The beauty about gardening is that every season is a learning experience.  I’ve been trying to keep better notes than I have in the past so that my gardening knowledge can grow more intentionally.

In my current log (which is really just a workbook with worksheets for each season) I have a note next to tomatillos that says, “need to use tomato cages next year, they tend to fall over”.

That’s a ridiculous understatement and a bit of a misstatement at the same time.  It’s not that the tomatillos “fall” over, they are more like an invading army reaching for TOTAL GARDEN DOMINATION… MWAHAHA!  Okay, maybe not quite like that… but pretty close.  They don’t really fall over because they can’t support their weight, they are obviously designed to vine out, and as they do the vines themselves begin to root into the soil, like this (forgive the horrible blurriness).

My mistake, after not caging them, was that I let them keep going without training or trimming.  They’ve gotten to the point where they completely dominated the green beans and were forcing the squash into submission.  Squash!  I mean, come on, squash!

Tomatillos know no boundaries.  They may have met their match with the sweet potatoes, which have a mind of their own.  In any case I started trimming this morning… significantly.  We’ve only gotten a few tomatillos this year, in spite of the massive plants because they are tough to see and even tougher to get to!

So I trimmed.  Well, it was more like Conan the Gardner, hacking away mercilessly, but I think I made my point.  The tomatillos are back to their original space (mostly).  Hopefully they will focus on making some fruit.  After all we use the tomatillo fruit to make tomatillo salsa.

I love tomatillo salsa, which is of course the reason I planted the monsters in the first place.

Hopefully they start behaving now.  If not, I’ve got a better plan for next year.