It won't surprise anyone who has met Roger Postley to learn that he feels anything worth doing is worth overdoing. When he picks a project or a hobby, he doesn't dabble, he dives in headlong, full bore. When he raised tropical fish, he had 90 tanks full of them. When his Ham radio tower was still standing, he talked with people in 268 different countries. Postley's latest overdone project is growing tomatoes.
From January to September, Postley spends at least part, if not all, of his days sprouting, planting, watering, fertilizing, picking, eating, and selling from the 100-plus tomato plants he grows in his Lansdowne back yard. They share the space with as many as 50 pepper plants, a few blueberry bushes, and a smattering of trees and herbs.
Knowing someone has so many plants in one of Lexington's older suburbs conjures up a tangled patch with little room to move. In fact, Postley, a retired middle and high school chemistry teacher, is so precise and efficient that only about one-third of his half-acre back yard is planted in vegetables. There is still plenty of space for a tidy patio and two wide swatches of grass where his Border Collie mix Oreo can roam.
Sharing Postley's space-but not necessarily his passion for tomatoes-is his wife Louise. "My wife doesn't mind weeding, but doesn't care about the tomatoes," he said. "She has been known to weed the garden for me, but doesn't care anything about the vegetables."
However, Postley has found many compatriots at the Lexington Farmers Market where he sells the fruits of his labor under the name Tomatoes, Etc. At his stand, Postley warns potential customers of his proclivity to overdo it with a sign given to him by his daughter. It says, "Warning: Retired Person on premisesÖKnows everything and has plenty of time to tell it!"
For tomato enthusiasts, that is a benefit, as Postley is anything but selfish with the information he has voraciously gathered in many years of vegetable gardening, and his 10 years of focusing on tomatoes. He is willing to share recommendations, tips, stories, and as much general tomato talk as the visitor can stand.
Postley wasn't raised on a farm, but he did grow up growing things, first on Long Island, then in upstate New York. "My dad started me gardening about age five; I doubt I was much help," he said. "He raised a lot of everything. Never corn because of space, but squashes, tomatoes, peppers."
Since Roger and Louise married in 1970, the Postleys have always had a garden. At first they were the basic backyard variety, but as Roger developed a taste for heirloom tomatoes, he began to focus his efforts. Initially he worked with another Fayette county grower, Russ Madison. "He was growing German pinks and yellows, but I was looking for ones no one had heard about," said Postley. He would find new seeds in catalogs, and Russ, who owns Proper Plants, would grow them.
"Roger is interested in everything, so I think his biggest questions were how to get these plants started, seeding plants to the schedule he wanted," said Russ. "He does quite a bit of research. He's a man that if he does something goes all the way with it."
About eight years ago Postley began starting and growing everything himself, using a small backyard greenhouse and a larger hoop house. Six years ago he moved from simply sharing the results with friends to selling the fruits at the Lexington Farmers Market.
In the off season, Postley takes his tomato show on the road, speaking to garden clubs, extension offices, and to anyone else who asks. He also attends a number of seminars on heirloom vegetables. He is a member of the Appalachian Heirloom Seed Conservancy and participates in its annual conference in October, and is also a member of the Kentucky Vegetable Growers Association.
Even with all this time and effort put into this hobby-Postley is quick to point out he is not doing this for profit, but he does have hopes of breaking even each season-he shies away from the term expert. "I'm an advanced amateur," he said. "I don't think there's such thing as an expert; all methods work, use the one you like. You're going to get tomatoes no matter what you do. How many and how fast is what changes. They are not difficult plants. If you snap the stalk and duct tape it together, it will recover and thrive. That's a pretty durable plant, if you ask me."
It's all about Heirlooms
It is very important to know that Postley is not growing the "normal" tomato. Yes, many of them are red, and some of them are round, but that is where the resemblance to a supermarket tomato stops. He hates supermarket tomatoes; those red, mealy orbs grown miles away for transportability and high production rates. Postley's tomatoes are tasty, juicy, and very perishable, and come in a rainbow of colors including yellow, green, black, orange, purple, and red. For people unfamiliar with some of these colors, he is happy to introduce them.
To many people, green tomatoes are just unripe and best when fried. However, there are varieties of tomatoes that are very ripe when still green, like Cherokee Green or Max's Large Green, a type Postley particularly enjoys. "They're large, lime green on the inside, tangy and very juicy," he said. "You won't confuse them with a red tomato; they have a different flavor.
In addition to colors, Postley's back yard is a virtual trip around the world, via tomatoes, with varieties that originated in Indonesia, Italy, France, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Crimea, Palestine, and Belgium. Oh yes, and the U.S. He picks his varieties not by country or by origin, but simply by taste. And his tastes change, so each year the varieties change too.
However, one thing stays the same. Every variety he grows-and he'll have 90 varieties among 120 plants this year-is an heirloom.
"Definition one of an heirloom is something passed through multiple generations of a family," Postley said. "The second is a variety that has been commercially or regionally available for an extended period of time, usually 40-50 years. No heirloom can be a hybrid. A hybrid is a first generation seed."
Heirlooms are pleasing to the eye and the tongue, and fun to say. Some examples of whimsical heirloom variety names include Radiator Charlie, Depp's Pink Firefly, Granny Cantrell's German Red, Ananas Noire, Green Zebra, Black Cherry, Kellogg's Breakfast, and Scoresby Dwarf. There are many more. Just in Postley's garden.
Postley's quest for homegrown summertime tomatoes begins in the cold of early February, when he plants his first set of 18 seeds indoors. Although truly, Postley has made this a year-round hobby, collecting and saving seeds late into the fall, and planning next year's crop deep into winter. However, we have to start somewhere. So in February this year's crop begins its life as seeds sown in Postley's basement under fluorescent lights. This group will be the first to head outdoors, moving in mid-March to a covered hoop house in the middle of the yard.
In mid-March, Postley will germinate the seeds for all the varieties he will eventually grow outdoors. This year that will total about 1,000 seeds. Some of the resulting plants will find a home in Postley's yard; others will be sold for about $2.50 per plant. In early May-starting around May 10-the plants relocate into the yard.
"For the most part I feel Derby day is too early," said Postley of the standard Kentucky tomato planting date. "If it's been warm (50 degrees) and the soil is warm, they can go in. I make it a point to keep a box or plastic bucket next to every plant to cover them at night sometimes until the end of May; we've had frost May 28."
Every plant in the yard will eventually get a handmade concrete remesh cage. "I cage everything. That is not normal. This gives it better fruit but it's a lot more work and more expensive," he said. Even after every plant is in the ground, Postley said he visits them daily, carefully tucking growing branches into the cages' boundaries.
As of March 2, 2005, the first group of Postley's plants to head "outside" into the hoop house were already about a foot tall and thriving, while another crew of smaller seedlings were in the basement just waiting for May.
When it's warm enough outside, Postley spends about four full days putting his plants into the ground. Using post-hole diggers, he plants each seedling about a foot into the ground. "Everything under ground roots," he said. One month later, by June 7, 2005, those plants were already carrying small fruits. That's even more impressive once Postley points out that none of them had flowers when they were planted. "When I set them out I pick off all the flowers so they don't fruit until they have roots," he said.
At the same time he is planting, Postley is fertilizing. Each seedling gets a gallon of water with two ounces of 7-14-7 diluted tobacco fertilizer at planting time. Several weeks later they are sprayed once with fish and kelp extract and organic fertilizer. "Tomatoes come out based on the amount of care you give them starting them," he said, explaining the intense labor involved at planting time.
Once in the ground, the plants are fertilized every six weeks with two fertilizer stakes each, and watered as needed throughout the season, which could mean daily, like during the 2005 drought, or not at all. "If the soil is starting to dry, water. Your goal is to keep a fairly uniform soil moisture," said Postley. "Dry-wet (cycles) is when you get cracking and blossom end rot. Mulching helps even the moisture. I use grass clippings. It also gives you a place to put the clippings."
By the first week of June 2005, Postley had his first vine-ripened tomato. It was a Matina. He said it is his dream, but not a necessity, to have the first truly vine-ripened tomato in the county each season, with a target date of Memorial Day. In 2005 he took between eight and 18 flats of tomatoes to the farmers market each week from June through August, when the drought ended his selling season. This year he hopes to sell at two markets; the Lexington Farmers Market and the Bluegrass Farmers Market (see page 6 for details on both markets).
"This is not a business. I don't want to lose money, but I enjoy this," said this eternal hobbyist. "It's stamp collecting with an edible product."