Mountain Laurel seen on a June 20 hike on the Flat Laurel Creek trail

Here’s a nice, concise guest article. It is always nice to be reminded how often we had guest contributors to our newsletter!

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West Virginia Tomato Growing

by Dave Cain

Gardening has been my passion since I was a young lad and tomatoes have been the mainstay of my small backyard plots. Expectation, fascination and accomplishment are some of the reasons why I am drawn to cultivate the soil each spring.

Having been born and raised in West Virginia, gardening is part of my Mountaineer heritage. The diverse ethnic backgrounds of our people have made many plant varieties available, especially heirloom tomatoes.

The first plants I raised at the age of twelve were Abe Lincoln’s and a very delicious tomato called Grandma’s Favorite. After weeding, hoeing and handpicking pests from my plants I was rewarded with an excellent crop of large delicious tomatoes. I even won a second place ribbon in the annual 4-H project fair. I was proud of myself and probably needed a larger hat size after all the praise that came my way. Little did I realize that we had an almost perfect growing season that summer. Long gentle rains interrupted the warm beautiful days at just the right interval and pests just seemed to know I was a neophyte. The bugs took their appetites elsewhere.

Nature has a way of humbling us mortals in a most abrupt manner. My tomato crop the next season was a near disaster due to heat, drought and the fact that it was a peak year for Colorado Potato Beetles, which sprang from the ground in multitudes. They had voracious appetites and my tomatoes were high on their menu.

I am now forty-six and look back with much pleasure on my years of tomato growing experiences. I have tried many varieties and many techniques. These years of experience have proven to me that common sense and basics are the key ingredients for successful tomato cultivation, but never forgetting Mother Nature’s tremendous influence.

This year I am growing Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, German Red Strawberry and Dad’s Sunset from seeds I obtained from the great people at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I’m also raising an heirloom Australian tomato which resembles a red pepper when mature. They make delicious pasta sauce and are great stuffed and baked. I’ve been growing them annually for four years, saving the seeds, and having great success.

A gallon of manure tea mixed with a tablespoon of Epsom salts, given once a week, has my plants glowing with health and vigor. And my feelings of expectation, fascination, and accomplishment are also in full bloom once again.

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Thinking back on our guest authors, some I’ve kept in touch with, some not, some have passed on - and some, like David Cain, were never familiar to me - it was often Carolyn who expanded our writers with some of her tomato growing friends.