Peeking inside the Flying Tomato Farm greenhouse, it's obvious that the growing season is finally in full swing. Our plants are reaching to the ceiling, loaded with beautiful, voluptuous fruit and lengthy green cucumbers. Dorothea accredits our plants' hearty growth to the combination of rain water and "worm juice" she runs down the rows every day. Using an old bath tub, Dorothea collects a good amount of rain water (this Pacific Northwest weather of ours has been granting a lot of it lately!), scoops up a green bucket's worth of water, pours it over the top of her worm bin, and then collects the residual runoff "worm juice" with another green bucket. She then waters all of the plants with this miracle concoction. It's a bit of a process, but it's well worth it, since Flying Tomato Farm has never seen such a ample amount of large tomatoes per plant- they must really love it! "It's all the coffee grounds. Those worms are really busy", Dorothea likes to joke.
Here at Flying Tomato Farm, we've been incredibly busy tending our plants: pruning, pollinating, watering, harvesting and maintaining an ideal growing environment. Now is peek season for the farm to make a profit at area farmers markets, as mid-July typically brings Eastern Washington competition, which means lower prices. We definitely have more tomatoes than we did last year at this time, probably due to the spurt of warm weather we had early in the season. Recent weather conditions (cold and rainy) have already started presenting a challenge though. Too cold and too damp of conditions can lead to fungal diseases and blights for tomatoes, so we're working harder than ever to keep the tomatoes coming. Luckily, more and more of our tomatoes, grown with love and lots of hard work, have been heading to market each week.
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