The Gardener's Dilemma

Or at least one of the gardener's dilemmas.  Discarding plants, that is.

Directions for sowing seeds always indicates to space seeds far enough apart that they will have room to grow and to pull up seedlings that are crowding their neighbors.  I confess:  I hate to pull up a perfectly good seedling and throw it away.  I will do it, of course, but I hate wasting a perfectly good seedling.  Sometimes I wait until the seedlings are a little bigger and then try transplanting seedlings to more commodious parts of the garden (usually not successful).

So that leads me to the lovely Brandywine tomato plant I found in a nursery last spring.  There was only one plant of this heirloom tomato that I had always wanted to grow, so I grabbed it eagerly and brought it home to the new raised bed I had just constructed.  I knew that it was a little early in the year for cold sensitive plants, like basil and tomatoes, but I decided to take a chance.  Well, that night the temperature dipped down into the lower 30s, and here is the result:

If I had only waited!

So I pulled my Brandywine plant from the ground, resolved to be more patient in the future.  But I just could not stand to toss the shriveled plant onto the compost pit, so I stuck it in a pot--just in case.  A few days later the plant bravely put forth a new leaf in the warm spring Texas sun, and then another.  Eventually, the plant looked like a real plant again (not pretty, I must admit--really rather misshapen).  

So I decided to find another corner of the garden to tuck this plant into--just in case.  Yesterday, after returning from our vacation, "Brandywine" welcomed me home with these three beautiful fruits:

Yes, there is a little insect bite in the tomato on the right--evidence that there were no poisons or chemicals used on this dainty heirloom tomato.  Tonight will be the time to savor the "fruits of my labor"--and to rejoice that the blasted plant did not get thrown onto the compost pit.