As The Tomato Grows

Tomatoes. What are they? Fruit? Botanically. Vegetable? Culinarily. Delicious? Absolutely. Sliced on a plate with a little bit of salt and pepper, they make a tremendous light snack. It is something you can feel good about. So why not grow and harvest your own? Well that is exactly what Maggie wanted to do. And so we did. Since we don't have a good place to grow them, we tried the hanging growers. We got a couple of tomato plants from Whole Foods and a few bags of soil and went to work. My pick was named "Jaga." Maggie's was "Big Rainbow." Planting was a little bit of a chore, but we eventually got them situated in the potters and hung them on a couple of screws that were already drilled into the beam on the ceiling of our patio. Then we played the waiting game.


When I was much younger, we had a small family garden in the back of our house. I don't remember a whole lot about it, and I don't remember everything we grew, but I know there were tomatoes and cucumbers. My mom at one time made her own pickles. I sometimes think back on this garden. I wonder if it was my fault that we discontinued its upkeep. I remember working in it sometimes, but I think my level of interest tapered off. This was a time in my life when I didn't like tomatoes. Maybe if I had, I would have worked harder. Maybe if I had, we would still have that garden. Or maybe it was the deer's fault. Nonetheless, having grown to love tomatoes, there was no way I was going neglect these plants.

I did my best to water them every day. It doesn't seem like it would be a difficult task. Most of the time it wasn't. But sometimes these poor guys went a few days without a drink. They grew very slowly at first. I was tempted to use loads of fertilizer. I wanted monstrous tomatoes and plants that would wrap around the porch and start talking, ordering me to please them. This never happened.

Eventually they started picking up. The growing was noticeable from day to day. The two plants were very different form each other. Jaga was compact and his leaves were dense. Big Rainbow was long, spindly. More water. More fertilizer.

I generally watered late at night. I enjoyed being out there after the heat of the summer day had dissipated. Perhaps after a few beers. I would venture out, often in my underwear. Often without a shirt. I would stand on a stool and move the watering can back and forth after water started to drip from the bottom. I tried to give each one full can, sometimes more, which required multiple trips back to the kitchen sink.

Young Jaga and Big Rainbow grew steadily. I could start to envision these giant tomatoes and the many ways in which we would use them. Pasta ingredients, pasta sauce, pizza, bruschetta, maybe even some fresh salsa. Oh the many ways I could eat them.* It was going to take patience though. As much as the plants had grown, they had yet to start flowering. But I continued to give them my love, support and understanding as I waited to consume their offspring.

*Of the many ways I could eat them, sun-dried is not one. I enjoy my tomatoes in a savory way, not chewy and sweet.

As time passed, I settled for store bought tomatoes. I ate them knowing how inferior they would be to those that would soon start plumping on the porch. Inferior because they lacked the personal care and attention that I gave these plants and a happy plant's fruit will inevitably taste better.

After all efforts to nurture these plants, it was finally time for harvest. Big Rainbow struggled to produce fruit at all. She mustered two tomatoes. One was rotten. The other was shriveled. Maybe I'm not as good of a gardener in real life as I fantasized. Jaga produced several tomatoes, but they were small. Cherry tomatoes essentially. Where did I go wrong? What happened to my giant tomatoes?

First Harvest

First Taste

Despite the small stature of the tomatoes, they were full of flavor. My first taste would be my favorite preparation, sliced with salt and pepper. Jaga's tomatoes didn't need any salt at all. In fact, adding salt was almost too much. We threw some in a salad, put some on a pizza, and I ate a few as snacks, but the harvest wasn't plentiful enough to do much else. I can't say I was disappointed, but I had some newly found insecurities in my ability to raise a tomato plant. Was it my fault the tomatoes were small? Or was it just the type of plant I bought? Why didn't Big Rainbow thrive under my watch? Perhaps my questions will never be answered. Nonetheless, I believe I will try again next season. Despite my love for Jaga and all the fruit he blessed me with, I will have to explore a new type of tomato plant. Maybe several at a time. Now that's a journey I can look forward to.