July is the time that I start hunting for ripe tomatoes.  Everything seems to be ready!  The vines are large and vigorous  and there are full sized green tomatoes everwhere you look.  The weather is surely warm enough and there is plenty of sun.  However, tomatoes have their own timetables and once the cage is up and the mulch is down, my role as a gardener at this point in the process is to watch and wait.

Some of the early tomatoes have begun to change in color from apple green to a pale green that, in some varieties, is almost yellow.  This is a sign that they may begin to ripen soon, but tomatoes ripen on their own schedule.  If I had to guess, I would expect to be able to put tomatoes into baskets within the next couple of weeks, but I can never be sure until I start to see them red on the vines.

For the time being, we’ll have to satisfy ourselves with walks between the tomato cages, and the rich aroma of the plants themselves.  We’ll have ripe tomatoes soon, and then the feasting can begin.

When I started to garden years ago, flowers were very low on my list of priorities.  I was interested in growing “important” crops like food rather than secondary crops such as flowers.  Over time, however, I find that an increasing amount of my garden space and gardening time is devoted to flowers. 

What’s changed?  Well, I have I guess.  The more that I grow, harvest and handle flowers the more I appreciate them.  Flowers are beautiful of course, and they come in a spectacular array of colors, sizes and shapes.  Most of the flowers I grow are extremely generous as well.  A beautiful zinnia that I cut down to a nub so that I can get a long stem will grow back to produce many more.  Flowers seem to attract the most beautiful and elusive summer creatures such as hummingbirds and butterflies.  They are a beautiful addition to the landscape that we surround ourselves with in the summer and seem to transform the rooms of our home when we take the time to harvest and arrange them.

Like with everything else that we consume, there are political, economic and ecological consequences with how we “consume” flowers.  I don’t have the time to go into it in detail here, but suffice it to say that all of the negative consequences associated with how food is raised, sold, transported etc. are even more true of the flower industry.  When you buy flowers from a florist in Macomb, you are getting a flower that has been chemically treated to a degree that might make even a conventional grower of California strawberries gasp.  Consider too, that a large proportion of those flowers are raised in developing countries where a significant percentage of the population is underfed and there are often no enforced environmental regulations whatsoever to protect land and water. 

Personally, I look forward to the day when we can choose organically raised or free trade certified flowers as we can our apples and coffee.  Even better in my mind would be enough local demand for organic, local flowers to support a couple of small, family market garden or farm operations, right here in McDonough County.