Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Barbara Damrosch, married to Eliot Coleman at the time, wrote The Garden 
Primer
http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Primer-Barbara-Damrosch/dp/0894803166

A Stalk on the Wild Side
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/28/AR2007032800506.html
By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, March 29, 2007; Page H07

Cherry bombs, the exploding kind, must have been named after cherry tomatoes, 
the edible kind, which burst in your mouth with a charge of candy-sweet 
juices. Pop one in and another must follow, whether you're raiding the 
shopping bag in your car or gorging your way down a garden row. The outdoor 
route is pure luxury, when the little orbs are warmed by the sun, their 
vitamin C at magnum force.

Rarely does a food give so much pleasure with so little effort. No one could 
call you lazy for filling a bowl with homegrown cherry tomatoes as the 
evening's appetizer, or scattering them over a salad. They can even be 
sauteed briefly in olive oil to add to a cooked dish. Better yet, dunk them 
in boiling water, count to 10, drain them quickly, then slip off the skins 
and strew them around a meat or fish dish, especially one with Latin or 
Provencal flavors. Never commit the crime of putting them in the 
refrigerator, which ruins both texture and flavor. They'll keep fine sitting 
in a bowl on the kitchen table -- and won't be there for long.

A cherry tomato may be adorable, but the plant it grows on is a wild thing. 
Turn your back on it, and by August it is a giant cobra, twisting through the 
bed and draping all in its path with fruit-laden branches. Think of it as a 
young tree that hasn't learned to stand up straight. Tame it, and you have a 
magnificent specimen that bears early and supplies you all summer. Lash it to 
a stout trellis or a fence, as it will overwhelm a normal tomato cage. Grown 
vertically, it makes fine use of precious garden space. The one flaw -- the 
fruits' tendency to split -- can be lessened by providing even moisture. Dry 
weather followed by rain causes this untimely bursting. A mulch of spoiled 
hay will buffer the extremes of wet and dry, and provide a summer-long dose 
of potassium.

An orange-yellow variety called Sungold, very sweet and well-flavored, is the 
current favorite cherry tomato -- for some fans the best tomato, period. 
Super Sweet 100 and Gardener's Delight are yummy, productive red ones. Matt's 
Wild Cherry is a primitive strain from the mountains of Eastern Mexico, with 
delicious marble-size red fruits on a mighty vine. But in fact, even our most 
well-bred cherry tomatoes are closer to their original form than are the big 
round type. That's why the sprawling plants are so vigorous and disease 
resistant, the fruits so full of character and wild at heart.