TOMATO ANGST
I grow lots of plants –roses that leap to new altitudes every year and daylilies in ever-expanding clumps. My hellebores regularly give birth to numerous offspring and the hardy geraniums thrive. If I believed in green thumbs, I might justifiably say that I have one.
But no matter what I do, I can’t grow tomatoes.
Other people do it with ease. Within a two block radius of my house I know of many individuals, including a few under ten and a few more over eighty who grow bumper crops. These people eat tomatoes all summer and the ones who are old enough to reach the stove cook up gallons of sauce for the next winter. Some of them have so many tomatoes that they give them away to friends and family. My neighbors’ soil is no better or worse than mine. Our tomato cages are the same design. All of us do battle with the usual array of suburban plant predators. The whole problem is puzzling.
I have tried to grow standard hybrid tomatoes like ‘Big Boy’ and heirlooms including ‘Brandywine’. As a lover of all things historical I was particularly upset several years ago when my ‘Brandywine’ plant yielded a total of four tomatoes. The year before last I swore off tomatoes completely, vowing to support local agriculture by buying my weekly quota at the Farmer’s Market. I had plenty of tomato sandwiches –the best possible summer food—and tomato salads, quiches and pasta dishes. Still, I felt unsatisfied.
This year I renewed my vow to abstain from tomato growing, but a funny thing happened at one of the local plant sales in March. A couple of cherry tomato plants found their way into my basket.
They are not just any cherry tomatoes, but Sunsugar hybrids, which bear golden yellow fruit. The picture by the tomato plant display made them look both gorgeous and delicious. No tomato will ever give me the euphoric rush that I get when I buy a new rosebush, but when I saw the little Sunsugar plants, I couldn’t stop myself. I bought them.
When I got them home, I potted them up in large containers, thinking that I would keep my infant tomatoes safe from raccoons by growing them on the back porch. After a suitable amount of time, they set blossoms. I was elated. Then the blossoms wilted and no tiny fruits appeared in their place. Clearly pollination was an issue, despite the fact that m y tomatoes were surrounded by an array of blooming annuals.
There was nothing to do except lug the containers down the back steps and set the pots amid the roses and catmint in the back garden. I thought the catmint might deter the groundhogs, not to mention the nimble raccoons, all of whom are so ingenious that they could easily send their offspring to MIT. I repositioned the jazzy blue tomato cages that I bought to complement the golden fruits, watered faithfully and waited. The plants produced even more blooms and I finally saw my first tiny tomato, round and green and hanging from a branch. It has been followed by a dozen others now, and I am eagerly awaiting the day when the first one will be ready to pick. Maybe this year my wait will be over and I will find myself up to my eyeballs in cherry tomatoes come high summer. Then, like a diehard Boston Red Sox fan, I will know that the curse has finally been lifted from my tomato growing efforts.
While I wait for the ultimate outcome of this year’s tomato adventure, I remind myself that I am perfectly able to grow edible crops. The basil on the porch has already yielded enough leaves to make a small batch of pesto and the blueberry bush is holding fast to a bumper crop of immature fruit. I never harvest leaves from the creeping thyme in the front, but it is creeping in fine fashion and certainly counts in the edible plant tally.
I suspect that I just don’t value tomatoes the way I value roses. At heart I am an ornamental gardener. These days that kind of assertion garners sneers from some of the more smug home vegetable growers, but it is true. I am sure that if I could find the inclination to wax rhapsodic over tidy vegetable beds and compose odes to two-pound zucchinis, I would also be able to grow so many tomatoes that I would have extras to lob at Mr. Antlers when he strolls through the garden.
I don’t foresee that happening.
Still, perhaps the Sunsugar tomatoes will prove me wrong. I check them and water them every day and throw every bit of available used cat litter down the groundhog hole to thwart any evil designs the groundhog might have on my crop. While I wait, I thumb through the rose catalogs. After all, I have a few sunny spaces left in the garden and they are NOT crying out for pepper plants.