This valley is known throughout the world by its computer-oriented moniker, Silicon Valley, a name that has stuck, thanks to a thriving industry.  It wasn’t that long ago this same place was better known for a vastly different business venture:  fruit orchards.  You may have noticed vestiges of this agricultural history – the myriad unrelated local businesses bearing the name Orchard Valley thus and so.  Though computer development and manufacturing took the area over with gusto years ago, fruit production was a flourishing business, once upon a time.

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Tomato seedlings in late May. Foreground right planted two weeks after plants to the left.

If you’ve been a Freshness Farms participant since last summer, you may recall my musings on tomato gardening.  We ended the season with sweet, juicy Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, but the path to producing them was a roller coaster ride, one minute filled with the ecstasy of abundant red fruit, the next plunged us into the depths of despair as we fought off rodent intruders intent on pilfering our bounty.

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Backyard farming -- hard work, but our reward is the delight in watching sweet treasures grow.

Mother Nature has teased us relentlessly this spring – one day it looks like warm temperatures are here to stay, the next we’re back to donning woolly sweaters and downing mugs of hot soup.  With this roller coaster weather has come uncertainty about spring planting.  Normally gardens would be firmly established by now, showing signs of steady growth.  With the thermometer dipping into the forties some nights, and barely reaching sixty some days, we’ve put our seedlings in with hesitant fits and starts.  As Memorial Day looms on the horizon, we can delay no longer.  This weekend, our planting finished, we’ll cross our fingers while making an impassioned plea to the heavens, and hope that sustained growing weather arrives soon.

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