From Lee Kafkas:

I have a tomato conundrum that I’d like some of the best gardening minds to ponder. My tomatoes are growing too well. While you may be wondering “where is that conundrum?”, allow me to let me lay out a little history of our yard and the tomatoes that have grown in it.

My wife and I have a small home plot in Minneapolis. Though close to downtown, we have a active wildlife population of birds that nibble on our raspberries and blackberries, rabbits that nosh on our greens, and squirrels that snack on our tomatoes. I haven’t waged war, haven’t been too concerned about pest control, our solution was to grow smaller tomatoes that provided ample fruit for both us and the squirrels.

This year I started some “red currant” tomatoes by seed and planted four inch high seedlings in a bed that I had recently built over the remains of an old tree’s ground stump. I figured there would be some good nutrients deep down for years with the remnants of the decomposing tree. Maybe I underestimated the powerful punch of nutrients that lay in this area because that four inch seedling, a month later is about five feet tall with almost thirty lateral branches off of the main stalk. It’s not all green stalk-y growth. There has been abundant flowering and fruit formation. My problem comes with the neighbors of this tomato plant.

In this new bed, I had also planted multiple asparagus seedlings from the farmer’s market. They are about ten-twelve inches tall, are a healthy green, and have sent up q-tip sized asparagus shoots (which I have left in place and not disturbed). They seem to be doing well, I know they need a few years to get established and I am patient, but I thought that a couple plants could share space with them in the first year, not knowing how humongous the neighbor would get. My main fear is that I may have retarded the asparagus’ root and stalk growth this year by this crazy tomato plant.

Are these plants incompatible companions? Am I safe letting the tomato keep growing how it wants to this year? Should I prune back all superfluous branches to give the asparagus more light and topside room? Whatever I do, I don’t want to encourage extra tomato root growth. My ideal is to get a bounty of red currant tomatoes and have a healthy patch of asparagus when the tomatoes are done. If any of you think a sacrifice needs to be made, let me know. All plans of action are welcome.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 26th, 2009 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Tomatoes, Peppers + Eggplant, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.