[Granville-Hough] 13 Feb 2009 - French Tomatoes - 13 Feb 2009

[Trustees and Executors for Granville W. Hough]

     I enjoyed a long talk with Bonny about her visits to York, Yorkshire,
and more recently to the Battlefield near Hastings where her ancestor
William the Conqueror earned his name.
      Dorothy was describing the wild growth of live oaks.  It reminded 
me of my older brothers setting out what they thought was a live oak in
front of our house.  It turned out to be a water oak and a monster tree 
which took over everything in the front yard.
    Dorothy, as you seem ready to put a tomato plant in a container, I
will describe how the French did it.  This was in the villages where the
family lived on the floor above the animals on the ground level  This
was described to me by a WW I soldier who was quartered with the family
near the end of the war.  They took a small wooden barrel and filled it
half full of manure from the animals below, then put in a layer of leaf
mold, then a layer of soil.  Then they set out a tomato plant or two and
sprinkled it every few days.  The water seeped through the wood and
evaporated, keeping the plant cool in the sun.  The tomatoes grew and
hung over the barrel in a beautiful display of delicious red, which the
old  soldier remembered as the most delicious tomato he ever ate in his 
life.
You might try it with good Texas bull manure.  A discarded nail
container (barrel) would be ideal, or perhaps a cardboard box.  Of
course, you may do just as well with a plastic container with holes
punched strategically.
	P. S. I remembered this story and decided to try it with kitchen 
garbage in Fullerton, CA.  I dug a trench in our back yard and put the 
daily garbage in it, covering it with soil.  When I had the soil built 
up to above ground level, I set out the small grape tomato plant.  The 
grape tomato was new to me, and I really liked them.  This plant grew 
into a vine covering the whole area.  We had grape tomatoes until no one 
else would eat them.  I found them best when they had been sitting in 
the hot sun and were fully ripe.
	I then saw an ad for a tree tomato and bought a plant, and put it near 
my Fullerton house.  It grew into a nice bush and was bearing tree 
tomatoes when we sold the home in 1975.  I liked them a lot, but I never 
again saw one. They look like a tomato, but are really another fruit, 
possibly from South America .