ODD TREASURE: We recently came across an odd treasure at a local estate sale.
We picked up “Pennsylvania Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff,” a book by Clark DeLeon that points out interesting places and people throughout the state.
Published in 2001 by The Globe Pequot Press, the book included a few local stops we wanted to share.
During his travels, Clark happened on L.A. “Larry” Rotheraine, a master gardener who runs the gardening program at Evergreen Elm.
“Rotheraine watches for frost the way a card counter watches for face cards in Atlantic City,” Clark writes. “That’s because the big-city boy gone country is the most successful gardener in McKean County and perhaps in the state of Pennsylvania.”
Larry, always happy at the chance to talk about his biodynamic gardening techniques, welcomed Clark into his Lewis Run home. Clark writes that the biodynamic process was developed by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, who died in 1925.
In a phone call to Larry, he tells us the group home is the only place to find the seed strain for the species of Evergreen Elm Biodynamic Cherry Tomato he and his charges grow each year with pride.
No one can argue with his non-traditional growing methods, as year after year he and his fellow gardeners at the group home take home piles of ribbons from the McKean County Fair for their quality crops, attesting to the garden’s fruitfulness.
In fact, Clark met up with Larry at the fair, where he watched the Evergreen Elm gang take home one blue, red or white ribbon for each of the 30 vegetables they entered.
Larry told us to type “garbage tomato” into the Google search engine.
The first thing that comes up when we did that was a YouTube video called “Growing Tomatoes from Garbage” that shows a tomato plant Larry grew in a pile of “garbage” — manure and table scraps. From the first video, just click on “LA Rotheraine” under the video title to find more videos by him.
In the first video, he said he expects the single plant, which is about 12 feet high and 10 feet wide, to produce more than 2,000 tomatoes.
That’s some plant.
Larry wanted us to share a picture of his tomatoes but we’ve run out of room. Photos can be viewed at Rotheraine.com.
We’ll share more on Clark’s travels on Wednesday.
