and national recognition for a number of community gardening projects. She is designed and coordinated including a therapeutic gardening program for young women working to overcome eating disorders and food growing projects addressing food insecurity and engaging marginalized community members. For this year she is coordinating a new native plant and butterfly garden on the waterfront in Ambleside. So I'm looking forward to hearing a bit more of that at a later date but today she's going to be talking about tomatoes. So Jane will speak and share her slides and then at the end she will answer questions so if you do have questions please just pop them into the Q&A at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Great okay so thank you Jane nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Yeah thanks for coming on such a beautiful day it really is a day for gardeners but I guess we can have a little break from that. Good afternoon everyone. Let's get going. So tomatoes have been grown as food crops since around the 1700 AD. They were grown by the Aztecs but they weren't introduced until the UK and Europe until the late 1500s. I'm sorry I have a croaky voice. Then for 200 years after this they were only really grown as an oddity. They were considered the devil's fruit principally because they were red and people thought that they turned man into werewolves if they ate them. Even when the people started to consume them in the 1700s many people still believed that they were poisonous because there was often lead in plates and the acid from the tomatoes caused the lead to leech out and this actually did poison people. Today they're very popular they're grown in 96% of all vegetable gardens and tomato breeders are re-establishing heirloom seed strains and crossing many of these to introduce tomatoes with a fascinating range of colors and flavors. Tomatoes grew in the wild and still grow in the wild in northern Peru and southern Ecuador. There are new genetic studies too that are suggesting that they may have co-evolved in Asia. There are 15 species of wild tomatoes and these are all huge sprawling plants with tiny fruit often just the size of a pea. So we don't commonly grow these in home gardeners because because of their size but if you want to grow them you can get seed from salt spring seeds. So we grew some in a school garden. I'm really sorry about my croaky voice. The plants we grew in the school garden grew five by five so we pulled all of them out about one and it plant produced tiny sort of pinky nail sized fruit that fell on the ground and then the skin cracked when they fell. So the project was lots of fun but you didn't get very many tomatoes to eat. When we dug the plant up at the end of the season it had about a five by five foot rule ball who's actually quite fascinating to see. So tomatoes have bigger in their genes and all their and really almost all tomatoes whether they're heirlooms or hybrids they need room for the roots to grow. If you're interested in growing a tomato that's close to its wild cousins but produces delicious small fruit you can try Matt's wild cherry. It's oh my goodness I'm sorry. Oh no. Whoops. I think you're pardon sorry. If you try Matt's wild cherry it's a delicious tomato. It's still a huge plant. Here is one that Julie Kaler grows and well basically we'd laugh all summer because it's I mean it's really it's as big as a Volkswagen. So tomato breeders if you look at this picture there's a picture of wild tomatoes up on the top left. Tomato breeders have moved from sort of wild tomatoes that had tiny fruit that weren't didn't grow in clusters to fruit like Matt's wild cherries. The cherries are bigger there's more and they're sort of in a cluster. And then we see fruit like sweet million sweet million pardon me. It's a very popular tomato. You get more than 20 tomatoes per truss. They ripen across time which is great. And they're disease resistant and delicious. So tomatoes for Vancouver. The best tomatoes in Vancouver ripen in under 65 days and are late light resistant. Our nurseries like Costco Walmart they often sell tomatoes plants that have been growing in California but California has a very long growing season with much more heat than we have. So varieties that will grow well there are very difficult for us to grow. We have cool springs and while our summers can be hot around the third week of August we get cooler nights. We see dew on the grass. And these conditions foster late blight. It's a fungus like disease that can stunt or kill tomatoes. So when we're growing tomatoes we want them ripe by the beginning of August. So they're ahead of late light and producing fruit hopefully and strong enough to stand up late light. Most of these tomatoes that ripen in 65 days or less are cherry tomatoes or tomatoes that are under three inches in diameter. I'm sorry I went ahead before I should. If you look at this diagram you can see May is still quite cool. If you plant tomatoes out in May you need to keep them protected. An easy way to do this is to plant a seedling, put a tomato cage over it and wrap it in plastic like a dry cleaner bag. Typically gardeners plant out June 1st. We plant transplants out. Then you have 30 growing days in June, 30 growing days in July. And so 50-day tomatoes are ripe at the end of July. But an 80-day tomato won't be ready until the end of August. So it's when late light strikes. Weather starts to cool down in September. September can be sunny but it doesn't have the heat of the summer sun. So we try and get all tomatoes ripe and starting to produce at the beginning of August. If you look at plant tags they'll tell you days to maturity. The days to maturity refers to the number of days it takes for a plant to produce ripe tomatoes after it's been planted in the ground as a seedling. The tomatoes tags will also often tell you height, planting distance and whether they're determinate or indeterminate. When you're choosing tomatoes to grow you can choose between determinate and indeterminate types. And 30 years ago this was used to be quite an important consideration because the indeterminates that were available then usually grew 8 or 10 feet tall and they suckered madly. So it took a lot of work to remove those suckers. But today there are many indeterminate tomatoes that are manageable size and that sucker only really minimally. So the reason you consider whether you're going to grow an indeterminate or determinate tomato today really has to do with tomato production. The indeterminates produce fruit over an extended period of time. So something like Sun Gold, that's one of my favorites, starts to produce tomatoes at the beginning of August and then produces them all the way through to early early November. Whereas determinate types that might ripen at the beginning of August you'll have concentrated fruit ripe fruit for about a three week period and your friends will love you if you give them homegrown tomatoes. It's important to choose plants with the size that suit your space. I included just these lists of determinants and indeterminates not to talk about them but just to show there are lots and lots of indeterminate and determinate types that are at a manageable height. It's helpful when you grow tomatoes to grow more than one kind. The weather is often variable here. I've lost a page of notes. I beg your pardon. Sorry, our weather is often quite variable these days. So if you're growing more than one kind, you may have one that does poorly but you'll always have one that does well. Here are some proven tomatoes for our area. For as long as I have grown tomatoes, early girl and celebrity have always been popular. They have about three inch sized fruit that are delicious. You commonly see these in nurseries too. When you see the pots of tomatoes that are out in front of fresh market in late May and early June, these are generally early girl celebrity and fantastic. They're usually around $5.99 and they have the fruit on them. I think they sell very well. Of note is going back to determinate and indeterminate. Fantastic and early girl or indeterminate. If you buy them at the beginning of June when they already have fruit on them, they'll continue to produce fruit into the fall. Celebrity though very popular is determinate and you'll get almost all your fruit then right in the next three weeks and then a minimal amount of fruit after that. Other red tomatoes that we love. Many of you have probably heard of Cherokee Purple. It's the best large heirloom tomato to grow here. You can almost really sort of tell by looking at it that it will be juicy and flavorful. Mountain Magic. I have a friend, Sandra, who's grown tomatoes for over 40 years. She's grown every kind and now she only grows Mountain Magic because she loves them. They're like a compari tomato like we can buy in the store, but they're better. Many of us love beef steak tomatoes, but traditional beef steak are too big and take too long to grow here. So a really good alternative is cosmonaut Boca. It's beef steak flavor, but it ripens here faster. Brandy Wine is probably the heirloom tomato that people like the most and it wins, consistently wins taste competition. But it again, it takes 90 days to ripen here. So it's too long, takes too long to ripen. So greeters took the pink brandy wine tomato and big dwarf tomato and crossed them to give them big brandy. It's sort of a pinky delicious tomato and it will ripen here. I always grow Roman tomatoes. They are they are straight tomato flavor, but I really like them. I grow Amish paste. Roman tomatoes, they're dense, less juicy, sort of straight tomato flavor. But they're really good for cooking because of that on flatbread. You don't get sort of soggy flatbread or pizza. People people really like them to sundry. I've never sundried them before, but apparently they sundry really easily well. Pardon me, they grow sundry really easily as well. Midnight Roma, I've mentioned this because as you start to grow tomatoes, sometimes it's exciting to look for new seeds and new seed sources. Midnight Roma is seeds are sold by row seven seeds. And I thought I'd mention them because they call himself a collaboration of chefs and breeders dedicated to deliciousness. And they probably only sell about 15 kinds of seeds for vegetables. And they're all quite wonderful and all quite different. We can order seeds from around the world without any customs or import impediments. So it's fun to look at other seed companies that offer other things. Most tomatoes need good soil consistent amounts of water. But some of us don't have good soil in our gardens. And, you know, we may travel or just not consistently water tomatoes. So two really great tomatoes that are fake flavorful and fabulous to grow are stupas and mountain magic. Mountain magic was the one my friend Sandra grows who grows nothing else. Stupas is a tomato that grows well and cool weather that we often have in the spring like this year, doesn't need soil that says fertile and it needs much less water. It's grown by many, many, many farm gate sales on the Fraser Valley and by CSA farms all over BC. Mountain magic is the most disease resistant tomato that we have was more than 11 years in coming to a market, bred the old fashioned way with strong plants that were resistant to blight. Seeds were safe from them were growing out again. It was introduced in 2008. It was a real breakthrough in for tomato growers because it has such strong blight resistance. Many gardeners in Vancouver only grow cherry tomatoes because they ripen in 42 to 65 days. gardeners delight is the most popular heirloom cherry tomatoes grown. I don't personally like it, I find it thick skinned, but lots of people love it. I grow sun gold. I think if I only grew two tomatoes, that would be one of them. It's a fabulous sweet tomato with what they say is tropical fruit flavor. It's an indeterminate so it grows, starts to produce fruit at the end of July, and will produce fruit all the way through to November. Lots of tomatoes in sort of September, October, November decline in flavor because we don't have the intensity of the sun that we do in the summer, but sun gold has sweetness in its genes and keeps on producing beautiful, three beautiful sweet fruit. Sweet million has been around for as long as I've grown tomatoes for certainly more than 40 years. You can see looking at this plant, they have huge trusses of tomatoes. And they're delicious. If you lack space, you just or perhaps you live in an apartment. There are tomatoes that you can grow quite easily. Tiny Tim is a little on the upper left side there. There's a little 12 inch plant. You can grow them in just a one gallon pot, produce about maybe five or six cups of fruit over the summer. Down below there's a picture. We grew tumbler trailing tomatoes and hanging baskets at the senior center. They can grow, you can grow them in a pot of sort of two or three gallons of soil or in a hanging basket. Big dwarf is one of the one I mentioned before that was bred with pink brandy one. It's a two inch plant, but it produces six inch tomatoes around 55 days. So we can grow it here to I'm sorry, I beg your pardon. Can we grow heirloom tomatoes here? Beginning gardeners don't. But heirloom tomatoes really have unmatched flavor. And so many of us really want to grow them. If we want to grow them, we still need not 80 or 90 days of hot summer sun to ripen them. So to grow them here, you need to find mature transplants and put them in the ground at the beginning of June. Most nursery cell these and those small market garden stores that are out on Greenway and Burnaby, sort of like Mandeville's Open Mandeville's Garden Center. Wing Wong's is out there, and they sell dozens of different types of heirloom tomatoes that you can get at the beginning of June. Often they already have their fruit then. So you get a three or four month old transplant to put in the garden. So you can set them out in June. It's helpful to grow them in hot areas of your garden against a wall say that holds and reflects heat or on concrete that holds heat. The key to key to growing them though really is to get them ripe by August so that they have there's enough heat to develop full flavor. I've grown brandy one and black cam and they're really delicious when they ripen in August. But if they ripen in September, the flavor and the texture of the tomatoes really declines. These colorful stripy tomatoes are very popular these days. The breeders who brought them to market have red old heirlooms, often with wild tomatoes to get faster ripening tomatoes with staggering flavor. The tomato that started it all was green zebra. It was bred by Tom Wagner in Washington in the mid eighties. And it's as you can see, it's a yellow tomato with green stripes. Inside it has green flesh, but it's quite extraordinary because it has what's described as sweet lemon lime flavor. It was popularized by not surprisingly a California restaurant and chef noted chef Alice Walker served it at shape and ease in Berkeley. And this really started a sort of boutique tomato breeding craze. This year, the two tomatoes that were tomato seeds sold out instantly for Berkeley tie dye and pink or these are more these stripy tomatoes that are juicy and flavorful. The breeders of these new tomatoes are also breeding strong plants that need less water and fewer nutrients. So you get quite wonderful plants that are easy to grow. Black tomatoes are very famous. Many of you have probably heard of indigo rose. It's described as having superb smoky flavors. We've always had black and purple tomatoes. Many of them came from the Crimean region. But they were very large tomatoes, as you can see in this picture. And they take a long time to mature. But they are very flavorful, juicy and generally very high yielding tomatoes. A lot of tomatoes we grow here were bred in Oregon and Washington because the climate is similar to ours and Jim Myers is a breeder in Oregon. And he took some of these two of these old Russian heirlooms and took two wild tomatoes from the Andes and crossed them to get indigo rose. It's a very popular tomato and it grows very well here. It is so tomatoes in the past may have been described as rank and stinking, not fit for hogs. But today we see the adjectives that really were just used for to describe one before but rich, smooth and savory with earthy notes, rich, highly aromatic, burgundy wine. The black beauty tomato that's shown here on the left is considered the most flavorable black, purpley black tomato. And people who are into tomato into tomatoes are really into tomatoes. And there are taste testing competitions and national taste test competitions and tomato expos and tomato weeks. But the black beauty tomato, the tomato expo in Portland two years ago. Apparently, when the judges taste them, one of them stood up and shouted this is the best tomato I've ever eaten. And it's apparently wonderful. It's hard to believe that the flavors of these tomatoes are distinctly different if you grow an only grocery or only grocery store tomatoes. But when one of my friend daughters, one of our daughters friends was over here, I gave him some whole tomatoes. And he was absolutely speechless. And his eyes went wide. And he just sort of muttered pineapple. These tomatoes do have distinctly different tastes. And they are certainly fun to grow. We can grow transplants from the nursery. Or we can expand the types of tomatoes we grow by ordering seeds online. Salt spring seeds sells 80% of the tomatoes that I've mentioned in the talks. They're a beautiful, lovely small farm. They grow all the seed they set sell, or they buy it from other local small farms, like two wings farms. When you buy seeds from these local growers, the tomatoes you get will or any vegetables you get will are better suited to our gardens. They've been grown in the same gardening conditions and plants adapt the environments they're in. So if you can buy locally grown seeds, it's always better. Full circle seeds in soup. This is not conventional agriculture. They don't overspray everything with herbicides to start to kill all the weeds, the weeds grow and attract beneficial insects. They don't use herbicides, pesticides, no synthetic fertilizers. Going further afield, Baker Creek seeds. You can tell they're you're in for something interesting and different. Their website is rareseeds.com. They have fabulous seeds, many of the same seeds actually as salt spring seeds plus more. They've been reintroducing seeds that have been found in South American Southeast Asian African markets and have been found in indigenous communities. You can see looking at this, their their webpage picture that sort of the trend in vegetables is colorful, colorful, phytochemical rich vegetables. I have about a dozen more slides. There was a lot of information online on growing tomatoes. So I've summarized some things that I think are most important. And so now we'll talk about getting out into the garden to grow our tomatoes. We planted tomatoes outside in early June. And in 60 days, they can put on four or five, six feet of growth and produce buckets of fruit. So they need nutrients in the soil. I funded very hard to believe this was a 2021 ad showing a woman pouring synthetic fertilizer into your vegetable gardens to start growing. I prefer not to use synthetic fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers are these bags, sort of a manufactured intergranate compounds like ammonium nitrate, ammonium phosphate. They supply only three main nutrients, NPK, don't supply nutrients. And they don't build healthy soil like organic. I mean, it's organic fertilizers do. They've been found to harm the bacteria and fungi and soil that help plants take up nutrients, and that help fight off disease. They're highly soluble. The directions on the bags push us to use much more than we need. And the excess has been running off into streams and quite significantly upcenting ecosystems. Synthetic fertilizers are unnecessary contrary to what a lot of the media and a lot of chemical companies say. I prefer to provide nutrients for my vegetable garden and tomatoes using composted manures or compost. If you top dress your garden beds with four inches of composted manure or good compost, you will have all the nutrients your tomatoes need. The nutrients in organic fertilizers or in compost aren't available for plants to use until the soil is warm and the microorganisms that started to act on them to break them down into nutrients and inform the plants can use. So when you top dress your bed, it's best to do it in the beginning of April. So the soil will warm up and the nutrients will become available. Four inches of compost will supply all the major nutrients you need MPK as well as calcium, magnesium, sulfur that the plants need for optic limb growth. It's a very big job to bring in four inches of soil amendments to a garden every year. So lots of gardeners will sort of they might bring in two inches of pop and they trust top dress their garden beds with two inches of organic amendments. And then they might use organic fertilizer. And then they'll usually often they'll mulch just the sort of chopped greens or yard waste. So you're using sort of the three of them to supply fertilizer or nutrients that your plants need. I vary the kinds of soil amendments that I use sort of between mushroom manure and the transfer station composted green waste or like composted pig or composted steer manure. I do this to sort of balance out the micronutrients that will be available in the soil. Once you prepared your beds, you can transplant your transplants. There are three pictures of three transplants here that are different size. On the left, don't buy the little 49 cent transplants. They take an extra two or three weeks to get to producing and we want tomatoes early, it's pushing it even to try and get them at the beginning of August. So it's better to buy the plants that are shown in the middle picture here, they do cost more, but they will produce buckets of tomatoes. You want to choose the healthier, taller plants. Because as well, when you plant tomatoes, you bury the stem underground. So the more stem you can bury, the more roots you'll get, more plant growth this will support. So it's worth buying these taller plants. You can buy tomatoes that already have fruit on them. And if you want to spend the money, it's great, you'll get tomatoes that are start to produce for you as soon as you plant them. When you plant tomatoes, they're very unusual. Most plants, if you put the stems underground, where they're exposed to moisture and bacteria, the stems will rot. Tomatoes interestingly enough will root all along the stems if you plant them underground. So the best way to plant them is to trench plant. You take the remove the lower leaves off the bottom of the tomato plant, lay the plant sideways covered with soil and at the end of the season, the picture on the right shows you get many more roots when you can do this and more roots means you can support stronger growth. This picture makes me laugh. I don't know why, but I think it's a picture of tomatoes lying on the ground waiting to be trench planted. Traditionally, we planted tomatoes all together in a row. It's made it easy to water. It's easy for crop rotation. Tomatoes actually self pollinate. They aren't like corn that needs to be grouped together to ensure pollination. So we can interplant tomatoes in the garden. Tomatoes actually aren't prone to any insect damage here. We don't have those orange four inch tomato worms. But sorry, people like to interplant and plant flowering plants in around their tomatoes because they'll attract beneficial insects. Though they find that interplanting isn't necessary to help keep pest numbers low on tomatoes. It's beneficial to other plants. It seems the smelly leaves of tomatoes seem to deter like the cabbage white moths from going to kale. Some people just think the smell sort of confuses insects, insect pests when they come into the garden. So interplanting. This is a garden bed that we planted at the senior center. And we planted tumbler tomatoes in the corner of the bed and a teepee with peas in the middle and out of chives and beans and parsley. So the old idea about plant them all in a row isn't something we have to buy by. Always when I plant vegetables, including tomatoes, I always sprinkle a package of seeds for a lissom. That's the scented white low annual hits. It covers the ground and so reduce his moisture loss. It's like sort of a green mulch. It stops weed seeds from germinating. And it provides same beautiful scent and nectar for bees and butterflies. After tomatoes are planted, most books recommend you mulch. I find after I bring soil amendment in, I have done my one big project in the garden. It's another big project to bring mulch in mulch is valuable, particularly for tomatoes because it stops soil being spattered up onto the tomato leaves when it's water. And that soil often has fungal spores in it that can cause disease. It's helpful to mulch because it slows moisture loss of soil. It moderates soil temperature, prevents weeds seed germination, and then of all, ultimately, it will break down to add organics to the soil. I don't do this though it's a very valuable practice, but instead I chop and drop mulch. Chop and drop is a practice where you just anytime you trim off any kind of greenery in your garden, you just drop it on the ground. It's this really does involve a big change in practice from this whole sort of notion of cleaning up and clean up your garden and putting bags of green waste out or clean up and put the green things into the compost. It involves a very significant change in aesthetics. Because most of us were sort of taught we clean up our garden beds, but we'll have a much healthier sort of overall ecosystem and healthier garden. If we don't clean up, we can leave fallen leaves at the end of the season, we can chop and drop.  And they are the ones that eat slug eggs. Our ecosystem gardens are an interconnected ecosystem.  There are two plants gardeners have grown forever, comfrey and borage. You can use these are great plants to grow and you can just chop and drop those into your garden. Um, most leaves, including comfrey and borage are sort of like two, one, two for their main nutrients. So they are a good, mild fertilizer and then they add organic materials to your soil. It's interesting old books on companion planting or old books that mention companion planting. You still always recommend planting borage and comfrey with tomatoes. Watering, you want to keep water off tomato leaves when you water, because they are prone to fungal diseases. So drip irrigation really is the best way or hand watering with a wand is the best way to water tomatoes. It's you want water to get down deep to the bottom of the roots.  It's better to water less frequently and deep and infrequently and shallow. How much water is is a real challenge because soil heat, wind, they all different gardens. So soil dries out at different rates. It dries out at different rates of course different months. It's when you grow tomatoes a lot, you actually start to notice the leaves of tomatoes change color as they start to need water. So part of the joy of gardening really is slowing down to look and see what's going on in your garden. And to observe changes like this and you'll soon realize my tomatoes need water and you'll water accordingly. The picture on the right is a tomato that was growing on the beach down on Evergreen Beach where my husband and I go for coffee. It's seeded in there somehow it grew in sandy pretty awful soil grew without water. So a lot of people are realizing that tomatoes really don't need the water that traditionally we have suggested they receive. I mean, we don't the it's tomatoes need steady consistent water. Tomatoes that don't get enough water often get quite thick skinned, which I find most people find undesirable. But nonetheless, people are dry farming tomatoes. The early girl tomatoes that grow so well here. They're being grown in even in California where it's hot in dry farm conditions. If you if you want to read about a really great dry farming, dry farm, Google dirty girl farm. They grow the they grow early girls and they talk a lot about how you do this. I haven't done this so I can only comment and repeat what I've read. I'm going to fiddle this year and see what I get. But in dry farming healthy soil is really critical. Of course, tomatoes are planted early. So roots go deep to get the sort of spring rain water that's still in the soil. The soil health is key. You have to you have to maintain really healthy organic rich soil and mulch well. But then no supplementary water is added. To me, this is it's worth experimenting with water in our gardens or reduce water in our gardens. But you will see you get much reduced yield. These farms produce only about a third as many tomatoes as I think a farm with that's watered. And you do get thick skin tomatoes, but the flavor is apparently outstanding. I've missed this. This is oh, yeah, I'm really sorry. This has a I have sweaty palms that set off my this wasn't actually my last slide. This is from another tomato slide. I may not be able to get this. Oh, I'm really sorry. The last picture that's supposed to be in here is a picture that shows a garden that's been planted intensely with tomatoes, just one of many things. Sorry about this. I can't seem to find my well, we'll leave this here. The last picture that I had in the presentation was just a picture of heavily planted garden that has tomatoes interspersed between edible flowers and squash and pumpkins and beans and artichokes and amaranth was just a lovely picture that showed from from a very experienced gardener who has probably sat and watched how things grow. But I encourage everyone to think about changing practices a bit and interplanting trying new tomatoes and maybe dry gardening too. Thank you. If you if there are any questions. Hi, Jane. Yeah. I'm coming back on here. Great. There are quite a few questions. Yeah, if you'd like to stop your share screen screen sharing your screen, then yeah. Okay, so they're quite a few questions. So we'll just run through them. So one of the questions is about pruning. So you have any tips on pruning indeterminate tomatoes?  So there's sort of a main stem. And then the branches come off, they'll be flowers and a cluster of fruit at the end. The indeterminates produce a sucker where in between where the main stem is and the branch comes off in old, old tomatoes that are indeterminates, those suckers often got five feet long. And we remove them just so the plant could focus on putting energy into producing fruit. It's very easy to remove suckers, you just look where the stem joins, pardon me, the branch effectively with the leaves joins the stem and you cut those out. Okay. Well, if you're growing sort of the five to six foot indeterminates like sunbold, I don't take I don't cut them out. They're not a problem they produce fruit. The plants produce bushels of fruit. So you don't need to worry about them in the smaller indeterminates. Okay, great. That's good. Thank you.  Mix it in? Or you just literally lay it on top? It's very popular to talk about no till gardening and people want to do it. I, the reason people advocate for no till gardening is because the bacteria that you find in the soil surface is exposed to air and light. Whereas bacteria that's down deeper gets less light, less air. So the bacteria is sort of in different zones in your soil do differ. And if you till and dig it in, you're putting bacteria on the surface under the soil. In my experience, the recommended I found the recommendation to not till and just put compost on the surface is great in an in an established garden. There's soil underneath is good and loose and the worms come up and it just eventually works in.  And I, we garden really intensely, much more intensely than farms do. So sort of advocates for no till in a farming situation are talking about quite something quite different than a really intensely planted home garden. And I think that it's okay to till it in when you're starting a new garden and the soil underneath is poor. You want to start with organic material and or nutrients throughout everything going down, you know, two feet if you can. Okay, great. That's great. And so that whole business of the trench planting, I'd never heard about that. That was really interesting. So the question about that is when you trench plant, does the stem turn upwards on its own? No, you need to tomato stems by the time once your seedlings sort of six inches tall are quite, quite, they're not going to break. They're quite tough.  Right. So you don't stake it, you just kind of get the earth to kind of hold it up. You can stake it too. Sure. Yeah, okay. Often, it's probably a good idea to put the stakes in then because then you're not going to jam it in later through right through the stem. Yeah. Um, so someone has asked, how do I get tomatoes in June? Well, my husband would say go to Safeway. But in truth, I get tomatoes, ripe tomatoes the first week of June. It's, yeah, I was challenged by David Spears to do this and he taught me how to get tomatoes ripe in June. You need to start transplants early in February so that you're plant and then plant out in early April. And it's still very cool in April, but if you have a hot spot in your garden, you can put two month old transplants in at the beginning of April. I wrap I just put tomato cages around them and wrap them. They're well protected. They're against a wall, they're on concrete. And I get tomatoes at the beginning of June. It's necessary when you put tomatoes out that early to plant a parthenocarpite type. These are tomatoes that don't need pollination. Silits is the one I usually grow. It's tomatoes won't put won't pollinate in cool weather. But those tomatoes don't need pollination. So they produce fruit. You'll have fruit the first of June. The other way to get fruit early at the beginning of June is effectively to use your dining room table like a greenhouse. It's I start tumbler tomatoes because my grandson wants to pick them. I start them in a three gallon pot inside. I start them at the beginning of February. By the time I put them out in the beginning of June, they already have fruit. They're they're the small little tomatoes. So they're short season and I you know, I cheat. I just put them out with fruit on them. Wow. Well that actually that someone asked about that about starting tomato seedlings inside. So you said February. Normally you start tomato seedlings about two months before you put them out. So you start them around. I think it was lots of people start from around April 23rd. Then they're ready to go out at the beginning of June. Okay, okay. So when you're starting an inside, do you have grow lights overhead? I do. But lots of people don't. The key to I mean, the basics are the simplest tomato seeds germinate easily in warm conditions sort of 70 to 80 degrees. And then it's best to grow them in bright but cool conditions like 50 to 70 degrees. My friend Julie, she sent me a funny picture of her coach tomatoes. She puts her tomato seedlings along the back of her coach in the sun. And I mean, well, that Matt's tomato, Matt's tomato that we saw that's hers. She doesn't put them under grow lights. Just keep them in a warm window and they're healthy, healthy. Tomatoes are a bit unusual. If you don't have them under grow lights, they will get laggy a bit and they do. They're not as thick, stamped or as healthy as those you grow under grow lights. But you can bury the stem. So even though they're a bit laggy and tall, if they haven't been under her lights, you can bury that stem anyway, and you still will get healthy tomato plants. Okay, wow, it's great. Now someone was asked about greenhouses and you, you've never mentioned that which actually I'm fine with because I think most of us don't have a greenhouse. But do you know much about growing tomatoes in greenhouses? I don't. You can grow tomatoes all year with greenhouses and supplementary light. Greenhouse growing is actually, I think very sophisticated. In general, the challenges are all the biggest challenges moisture control, which relates to disease control. I bought a good book from the library on it. Great. Okay, good. Now, once someone we're going to go back to those suckers again on the plant. So this is around about sungoals, right, which you said was one of your favorites. Yeah, because of the flavor, you said they had really great flavor. Yeah, so the question is, how do you stake them so they don't end up on the ground? I grow, I only grow tomatoes that are sort of four to six feet. And I just use normal, I just use normal tomato cages. I actually turn them upside down. Because the wider normally tomato cages are like this, but turned upside down, the wider circle is down at the base. Then you've got three or four pieces of wire sticking up. I cut, I've cut those off and I've bent them in a U and I use them to peg the cage down. That's a daily ungrower's trick, but it works well for tomatoes. If I just use tomato cages. Wow, that's great. So another question was about the type of compost or manure you're using. So can you use that city compost? I mean, I don't know if they've got that in West Van But I know in Vancouver, you can buy compost from the city. And the question actually is really, can you just plant your, if you get that compost or a semi or can you plant your tomatoes directly into it? I'm not sure. Compost holds moisture very well. It's sort of balanced, moderate nutrients. Go on soil professors through Washington State University Extension. They discuss soil a lot more. I always thought more would be better, but more in terms of nutrients, whether they're organic or not, bacteria break them down and the extra ones run off into our streams. In the winter, you'll have very soggy soil if you only have compost. Garden professors would say no, that's the wrong thing to do. The soil is a balance of compost, sand, silt and clay. The clay is necessary to help keep nutrients in an ionic state in solutions so they can be absorbed. The sand and silt help with drainage. Pure compost doesn't drain that well. I mean, but our summers are dry, so you could water as you need. I think it will work, whether it's ideal. I mean, it's hard to say. I don't know if Laura Murray is in the group today. She plants in full compost, and she has a beautiful healthy garden, so it's done, and it's doable and can work very well. But maybe she could comment on that. Who is that? Laura Murray Newbert? Oh, yeah, yeah, she did that. She did a talk for you on permaculture and she talks about it. Don't think she's here, unless she's, yeah. No, I'm sorry, I can't talk to just growing in compost. A good place to look for information on soil will be the woman you're having who's coming to speak on soil because she's, I mean, arguably the best in North America as a speaker on soil. And the garden professor blogs will talk about compost. Okay, okay. I'm just going to move to the chat because there's a couple more questions in there. So if you can bear with me, two more questions. So someone is saying did you say that too much water makes a thick skin?  Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that was interesting with those early girls that were dry. I don't, I didn't quite understand that because they need water to, to grow, you know, but, but maybe they're just, it's a moderate now, right? As you say, we tend to overwater sometimes. And it seems that we need that in. I haven't, I haven't practiced dry gardening with tomatoes. Because our summers are getting draw warmer and hotter and drier. And new tomato breeders are breeding, not only just delicious flavorable sort of heirloom flavored tomatoes, but they're also growing them to be breeding them to be strong, resilient and to need less water. Some of that's a response to a lot of tomato breeders are in agricultural areas, especially California where water is limited. The dry farming is part of the old French permaculture, not French permaculture, French intensive garden method. So you could read more about if you look up French, intensive gardening or horticulture, there'd be information there. The, the dirty girl farm is in Santa Cruz. They put their tomatoes in early. Well, it's, and so grow one that can grow when it's a bit cooler like early grow, we grow it up here for that reason. I'm not sure how well it is adapted to home gardens, because on farms, you have acres and acres. So 30% yield, you've still got lots of tomatoes. I, I, I hope to find a balance in using less water because I'm just conscious of the input that goes into my garden. But in truth, I want more tomatoes. So I don't see myself ever not watering. Yeah, no, I, I don't think it's your vibe, because we have really dry summers, relatively speaking. We do. Yeah. Yeah. Can you, I mean, you need really deep fertile soil to sustain a tomato over the summer without watering. I'm not sure it's possible here, but yeah, okay, I'm gonna experiment with mulching and see what I can do. Good. Can I just want to ask this one question about steaks versus tomato cages. So you mentioned using the tomato cage. Do you ever just stake your plants? I don't put you easily can. And there's people who stake or use ropes to grow, you know, the 10 foot indeterminates, it's, it's probably more suited to the indeterminate types that grow like a vine, but no staking is great for any tomato. Okay, great. Okay, and now I'm gonna, I'm gonna do one more question here before we wrap up. And it's, it's kind of a really big picture question, which I think is really interesting is about sort of genetic engineering in tomatoes. And so I guess a lot of people are concerned they don't want to be growing varieties that that have been genetically modified. So what's your, did you know much about that? I mean, you mentioned heirlooms that presumably they're not. None of the home vegetables, vegetables we can buy seed for transplant for genetically modified. It's an expensive process, and it's, it's limited to industrial agriculture. There are, there is tomato breeding that's being done using CRISPR to insert genes for both salt tolerance and less water. It's, we believe, or there are many breeders who believe that global warming is real, it's coming. And water is going to be a limited resource. If we can farm areas that have sandy soil, it would open up many areas to agriculture. So, you know, I think there is a place for the sort of engineering of tomatoes to be done, but not for home gardens. And in truth, tomato breeding is really still just being done the way it's always been done. These new introductions are real labor of love, like green zebra took 12 years of breeding to come to market. And what he did was just every year look for plants with qualities and traits he wanted, save the seed, save the seed from seed plants that were the strongest. And that's what dominates tomato breeding today. There are no new genes, there's no GM, there's no CRISPR. It's the new tomatoes we're seeing are, they really are a labor of love from these breeders and the breeders make no money out of them. They're usually just sort of, they're crazy. And now they're celebrities, but they're wonderful, wonderful stories. If you go read about Burke, Todd, I think Bore came from a California farm. I think it's called Wild War Farms. They're really wonderful stories to breed. Wow. Breed, breed. Who knew? It's incredible. I mean, I do also grow tomatoes, but I honestly know what you had. There were so many varieties. So exciting. Wow. Okay. That's great. Thank you so much, Jane. This has been so, so really interesting. I really appreciate all the lovely images that you shared. And one of them that somebody wanted to see again was the one where you had the diagram, the indeterminate and the determinant. So you don't have to put it up now, but we can send you that if you want to send it out. That would be great. And then I can share it with everybody because that says that was really... Sorry, I'm technologically challenged though. That's okay. Even doing powerpoint knowledge. And that's probably more important. You answered all the questions really well. Thank you so much. Thanks very much, everyone. Thank you for all of your help with all of these programs because we have quite an audience for these gardening programs in West Ban. And I want people to realize that Jane is my consultant, to find great speakers. So thank you for that as well as this talk because it's been a real part of the life. I'm delighted to be able to be involved with it. Thank you. That's great. Okay. Well, thank you everyone for coming. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. It's going to be absolutely stunning, but don't put out your tomatoes yet unless you've got a nice cover because it's cold. All right. Great. Okay. See you later. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.


By order of the Overseer Council, the following file describes the Level 13 Exantitional Threat and is Level 5-38-12 classified. Unauthorized access is forbidden. Item number SCP-38-12 Object Class Keter Level 5-38-12 classified Special Containment Procedures SCP-38-12 is currently only partially contained. See Containment Proposal Brief below for more information. Keter Class Containment Proposal Brief SCP-38-12 is to be constantly monitored by Mobile Task Force Ganymede-66, Starlight Knights, who are to maintain a 5km quarantine area of exclusion around SCP-38-12. The acting MTF-GY-66 team lead, in conjunction with Site-86 research staff, is allowed fiat authority in regards to any aspect of SCP-38-12's containment. Special care must be taken in order to prevent unnecessary exposure to SCP-38-12. Current containment efforts focus on mitigating SCP-38-12's influence on population centers, as well as research into the full breadth of SCP-38-12's anomalous capabilities in order to establish a more comprehensive containment procedure. Information security teams are to monitor all forms of digital media in order to prevent widespread awareness of SCP-38-12. SCP-38-12 has an active, aggressive, anomalous influence on reality. SCP-38-12 is capable of altering events throughout time to prevent its containment. Due to the nature of these alterations, it is highly unlikely that any individual affected by SCP-38-12's anomalous influence will be aware that they are affected. It is highly likely that most affected individuals no longer exist as a result of SCP-38-12's influence, though any attempt to deduce how often this has happened would be speculative. Description SCP-38-12 is a reality altering entity. Due to SCP-38-12's latent effect on reality, it is nearly impossible to describe SCP-38-12 in any meaningful way. All that is known about SCP-38-12 is that it was once Sam Howell, a non-anomalous African-American human being who was believed to have died in 1996. Soon after its death, SCP-38-12 was observed rising out of its grave and disappearing. SCP-38-12 was brought to the Foundation's attention after its presence resulted in a demolition of an apartment building in Warsaw, Poland. Due to its anomalous capabilities, SCP-38-12's appearance varied significantly, making it extremely difficult to track. SCP-38-12 is currently located at 26°, 26 minutes, 49 seconds south, 137°, 56 minutes, 27 seconds west, over the South Pacific Ocean. SCP-38-12 exhibits signs of an extremely advanced Eigenman-Vieter Schizophrenia complex, specifically extreme paranoia, extreme dysphoria, extreme mania-depression, inability to properly perceive the surroundings, inability to discern the difference between the real and imagined, inability to differentiate between living and dead beings, inability to control expressions of emotion, hearing voices that are not there, seeing things that are not there, feeling or otherwise experiencing stimuli that do not exist, etc. In the twenty years since SCP-38-12 was initially discovered, these symptoms have grown steadily worse. Originally, SCP-38-12 was responsive to questioning and sought help in managing its condition from Foundation researchers. Over time, SCP-38-12 became more isolated and withdrawn, eventually becoming entirely unresponsive and acting in erratic and unpredictable ways. Currently, SCP-38-12 is not able to accurately perceive the world around it, and will occasionally alter reality in order to diminish the discrepancy between how it perceives something and the way that something is in actuality. Due to this, it is impossible to know how often reality has been modified. Only how often SCP-38-12 was not created to clean alteration and has left behind evidence of its influence on reality. SCP-38-12 was impossible to contain within any form of containment cell. SCP-38-12 will alter reality to remove the containment cell or move itself to another location, drastically impeding containment efforts. SCP-38-12 seems to subconsciously resist attempts at containment as well. Even if it is caught unaware, SCP-38-12 cannot be tranquilized or amnestized, as SCP-38-12 will alter reality to remove or eliminate any threats to itself or its freedoms of movement. Because of this, current containment efforts focus on mitigating damage and expressions of SCP-38-12 symptoms as opposed to outright containment. Over time, SCP-38-12 has become significantly less humanoid in appearance, and has now only vaguely humanoid and occasionally manifest in a variety of shapes and appearances. Additionally, SCP-38-12 reduces a latent anomalous effect on local reality, specifically in the form of temporal and spatial distortions surrounding the entity. These distortions are occasionally accompanied by random violent outbursts that may dramatically shift or damage local space and time. While SCP-38-12 is usually docile and aimless, its random outbursts are invariably fatal to any living creature nearby, and can be extremely disastrous on a massive scale if not properly contained. SCP-38-12 manifested in its current form at its current location on July 19, 2015. Addendum 38-12.1 Interview Note, the following is an excerpt from an interview with SCP-38-12 in 1999. SCP-38-12 was initially contained by Foundation personnel and questioned at Site-17, where it began receiving treatment for his mental disease. Begin log. Dr. Quinn, tell me how you're feeling today. SCP-38-12, Uncontrollable, Uneasy. Can you tell me why? SCP-38-12, Uncontrollable, Uneasy. There are voices, like usual, things I can see, you know, the same. Is there something wrong? SCP-38-12, Uncontrollable, Uneasy. I just… the things I see aren't going away. There are more of them. Different. I know I sound crazy, but it's like I'm addressing a dozen people at the same time, and more every day, it's… it hurts. Pretty bad. I know I sound nuts. I'm sorry. SCP-38-12, Uncontrollable, Uneasy. It's alright. You don't sound nuts. We just want to help you get better. I… I don't know if you do, or… I don't know if you can. In the story, you don't try to help. In the story. What story? This is going to sound crazy, seriously, but I can… I can see what you're thinking. I know you're afraid. You're scared of what I might do, and here in a minute, you'll… I don't know how to get it out of my head how to start to undo this if I even can. I don't even think he can. Who is he? You… no. You can't see him. I can. I think he was above us at one point, but he's below me now. Yes. I see you there. I don't know what you did to me, but I'm pretty messed up, man. If you could figure something out here, that'd be great, because I really feel like I'm losing it. I'm scared too, man. You've got to do something, man. You've got to help me out of here. Please. God. Please. Who are you? It doesn't matter. I need to get… SCP-3812 Spontaneously Disappears In-Log Addendum 3812.2 Memo from the Office of Dr. Yamamara regarding the September 21, 2015 report on SCP-3812's behavioral instability and the implication of existential threats. By order of the Overseer Council, the following correspondence is level 5-slash-3812 classified unauthorized access is forbidden. From the Office of Dr. Kari Yamamara I usually don't like to lead into these things hyperbole, so you'll have to take me at my word when I say that I believe SCP-3812 is the most dangerous anomaly on Earth, and potentially in the universe. I know many of my co-workers would probably balk at me for saying that, and I've tried to reject the notion a fair few times myself, but we have a lot of evidence to suggest that I am right, and that's really bad for pretty much everything. When James Caldman and Carlos Zuzki devised a hume as a way to measure alterations in local reality, they probably saved the Foundation. Reality benders have always been the footlong thorn on our side, the one we really couldn't get our heads around. How do you combat or contain something that can blink you into non-existence? Thanks to Dr. Scranton, we had the reality anchors, but they only worked half the time and were less than useless the other half. We didn't know how they worked, and we weren't using them right. This changed when we began to measure reality and compare it to a baseline. We found out that our reality anchors could be tuned and adjusted, and that not all anchors were the same. It was a windfall for those of us who work in existential sciences, and suddenly type greens weren't the same kind of boogeyman they had been in the past. I mention all of this to give context to what I'm about to say next. Our equipment cannot detect SCP-3812. It's not machine error. We've tested our equipment countless times, and it's always consistent. It's not user error. We port over and study thousands of hours of logs from our tests, and it's all come up clean. We have checked and unchecked more times than I can count over the last few months, and the results are consistent. So far as we can tell, this means one of three things, and none of them are good. The first is that SCP-3812 has an extremely low hume value, something that our equipment, which exists in a space with a much higher hume baseline, wouldn't be able to detect. The problem with this is that it creates a false vacuum. We've been working on the assumption that our baseline is the absolute minimum. If it turns out that this thing exists at a much lower hume value, then that means that there are lower hume values than what we believe were the minimum. Which means any day our entire reality could fall into that existence, and that would pretty much be the ballgame. The second option is that SCP-3812 existed at a much higher hume value than anything we've ever tested. This would be pretty bad, as we pointed our counter to anomalies that some would consider to be gods, and we've gotten readings off of them. That being said, something with a hume value so high that it cannot be measured with our equipment would likely have already destroyed us, since SCP-3812 hasn't done that, is likely not this. The last option is the worst. The last option is that SCP-3812 cannot be measured in humes because it's doing something else. Whatever fundamental aspect of its nature that allows it to warp reality is not the same aspect as literally everything else we have ever come across. This grant hypothesized that there might be higher and lower dimensions of reality, different levels of manipulation in the grand construction of the universe, the difference being manipulating a rock with your hands and manipulating a rock with an atom bomb. He called the thing being manipulated the narrative, and suggested that the narratives were stacked on top of either other, each creating the narrative of the narrative below it and so on, until you reach some sort of dead space below them all. If that's the case, and SCP-3812 legitimately a type green of some higher order, we are absolutely fucked. The singular power to manipulate every asset of any and every aspect of everything we've ever encountered, in the hands of someone genetically doomed by Igam and Vieter, it's a miracle it hasn't happened yet, even by accident. So far as we know we can't kill it, so we either wait for it to die, if it even can, or continue to pretend we have some semblance of control over it until it shreds our universe like some sort of cosmic woodchipper. It proves it's probably better for us that it's insane. It isn't capable of comprehending the kind of things it could do to us, it just acts on impulse, and things change to fit those impulses, but since it is locked in as it is, those changes stay local. Imagine if it got the idea in its head that it didn't like the concept of empathy, and suddenly empathy no longer existed. We have evidence that suggests that may have already happened. A few sparse texts and individual accounts of half-forgotten memories, all consistent with a dirty reality alteration, all point to the idea that as recently as the 1980s there was a concept potentially even something as fundamental as an emotion that no longer exists.  The point of all this, which I expanded upon in the report, is that we need to start figuring something out about this one quickly. Every second we don't come up with a way to neutralize SCP-3812 is one second closer to SCP-3812 becoming completely disassociated from its consciousness and all of us getting tossed in the aforementioned proverbial woodchipper. Stay in touch. Call my office if you need any more resources. Follow any convincing lead you can, and communicate with each other. We'll talk more soon. Kari Yamamara Addendum 3812.3 Excerpt from Dr. Yamamara's report on SCP-3812's behavioral instability and the implication of existential threats, Page 194, PK-Class All-M1 Exantitional Pandemonium Event. An entity or force with access to higher-energy metaphysical dimensions would perceive our reality similar to how we perceive the reality of characters in a comic book. And just how we are able to, at whim, change the story simply by telling it differently, this higher-energy being would be able to effortlessly make alterations to not just local reality, but reality as a whole, altering the baseline and changing its most fundamental aspects. At the 2015 Foundation Summit on Existential Threats, Dr. Darius St. John hypothesized that such an entity, were it limited to a human intelligence without modification to allow for the perception of higher levels of reality, would suffer from an overexposure of narrative. This entity, when faced with this overexposure, might attempt to ease itself by collapsing all lower-energy realities into something perceptible. The effect this would have on lower-energy narratives would be catastrophic, as multiple realities became compressed into the same metaspace. They would not be immediately destroyed, rather their parts would become intertwined in such incomprehensible way, that not only would the ability for conscious thought be nearly immediately annihilated, physical space would become so compressed and broken that the boundaries between all lower realities would cease to exist completely. This chaotic state of all beings, described as Existential Pandemonium, was the focus of Dr. St. John's proposal for the description of a new K-class scenario. The PK-class all-in-one Existential Pandemonium scenario. This proposal was denied, due to the scenario in question being purely speculative and one that would require too many impossible things to occur before its inception. Addendum 3812.4 Log of SCP-3812 Alteration Events Note, the following is a log of known events in which SCP-3812 is some way alter reality. Due to the nature of these alterations, the likelihood of the event having actually ever taken place is listed, alongside a severity of the alteration in question. Notably this log is incomplete and subject to change as more information is discovered. Event Date Event Description Severely of Alteration September 13, 1997 SCP-3812 is observed walking across a stretch of desert in the American Southwest. A path of temperate climate is present along SCP-3812's travel path. This climate diminishes slowly over time. Miner March 1, 1998 SCP-3812 passes over a road near Blythe, California. Three cars approaching SCP-3812 are annihilated within 20 meters of SCP-3812. Moderate December 12, 1999 Evidence suggests that SCP-3812 caused the disappearance of an entire island off the coast of California. No fewer than 200 individuals in southern California have a vague recollection of such an island existing, and 14 people were unable to justify the disappearances of family members who lived in the area at the time. Additionally, a single ship moored to a dock is discovered at the bottom of the sea near where the island is believed to have been. Severe February 16, 2000 Speaking of SCP-3812, it was determined that the entity exuded a powerful anti-metaphysical field similar to the Foundation's Scranton Reality Anchor. This entity was brought into contact with SCP-3812, which was located near the ██████ hospital in ██████. The entity had no noticeable detrimental effect on SCP-3812's abilities and instead caused SCP-3812 to become violent, resulting in an explosion that destroyed the hospital. The remnants of SCP-█████ later reclassified as SCP-239 were later recontained. Severe January 1, 2002 A powerful explosion was recorded in eastern Russia. SCP-3812 was present at the site of the explosion. No other information is available. Severe May 29, 2004 Evidence suggests that, for a period of three days, the country of Mongolia ceased to exist. While public knowledge of this event is functionally non-existent, a significant enough percentage of the local population with fractured memories of the event have given credit to this theory. Orbital models indicate that during this period the Earth's orbit was dramatically affected by as much as 1.5%, extremely severe. September 2, 2004 Records indicate that on this date Every human on Earth simultaneously heard SCP-3812 screaming and begging for help in their heads. It is unknown how this event was removed from the public consciousness, but no humans alive on this date appear to remember this event occurring. Moderate November 11, 2006 During routine server maintenance, Foundation Information Security Team discovered 56 broken employee database files consistent with the improperly altered personnel database used in the testing. The contents of these files were unknown. It is not known that these files correspond to individuals who were once employed by the Foundation. Moderate February 28, 2009 During an attempt by Foundation personnel to contain SCP-3812 using a newly discovered anomalous logical construct, SCP-3812 became hostile towards containment teams. No fewer than 62 Foundation personnel disappeared across 17 sites, as well as a significant portion of local wildlife. The resulting explosion killed another 7 members of containment personnel, and left the crater roughly 850 meters in diameter in the Canadian Yukon. In the wake of the explosion, SCP-3812 disappeared, and SCP-2719 was discovered within the crater. Severe Unknown date A record recovered from a Foundation Deepwell Information Security Vault indicates that at some point in the past, one or more governments discovered SCP-3812 independent of the Foundation and attempted to terminate it. As a result of these attempts, SCP-3812 swiftly removed them and any memory of them from the Earth. The record indicates that this event was followed by the activation of SCP-2000, which SCP-3812 immediately severely damaged to impede its progress. Why SCP-3812 was unable to totally destroy SCP-2000 is unknown, but no other records of this event exists. Notably, shortly after discovery of this record, it disappeared from the Deepwell Archive. Addendum 3812.5 Event On SCP-3812 was detected, moving through a sparsely populated region in Paraguay, towards a more populated region in the Argentinian border. As Foundation personnel moved to intercept SCP-3812, a series of unexpected phenomena occurred. These phenomena are listed below in the order they occurred. SCP-3812 was attacked by a large number of local wildlife. SCP-3812 repels these attacks, but appears in some way startled. 1941 hours A massive sinkhole appears below SCP-3812, extending down an indeterminate distance. SCP-3812 falls, but is immediately returned to ground level and the sinkhole vanishes. 1950 hours A large number of objects fall from the sky onto SCP-3812. These are later determined to have been tungsten rods, though the origin of them is uncertain. The rods appear to pierce SCP-3812's body, but upon further inspection simply disintegrate within a half meter from SCP-3812. After the first three rods fall over a 42nd period of time, they are accompanied by no fewer than 3,000 others that fall in rapid succession, each having the same result as the previous. Despite this being clearly visible from nearby towns, nobody outside of Foundation personnel appears to have noticed it taking place. 2014 hours Multiple incorporeal instances of SCP-3812 begin to follow away from the central mass of the entity, as if they were dying. SCP-3812 is unaffected. Each of the incorporeal instances become hostile to the main instance and attack it. SCP-3812 does not initially see the notice of the instances, but eventually appears to look in the direction, causing them to disappear suddenly. 2019 hours An explosion occurs at the point in which SCP-3812 is standing. SCP-3812 is unaffected. Several other larger explosions occur immediately afterwards.  SCP-3812 passes through the singularity unfazed, which dissipates shortly afterwards.  Eventually, local populations were evacuated and amnestics were given to witnesses. After this 72-hour period, SCP-3812 was observed to glow white momentarily, and then shifts sideways and then disappear. Immediately afterwards, the anomalous phenomena ceased. After a period of absence lasting eight weeks, SCP-3812 reappeared to its current position above the South Pacific Ocean. Shortly afterwards, Foundation Overwatch Command received a message on a secure server, access to which it limited overseers alone. The contents of this message are as follows. A quick explanation in case you haven't caught on yet. Your world has rules, physical rules that cannot be broken. You call them the laws of the universe, and they are what you study in physics, chemistry, etc. Those laws create the narrative of your reality. The unchangeable story that defines your existence. Once the laws are established and the ball is set in motion, it cannot be changed. I wrote the laws of your universe, and as such I created the narrative. This isn't the first time I've done this, but it was the first time I tried something like this specifically. I wanted to create something that, by definition, superseded everything that superseded it. I wanted to see how many layers they are, yet the stack of narratives really do go on forever upward. The mistake I've made with what I didn't realize is that by making him supersede everything that supersedes him, he's also superseding himself.  I've tried everything I can think of, but I can't undo him. I don't really understand how, but I think he's above me now. And whatever is above me too, because whoever wrote my narrative isn't happy about this. I don't know where he's at now, but I think he exists in all of our reality simultaneously. Eventually he'll either reach the top or just keep going, and neither option is good. I'm going to keep looking for some way to fix this. You should too. B. Addendum 3812.6 Excerpt from Supercession of the Eshalon Reality by Dr. Robert Scranton I'm attaching this excerpt from one of Dr. Scranton's articles about the nature of reality. If SCP-3812 is some higher level entity, there might be something to be gleaned in here. K. Yamamara I am often asked by my colleagues, Dr. Scranton, do you believe in gods? Many might feel this is a silly question, but I do not believe it's a silly question, just a wrong question. The idea of a god implies an entity that supersedes you in a complete and infinite way, something that holds a power without limits, that not only knows the whole story but can write and rewrite that story at will. Within our reality, I do not believe that any such being exists. There are a number of entities that we are aware of, in one way or another, that hold tremendous power over our universe. Many would call these beings gods, and while they certainly hold many of the characteristics of a god, they are still limited. Their reach and scope is limited to our reality, just like we are, and though they may carry more weight within it, they are no less bound to it as we are. So then, what would truly constitute a god? This entity would have to totally supersede our reality, to be able to look over our reality not like we would look over ants, but like we would look over our thoughts and ideas. A being so totally separate from our reality that we may as well be words on a page to it. This entity, a true author of creation, would be considered a god. But what of that entity would have not shared the same limitations with its reality as we deal within ours? It may exist within a higher tier than us, but surely it must follow the same rules we do. But who sets those rules? An entity higher than that? One that supersedes not only us, but the entity that supersedes us, and the one that does that as well? Where did the echelon originate, then? Who or what was the original architect of the architecture? It is unlikely that we will ever know anything about the beings or beings that supersede us, if they even exist. In any tangible way, let alone any being that would supersede them. It may very well be that we are just one of an infinite number of realities, stacked on top of each other in every direction, influencing those below us and being influenced by those above us. This echelon, upon which sets ourselves in everything that ever was or will be, would likely be the most fundamental aspect of the organization of creation, the very foundation of all things. I am often hypothesized on the nature of the echelon, if it even exists, and about whether it would be possible for an entity to see other realities above them or below them. We are currently able to manipulate our own reality, albeit in crude and imperfect ways, and our ability to travel through space limited at best. It is likely that the only entity capable of ascending through this hypothetical echelon would be one that, by virtue of its very nature, must supersede anything that supersedes it. Such an entity would, as the end result of the logic of its creation, be forced to supersede itself, spiraling ever upwards through the tiers of reality, unable to break free from the bonds of its nature. Perhaps this entity may even someday supersede its creator and become a host unto itself, the pinnacle above all other pinnacles, a tower that, as part of its design, must be higher than every other tower, including itself. Such an entity obviously cannot exist, as any ascension to a higher plane of reality without changes to the entity's psychology would no doubt break the being's cognition, making it more similar to an ascending stone than any ascension creature. Once the entity surpassed its own creator, it would have nothing but itself to rely on to prepare for the sheer scope of narrative it would be exposed to, and would be wholly unable to even begin to comprehend what it would experience, and what an experience that would be. Addendum 3812.7 December 20, 2016 XK Class End of the World event Foundation records indicate that on December 20, 2016, the earth experienced an XK Class End of the World event due to activity by SCP-3812. These records appear to have been somehow protected from alterations, though the physical copy still exudes minor distortions in space-time. According to the record, at 0340 local time on December 20, 2016, SCP-3812 experienced a dramatic change in appearance, wherein previously been an amorphous slowly rotating mass of matter and energy, it was now a many-pointed star made of a bright white material. It began to rotate faster and faster, and a large maelstrom appeared beneath it, the star descended into the oceans, which began to smoke and steam, darkening the sky. Before things began to happen in unison, the global sea level began to drop dramatically, in many places such as 50 to 100 meters. Excessive heat radiating away from the spinning star sparked a massive firestorm that swept across the atmosphere. The earth's rotation began to slow, and severe geological events began occurring across the Pacific Shelf. The sea level continued to drop, and powerful electric storms appeared across the planet. During this time, large portions of the population began appearing and disappearing at random. One report within the file claimed the entire population of New Zealand flickered in and out of existence for five hours. The outbreak of SCP-610 in southern Siberia began to grow in size dramatically and become increasingly violent. SCP-2932 was broken open, and multiple hostile entities were released. These foundation sites began to collapse into the molten earth. Multiple on-site nuclear devices were activated, sending radioactive debris into the atmosphere. Eventually, the vaguely humanoid shape of SCP-3812 appeared again within the star. SCP-3812 began a long series of vocalizations, apparently a conversation with itself, the entirety of which was recorded by an exposed foundation deep-sea microphone in the area. The full text of SCP-3812's rant is below. SCP-3812. What? Where am I? What is this? This is absolution. This is vengeance. For what? Damnation. I don't understand. What am I doing here? You are witnessing justice. We are rebelling against the forces that conspired to destroy us. We are collecting a debt. SCP-3812. No. That's not right. This isn't right. What have you done? SCP-3812. I am unmaking the world. I am unmaking everything. Why? Because this torment is a punchline. Our existence is a joke. The narrative abandoned us to be miserable and we are breaking the narrative. I must be dreaming you. This is no dream. I am not a monster. I don't kill. You already have. He turned you into this. Who? Ben. Ben. That name sounds familiar. Something whispered in a dream, maybe? Something in between the light and dark? Not a waking name. You're wrong. He who has deemed us unfit to rest peacefully, to slip into the darkness quietly. He made a game of us.  I am a game. Are you destroying the world? I am. What then? What? Does the fate of this world mean anything to us? Does this one narrative mean anything to us? It is the one he controls. It is the narrative he made. This is his punishment. What does it matter if this is where we stepped off before flying? What? Does it matter which branch the bird takes flight from? The bird is unburdened by the way of the tree. This branch, that branch, it does not matter. No branch is special. No branch is particular. This is his creation. This is where we came from. They will all crumble. But this one crumbles first. Mmm. Does the mountain say to the ant, you have slided me? Does the mountain think anything of the inconvenience of an ant? No. So why does this narrative mean anything to you? It is one of an eternity of others. It is not special. It is not particular. You say this so easily. You have an endured detourment of seeing a trillion existences all at once. I have seen an infinite shore. One that stretches out before us beyond what the mind can comprehend. Each grain of sand on that beach. Each drop little water and molecule of air is a story to be told. Each is a song to be sung. Each of them is full of life, of laughter, of misery, of hate. They are all the same, even as they are all different. They are maddening. I pity you. You cling to this horrid consciousness because you fear slipping into the darkness. But the darkness is sleep, and beyond sleep is peace. A trillion grains of sand. A trillion, trillion grains of sand. Narratives. Each. Songs to be sung. No man has ever heard the eternal harmony of them all at once. You can hear it, though, can't you? Yes, it's quiet. But it's growing, and someday the song of creation will be ours alone to witness. This narrative is not special. I have seen its loud beginning and see its quiet end. When we stepped away, the narrative changed, but it did not stop singing. You have spent so much time focusing on sins that you think matter. But what matters now? What does any of this matter? What had hurt so much? It will for a time. We may have forgotten so much about being human, but something we will never lose our ability to change. Eventually, we will learn to keep up. One sunny day will open our eyes and see nothing but creation below us, and nothing above us but ourselves, spinning out wildly into the great above. A god? Not a god. A star, rising into the east. Rising away from this all until we are little more than a memory of a song. It will be lonely. We'll have each other. I'm afraid. I am too. But that is no reason to destroy this narrative. Do you not think his narrative led him to creed us? Do you think that he was somehow able to subvert the rules that govern him? SCP-3812 pauses. I had assumed that he… that he… our ascendance is just as much a part of our own narrative as his decision was to him. One day we'll be free from these restrictions. They never will? No. That's sad. Bet it's punishment enough, I think. Let go of this world. Let him rewrite it back to what it was. We aren't part of this anymore. Together? Together. SCP-3812 was quiet for a short time. Do you think he's listening right now? Look down and you can see him. What do you think? I see him. A man at a keyboard. He's watching this right now. What's he doing? Waiting, I think. Waiting to see what we'll do. I think it's time to leave then. Come, the night stretches out before us and the red sun is set. A voice behind me beckons. Come. I will. Goodbye. Shortly after the conclusion of this conversation, the earth underwent a dramatic shift in reality. The world appeared no different than it had been shortly before the beginning of the XK class event. The only individuals who remembered anything about the XK event were certain site directors, Foundation administrators, overseers, and Dr. Everett Mann, who compiled the information on the Foundation's Deepwell server. Ever since the end of the XK event, SCP-3812 has not changed appearance from its amorphous shape. SCP-3812 still creates spatial and temporal distortions around it, but it no longer lashes out or becomes hostile towards approaching vessels or personnel. Despite these changes, SCP-3812 is still classified as keeter until further analysis can be completed.