We’ve already eaten green tomato, bacon and potato casserole, green tomato relish is next. But what can we do with the rest?

Here’s how the patch heap looked at peak production.

We planted a bit too close using just the standard NKP fertilizer to start, the sun, water and new contractor’s fill dirt did the rest.  A tomato explosion. Picking the fruit was like an Easter egg hunt but worth it. I had tomatoes with cottage cheese for breakfast most days.

We are still eating Early Girl, Ace and San Marzanos but I picked them all to clear out the tomato plants, roots, stakes and cages, crab grass, Asian Elm root suckers and everything else growing under the cages to free the smothered baby pine tree.

Never again with the chicken wire, I’ll rake up the cat crap next season. If we’d been able to weed and spaced the plants right it would have been like the miracle of loaves and fishes and tomatoes.

The Japanese Black Pine (Pinus thunbergii), a Christmas gift from son and daughter-in-law, can breathe again and get some nutrition from now uncrowded roots. The plant debris from the tomato heap filled the green-waste bin and the hated chicken wire filled up the trash.

Guess it’s fried green tomatoes as far as the eye can see.

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