The race is on...to get rid of tomato plants

Call me sentimental, but I can't bear to throw away the tomato plants I lovingly grew from seed. My dilemma is that in another week they will choke out everything else. Except for the weeds. In the hierarchy of my vegetable garden, top-down, there is:

1. Bindweed
2. Pigweed
3. Other weeds
4. Tomatoes
5. Viney fruit and vegetable plants
6. everything else

If anyone knows a commercial purpose for bindweed, let me know. Because I've been pulling it out like crazy and I can't get rid of it, so it might as well be useful.

I was reading today on MSNBC about the salmonella scare with tomatoes. Apparently people are buying local tomatoes in droves. Perhaps they will discover the joy of buying produce from the producer. Another good reason to buy local: gasoline prices are raising the price of food astronomically. Well maybe not that high. But bad enough. Why buy tomatoes from thousands of miles away when you can support a farmer here? Or grow your own?

People are growing Victory Gardens this year. Victory over what, I am not sure.

Victory over stagflation! Victory over salmonella!

Perhaps I should just move the extra tomato plants to other places in the yard where they can compete with the pigweed and achieve me some kind of victory. But that means the dreaded word: CANNING. A little bit of canning is okay. That's when you say, "oh, look. I have a few jalapeños and an extra pile of tomatoes. Why don't I can some salsa?" Oh yes, that's so chic. But I am talking about serious canning here, the kind that my mother did when I was a kid, when the four 5-gallon buckets of squashed fruits sat on the back porch in 97 degree heat, giving her the finger while my dad said, "Judy, you'd better can those things today."

Good news: my friend Darlene is going to take a few of my tomato plants. "I'll bring some by," I said. In a wheelbarrow. Full. Good luck with your Anti-Salmonella Stagflation Victory Garden!

Shannon