I’m 38 and have been vegetable gardening semi-seriously since around the age of 18. I fell in love with horticulture at the age of five due to a kindergarten project of propagating begonia’s from the teacher’s plant from home. Each kid took a cutting and stuck it in a pot of new soil. We were told that by Mother’s Day, our little begonia plants would be close to blooming for us to present to our moms. I was captivated from that point on.

Tomatoes were one of the first non-ornamental plants to get me hooked on vegetable gardening. My first year trying them, they were magnificent: beefsteaks and pink brandywines grown on 8′ rebar and meticulously pruned and fawned over–around twelve plants total. From that year on I’ve experienced the gamut of ups and downs with these frustratingly wonderful plants. …Diseases, pests, weather-related banes and boons, etc… Some years are just plain better for growing tomatoes than other years! You have “tomato years”…and you don’t.

These days, I’m equally enamored with my other gardening endeavors as I am tomatoes. I still plant a couple of beefsteaks and a couple of pink brandywines every year, but I also make sure to plant some cherry types (it’s been Matt’s Wild Cherry and Coyote the last couple of years) and I always plant some hybrids, too (betterboys are what’s common to grow here on the fall-line of eastern Georgia). I took the advice of asking a successful neighbor what they’d been growing for years and was directed to the variety called “Celebrity” last year. I planted a bush type and an indeterminate type, and they both did very very well. So, I just play around and through all the diverse methods and types, I always get tomatoes. Some years they all do well, some years only the cherry tomatoes yield decently.

When we begin to enter the dog days of summer and the cicadas are belting out their cacophonous songs I know the end is nigh for most of my tomato harvest. The smaller tomato worms begin the proliferate in an explosion that could almost only be tamed by noxious pesticides, the heat is sweltering and fruit will not set, and the eastern leaf-footed bugs (what do you do about those?!) are all over everything…I begin to work more with other gardening endeavors and don’t sweat the end of the tomato season. There’s compost to make.

Well, that’s almost the end of my rambling. Just two more things to mention. David, I’m not sure if this extends to your portion of the state, but you may well be here in time for our 13-year periodic cicadas’ emergence. I was born on a cicada year, I remember killing them with wiffle-ball bats and badminton rackets at the age of 13, I marveled at them with new respect and admiration at the age of 26, and next month I will be 39…yet another cicada year has rolled around! I hope you and your family get to experience it where you’re at. It’s amazing. Also, as always, you are an inspiration. Thank you very much for what you do! Looking forward to this gardening season with unbridled anticipation and enthusiasm!