Fort 'Mater

I remember as a youngster seeing a TV sketch in which two Brits – a husband and wife – were attempting to sunbathe on a British beach. It was cold and cloudy, as British beaches can be. The two were dressed heavily despite it being summer.

Not long for this world

“Get ready, love! Here it comes!” he yelled.

And then the sun peeked out. The two flashed open their coats, revealing too-taut bathing suits and chalky bodies, and thrust their faces hungrily upward. Then, seconds later, the sun retreated.

“That was a good one, eh, love?” she asked.

So it is with our growing season in Northern Michigan. Here, but quickly gone.

I’m a second-rate gardener. My best success was when we lived in fertile Central Illinois. Then, I could toss a few kernels of sweet-corn seed into the backyard and feed the neighborhood.

Up here, it’s a struggle. Successful gardeners do the work with panache, but they’ve been at it a long time, instinctually knowing the nuances and brevity of the growing season. Timing is everything. We almost went to war when Covid and the governor prevented folks from buying their seed and fertilizer at the garden shops. Spring days in Northern Michigan are measured in minutes.

Given my failings as a farmer, but still wanting home-grown tomatoes, I decided during our first spring Up North that we’d buy potted plants, already healthy and tall, to even the odds of success. It’s a system that’s worked pretty well … until last month.

Three's better

We always buy three plants. An Early Girl, to quickly satisfy the itch. A Big Boy, because size does matter. And one of those varieties of small, cherry tomatoes. This year, we chose SunSugar, which actually turns out orange fruit.

Our house on Chandler Lake is shrouded by tall pines and oaks. So, in our six years here, I’ve learned well where the sun most warms our lot. It’s a 10-foot by 10-foot square at the northeast corner of our house, on the walk by the driveway. It’s the only spot in the entire yard where you’re guaranteed more than a few hours of direct sun. That’s where these three plants must go … side by side, all in a row, like three football linemen.

Each May, imagining lunchtime BLTs, we visit the garden shop halfway to Suttons Bay and buy our plants. I know exactly where they are … at the back of the main greenhouse. They’re easy to spot, in giant pots and towering a leafy four feet tall. Lifting them onto our flat cart is like lifting baby elephants.

We squeeze them into the car, behind the front seats, always careful not to break the vines. Then at home, just as carefully, we deposit them in their driveway spots. “Grow, boys, grow!”  I instruct, always forgetting there’s a girl among them.

Taller than me!

This year’s season started perfectly. Lots of rain alternating with, warm, sunny days. Within a few weeks, the vines were a proud six feet tall and the fruit began to show. By July, we were picking the SunSugar and salivating as the Early Girl’s first offspring turned deeply red.

But, disaster. One morning, after making my coffee, I went outside to get the paper and check the plants. I think we’ll be picking our first today, I thought. Then I saw it. What had, the prior evening, been a plump, buxom Early Girl tomato was now a hollowed-out shell, the skin tattered and torn, the red meat almost gone. What meat was left was marred by narrow tooth marks.  

“Cindy!” I yelled to my better half inside, outraged. (If I love tomatoes, Cindy adores them.) In our six years, this had never happened. Sure, the plants had sometimes suffered too-cold temperatures, or occasional drought. But never the audacity of an animal’s bite.

I quickly Googled “deer teeth marks,” thinking the herd on the hill was the culprit. But deer don’t have upper incisors, I learned, so they tear at their food. These marks showed the precision of a surgeon – straight, deep lines.

“Squirrel, maybe,” I muttered. “Or chipmunk.”

I ruled out squirrels, figuring that we already feed them adequately from our bird feeders on the opposite side of the house.

But the chipmunk? Both our pup Ginger and I had occasionally spotted one on the drive, under the woodpile. Nevertheless, I was optimistic. This was an aberration, I thought. What’s one tomato among hundreds over a half-dozen years?

“I’ll just pick the next one tomorrow. It’ll be fine.”

The next morning, the second ripe Early Girl was gone … completely. Aghast, I quickly ruled out the chipmunk. How could such a small creature climb three feet up, pull the heavy fruit completely off the vine, and then steal it away with no trace? Knowing the might of squirrels, I reconsidered their guilt.

Truth’s moment came that afternoon. I spotted the chipmunk running from beneath the Big Boy. Ginger gave chase, to no avail.

Busted! I thought.

I quickly Googled how to protect the plants from chipmunks. Home Depot carried some bird netting that just might work, I read, so I bought two 14-foot x 14-foot sections. Plenty of material to double-cover the threesome.

“This just might work,” I told Ginger as I draped the netting over the vines, making sure I allowed plenty at the bottom to confuse the chipmunk. “I don’t think he’ll get through this.”

That night, I went out to fire up the grill. Ginger tagged along. Then it happened … within seconds. Just as I stepped on the driveway, Ginger dashed toward the tomatoes.

“He’s back!” I yelled.

The chipmunk, under the Early Girl this time, instantly saw the threat and shot toward the woodpile. But he snagged himself in the nets, thwarting his own escape.

Ginger lunged for the chipmunk but also got snagged.

Then everything seemed to move in slow motion, like a Sam Peckinpah movie … the chipmunk, dog and the three towers of bountiful summer fruit went tumbling in a confused mess of black netting, green vines and underripe tomatoes.

It was a tornado, twisting, turning, wiping out the farm.

Just as I reached the scene, the chipmunk somehow bolted free. Ginger tried to give chase, but she was anchored by the nets and now-tipped pots, each weighing about 30 pounds. Barking, her legs churning, she only compounded the problem, getting deeper into the snags and shaking the vines. The vines, having fallen like dominos, bounced up and down, tangled, now at a less-proud six inches off the ground.

“Ginger!” I yelled. “Stay! Stay!!”

I grabbed the panicked dog, yelled to Cindy for assistance, and we slowly unwound the netting from the carnage. Delicately, I lifted each vine, inspecting what remained and what was lost. The cherry tomatoes survived the maelstrom relatively intact … they remained on the vine. But the Early Girls and Big Boys were a mess.

   

The victims

There were fourteen victims in all, each of substantial girth and promise. Uttering a quiet, disgust-filled f-bomb, I softly placed them in a plastic bowl. I already knew their fate. We’d made fried-green tomatoes before, but I’d never been good at cooking them. It’s such a pity that the green ones don’t work well between bacon and lettuce.

Northern Michigan gardeners must be resilient when Nature strikes, so we quickly strategized about what to do. The growing season was still young, and while some vines were broken, many were not. Brought to their right height, we assumed there’d be fruit ahead.

Cindy suggested that instead of draping the netting down from the top of the vines, we drape it up. That is, we set the heavy pots atop the netting and gather the fabric together at the top. That way, the chipmunk couldn’t slip underneath.

Made sense, so I quickly agreed. But I was fearful nonetheless. Thinking now we needed to tightly circle the wagons, I pulled the three pots together. So, what was once a row of fearsome linemen was now sadly and depressingly defensive-looking – three disheveled survivors, hunched back to back, waiting for the next assault.

I imagined Custer and two other doomed compatriots at the Little Big Horn.

We made one more calculation: If we used just one 14-by-14 netting to cover the plants from the bottom up, we could surround the base with a bunched-up version of the other. So, turning the second net into a wide but loose, many-layered rope, we circled the trio with the net, then weighed it down with rocks and branches. Imagine thick barbed wire without the barbs, or a fabric moat.

“Get through that, you sucker,” I challenged the chipmunk, who I knew was watching from a distance.

Fort 'Mater

Today, I’m pleased to say that Fort ‘Mater has held up just fine. We’ve harvested some fine specimens. Better yet, of the fourteen victims, a half dozen or so turned red in the kitchen. We used them for BLTs and just straight eating. The fried-green tomatoes were just okay.

Next year, I vow to bring back the linemen, though with bottoms-up netting from the start. Meanwhile, the trees already are starting to turn; a swatch of yellow and red has appeared on the maples across the lake.

Like other gardeners up here, I know the growing season will soon end. All things considered, I'm still optimstic ... confident I'll be able to say in October, as I store the pots:

“That was a good one, eh, love?” 

Survivors ... tasty!

A Sad Addendum:

Okay, now I blame Trump, the pandemic, and global warming. 

Two days after I posted the above, I went to check the tomatoes' progress. To my dismay, nearly every Big Boy and Early Girl was marred with deep divots ... like someone had used a sand wedge to pitch them into a neighbor's putting green. Worse, my nearly ripe, orange SunSugars were gone. All gone.

The mystery deepened when I noticed critter poop on nearly every branch and leave. And that many of the leaves were also gone. Branches stripped bare.

Then I spotted a caterpillar – green, bulbous, as fat as a middle finger after a bee sting. Then I saw another ... and another. Three altogether. Like the three horsemen of the apocalypse. I'm sure the fourth had been there but moved on once the feeding became spare.

Daughter Meghan quickly learned the culprits were tomato hornworms. The "horn" refers to the worms' horn-looking tail. These guys can decimate the heartiest plant in just hours, which explains the massive amounts of poop. Each worm's innards are like a finely tuned manufacturing line.

I placed two of the caterpillars into glass jars so we could view them like jurors. (The third one had died on the vine.) We researched the species and marveled at how beautiful they become as moths.

Because of that potential grace, it didn't seem right to judge them harshly ... to kill the surviving two. So I let them free in the lower yard.

"We'll see if they climb the stairs and return to the plants," I announced.

Meanwhile, ever hopeful, I disposed of the sand-wedge tomatoes, trimmed the leaves discolored by the poop, freshly watered the pots, and re-draped the lot with the bird netting. Tomorrow, I will watch for deer, squirrel, chipmunk, and worm.

I will also wish that this tomato season ... and all of 2020 ... be quickly gone.