every effort to ensure that each tomato plant was treated to a low trickle of water over a long period of time. Every plant was treated with that slow trickle treatment for 30-minutes or longer. Plants in every vegetable garden do best with heavy, infrequent watering schedules. They don't need a drink every single day. They do best with that slow drip or trickle attention once or twice a week.

"Help Me! I'm Dying!"

Yet, there's always one malcontent in every vegetable garden collection. Two years ago it was roma tomato variety called Korean Long. Which is a very fancy name for one very average roma tomato. The Korean Long received more than enough water. Yet, as soon as our famous summertime temperatures broke the century mark, it started to put on a show just like the one you see out of this plant in the 2024 tomato garden.

Worse yet, I'm not even sure if "Sandwich Slicer" is the right name to apply to this garden drama queen. Google tells me the variety came to me by way of Burpee Seeds. Which isn't surprising. Burpee is a seedhouse that produces seeds for a lot of different tomato varieties. Yet, a search for "Sandwich Slicer" on the Burpee website defaults to another variety called the Steak Sandwich Hybrid. Which is another large slicing variety. Are they the same? Good question! According to Burpee Seeds, they must be. But, who knows?

The Steak Sandwich Hybrid is not a horrible tomato variety. I actually trialed it some ten years ago after Burpee made a big fuss about this new offering in the 2014 catalog they issued that year. I do recall the seed price wasn't cheap. No "new" variety of tomato seed is. But, if I was going to waste another dollar or two on an interesting variety, it was going to be for something like "Steak Sandwich." That's good marketing. Almost as good as sticking a very average roma tomato with the name of Korean Long.

Drama Queen Production

By the way, the moment the sun goes down this thing perks right back up again and looks. well, normal. It looks the part of a healthy, happy tomato plant in the 2024 garden. Because it is. Gone is the viscious, drama queen like, wilt. Gone are the signs of some kind of disease-causing wilt. Thanks to the unique weather patterns in the six-county Sacramento Delta region, cool air flows right in from the Pacific Ocean following a blistering hot summer day. This is why tomato plants do so well in this region, and why much of the farmland in the region is dedicated to the growth of processing tomatoes. Like the roma. Plus others.

Need proof? Look no further than Yolo County, just west of my home in Sacramento County. More than 35,000 acres of cropland there was dedicated to King Tomato in 2022. That resulted in about 1.7 MILLION TONS of tomatoes, worth a cool $183 million and change. Most of that coin was realized from the common processing tomato known as the Roma, but then again, some heirloom varieties are also grown there on a commercial basis. But the processing tomato is king in Yolo County. It is the number one crop, by far.

The wilt may look bad, but it isn't hurting production. Not on this plant. At least, not hurting production so far. The "Sandwich Slicer," or DRAMA QUEEN if you will, is loaded with fat, green tomatoes. Plus, our tomato production season is just getting started. The month of June isn't up yet. There's another 3-4 months of solid tomato plant production yet to come. The Drama Queen has tomatoes all over it. Despite the wilt, it looks like it will be a good producer. Providing is doesn't UP AND DIE on me. Which it looks like it just might do. Until the sun does down. Then, everything is right in the Drama Queen's world again.

D-Day and The Tomato

Dad: Red Beach-Dieppe, France 1942

I had intended to write and publish this post on the date of the 80th Anniversary of the now legendary D-Day invasion on the coast of France, but I wasn't quite ready yet. It is the story of two men who greatly influenced my future exploits in the garden. It is part of the reason why I do what I do. When I work in the garden as I often do during these warm summer months, my thoughts are occupied by these two. These two family members did not take part in the D-Day invasion that took place on 6 June 1944. But they were both in this war. They were both either in, or a witness to, combat. They both played the crucial roles that they did.

Later, as a small boy growing up in 1960's California, I noticed the gardening efforts of both men for the first time. My first memory of a ripe tomato on a tomato plant comes from the garden that my father planted and nutured at the home of his second third wife, a lady named Clara. That garden, as I recall, contained corn, cucumbers and tomatoes. The round, red and ripe tomatoes from that misty childhood memory would become a treasured part of a backyard barbecue, as would the corn and cucumbers. It is one of those summer childhood experiences that I've never forgotten. That, and the memory of my brother and I attempting to impale each other with the sharpened metal tips of a well-tossed lawn dart from the infamous game: Slider Jarts.

By the way, that photo above right is a picture of my father. I don't know who took that photo. I just know it was taken at the moment he was captured. That moment came late in the day after a tremendous battle called The Dieppe Raid. This photo was taken shortly after the battle on one of the invasion beaches, known as Red Beach, came to an end. The date was 19 August 1942. It would be the end of dad's war against Adolph Hitler and the German forces that Hitler unleashed across Europe during World War II. D-Day would come and go while dad was locked up in a German Prisoner of War (POW) Camp in what is today a part of southern Poland (Stalag Luft VIII-B, Lamsdorf, Poland).

Francis Doran: Merchant Marines

The second gardening influence in my life would come from the man to my immediate left. His name is Francis Doran. He is (was) my uncle. Francis played the role of older brother to the sister who would later become my mother. His gardening exploits are rather legendary, because he chose to grow his gardens in the worst spot that any gardener could possibly choose: the bitter cold of a Bay Area location where no vegetable in its right mind will grow. Despite those bitter cold summers, Uncle Francis would manage to coax well-shielded tomato plants to grow and produce small pieces of treasured garden fruit. He would also employ the magic of a greenhouse in his backyard to produce champion cucumbers, an exploit that he both relished and celebrated in his later years.

No meal served at his Bay Area home would be complete without a trek down a steep hill in his backyard that led to that greenhouse. That is where the magic of his garden exploits really took place. I have many memories of his triumphant emergence from said greenhouse, fat cucumber in hand. Later, as I began to borrow from the skills taken from him and my father, he would show a tiny bit of jealousy at the garden cucumbers and tomatoes I would present to him each summer that I visited. He also knew, however, that those summer harvests were helped a great deal by the heat of a typical San Joaquin Valley summer season. He wanted no part of that heat and would take every opportunity to tell me so.

Uncle Francis probably would have taken part in the D-Day invasion that took place on the American beaches named Omaha and Utah, but there was one minor problem. He wanted no part of that, and for good reason. Francis managed to live into an old age because he managed to steer clear of the alcohol and cigarette habits that many WWII veterans adopted to cope with the horrors caused by wartime service. Because he did live for as long as he did, I grew to the age where he could speak to me about exactly what happened and what was going through his mind. Today, I treasure those conversations. It is a look into the mind of a young man who badly wanted to serve his country, but also knew he didn't want to become a wartime statistic.

Restored Liberty Ship

"I was not an athlete," Francis explained to me once. "I could not run fast. I would have been the slowest soldier in my platoon. I knew that some German sniper would have picked me out immediately as an easy target and 'POP,' that would have been the end of me."

It is a common belief today that the invasion of France by the Allies in WWII was a well kept secret. Nothing could be further from the truth. Millions of American boys and young men knew as early as 1942 that the Allies would be forced to invade France in order to drive the Nazis out and back into Germany. Francis, who was finishing his final year at the University of Oregon in the spring of 1942, knew this all too well. The moment he received his diploma on the day of his graduation, he also knew he would also receive his draft notice from the U.S. Army Recruiter who was stationed on campus.

So, the day before the big event could take place, Francis and his best friend from college, a young boy named Robert, took proactive action.

"We pulled a fast one on that recruiter," he explained to me, chuckling the entire time. "The day before graduation we went out and joined the Merchant Marines. When that recruiting officer discovered what we had done, boy he was mad! But there was nothing he could do."

Francis was under the belief that his service in the Merchant Marines would keep him safe from the dangers posed by a German sniper. Which it did. What he could not know, however, is it put him at risk from getting hit by a torpedo fired by an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine. It also exposed him to daily attacks mounted by Japanese pilots who flew repeated suicide missions against the U.S. Navy in 1944 and 1945.

Francis in WWII

In fact, the first taste of what he could expect came not long after his graduation. It took place during his service on the first of three of three Liberty Ships he would call home for the duration of the war: SS Henry L. Hoyt. A month after setting sail from San Francisco in July, 1943, my uncle found himself off the coast of a South Pacific island called Guadalcanal. Worse yet, my uncle was onboard an ammunition resupply ship that carried 10,000 tons of bombs and ammunition. His ship, like many other Liberty Ships built for wartime service was, in reality, a floating bomb.

At this point in the war against Japan in the South Pacific, the US Marines and the US Army had managed to drive Japanese forces off Guadalcanal. But that didn't stop the Japanese from retaliating with bombing raids launched from nearby Munda Point in New Georgia. Which is exactly what took place as my uncle worked feverishly to unload his floating bomb on a series of DUKW's. These were amphibious trucks that were used by the Army and Marines to ferry ammunition and equipment from liberty ships to ammunition dumps on islands that U.S. forces had won in battle. It's the same ammunition dump that Imperial Japanese Vals were targeting at the time of my uncle's arrival. He was uncomfortably close.

"All the while (during unloading) the Japanese were blowing up parts of the ammo dump in the hills," my uncle would write in a letter decades after the battle took place.

Unfortunately, for my uncle at least, it was a scene that would most likely be repeated during his service aboard another liberty ship called SS Hiram Bingham. He would spend the final seven months of the war in the South Pacific ferrying ammunition and supplies to islands liberated by either the Marines or the Army (or both) in 1944 and 1945. I am not sure where his service took him on the Bingham, but I do know that one of his last stops would be made in Danzig (Gdańsk), Poland. He arrived via the SS Murray M. Blum, his third and final liberty ship assignment. He arrived in port not long after the city had been liberated Russian forces and WWII had come to a merciful end.

Dad (Right) in England

My father did not speak much about his experiences during the war. But then again, I was far too young to hear or understand this kind of detail. By the time I finally reached the age to realize where he had been (Dieppe) and what he had done, I was filled with questions that my father could no longer answer. He had been gone for nearly two decades. I don't know if he would have been able to say much had he managed to live to an old age like my uncle did. There are men who saw or did things during the war that they could never talk about, not even decades after the fact. The secrets they held died with them.

I can only tell you what I think. My father was an OG (Original Gangster), provided there is such a thing. He would become the very first American boy, or among the first handful of American boys, to charge up a beach under fire in Nazi-occupied France in 1942. In fact, dad joined the Essex Scottish Regiment of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division long before America was forced into the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

His country of birth and citizenship, however, is a fact that did not escape the attention of the Gestapo after he had been captured following the failed Dieppe Raid. A postcard he would send from his POW camp would indicate that the Gestapo had interrogated him about it. One of those questions might have been why an American citizen would join the fight against Nazi Germany in 1940. It is a good question. I did not know the answer. I only just recently discovered an article printed by the Windsor Star newspaper (Ontario, Canada) in July, 1945 where my father claimed to have joined the Canadian Army because he "craved excitement."

Dieppe Carnage 1942

Both my father and uncle would survive this war. I don't know what either of them were doing on D-Day, but I do know that both considered it important and a solemn event. My father's lone request to his youngest son during Veteran's Day parades was that I at least stand for them, and not plop down in the street with a sugary snow cone. Then, of course, there were the vegetable garden growth efforts that both were clearly proud of.

The one person who did not survive was my uncle's best friend from the University of Oregon. I don't know Robert's last name. Nobody in the family does. I do know that my cousin Rob is named in honor of him. I only know that he was on a liberty ship like my uncle was, except, he did not survive. It may be one reason why my uncle had a hard time forgiving the country of Japan following the war. It's an animus I noted in the 1970's, especially after my mother had the unmitigated GALL to purchase a new car that carried the model name of Mazda. He wasn't happy about that. He would not allow her to park it in front of his vegetable garden either.

Dad passed in 1972 following a long illness. He is buried at Lakewood Cemetery Park in Hughson, CA. Francis plowed right through some early health issues that bothered him somewhat. He lived to see his children marry and produce grandchildren, which he was quite proud of. He passed at age 91 in 2010. His final resting spot is in the city where he grew up, a family plot located in Eugene, OR.

Ozempic Sucks, Plus Other Garden News

Vegetable Garden in Early May

This is a blog about vegetable gardening. It will always be about vegetable gardening. That is the main subject. The main idea. It is why I write these things down. However, I reserve my right to digress from time to time to take in other areas. Like this one: Ozempic is a horrible medication. I have lived with those daily injections for three weeks. I cannot begin to describe this horrible experience. It is one reason as to why I haven't updated this blog recently.

I am not about to describe the side effects from this medication. Many of them are listed online. You can read it for yourself. I've experienced all of them, plus others that are not described in detail as they probably should be. This has been one terrible trip. However, I have come to the decision that it is simply not worth it. No more Ozempic. Ever. I will let Diabetes win.

Rant Over. Back to the garden. I promise.

Vegetable Garden in June

This is the state of the 2024 summer vegetable garden. It is the "progress so far" report between plant out and the first month of garden growth. The picture above right represents the vegetable garden just after every last starter plant and seed was set into the prepared beds. That's 30-tomato plants, six hot pepper plants (including The Survivor), 15 sweet or bell pepper plants, three tiny basil plant starters plus one row of Sumter cucumber seed and a separate row of two different types of bush bean seed.

The three or four squash starters that I had kept around would go into another nearby bed that would not be prepped for another week or two. I'm still attempting to locate some additional starter plants for this bed, but I don't think tomatoes will be one of the choices. 30 tomato plants will be quite enough. Or, perhaps too much. It all depends upon your state of mind.

The second photo, located above left, is the state of the garden in June. This photo was taken in the same spot as the first photo was. It was just taken 30-days later, June 3rd to be exact. The tomato plants then, which are about twice this size now in mid June, all got off to a great start. There was one exception to this fantastic start. It was a plant that Bandit the Border Collie paid a wee bit too much attention too. It has since recovered from this Border Collie attention and is setting a terrific early crop.

Purslane With Peppers

No, I am not about to tell you the kind of attention that Bandit paid to this particular starter plant. It's not the kind of attention that would normally be considered to be helpful. Although, it just might have been based upon the number of blossoms that this plant in question is putting out this June. It appears to be quite happy!

The orange garden protector known as Mango the Magnificent is back on the job once again. It's hist job to deter the garden pests that come to visit late at night, hoping to filch a snack or two. Despite suffering some problems with his back legs over a long and cold winter, it hasn't deterred or affected his ability to patrol the garden rows at night, or quietly stand guard in spots around the yard that critters have used in the past to gain garden access.

One of the biggest problems so far has been weeds and weed control. The spring garden pest known as Purslane is once again putting on a terrific show in the garden. Yes, Purslane is reportedly edible. Reportedly. However, I am not the "forager" type of backyard gardener. With the exception of a volunteer grapevine that is poised to deliver a massive amount of grapes later this summer, I tend to stick with what I planted.

This means I avoid the Purslane. Yes, I understand Purslane is edible. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Horticulture Department goes a step further by proclaiming the following: It is considered quite nutritious because it is unusually high in omega-3 fatty acids (found mostly in fish and flax seeds) and contains significant amounts of vitamins A and C, as well as calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium and antioxidants.

Weeding Out the Purslane

However, I still did not plant this. I'm not quite ready to forage for something I didn't plant. Unless it's a wild green grape. Which, I must admit, is pretty darn good.

At some point, when my appetite for any type of food returns (another fine side effect that I am suffering from), I will actually get to enjoy the fruits that this garden will eventually produce. I hope that appetite does return. Because the day of extreme garden production isn't all that far off.

I have implemented a few changes in this year's garden. Most of the changes deal with water. All gardens need this vital resource. However, the changes I have implemented this year have either resulted in some mildly impressive growth and early fruit sets, OR, it's just "one of those years." I appear to be blessed. Time will tell.