Tomatotopia

Potted Tomato Plant

Many years ago, my wife, Christine, and I were renting a house from an elderly couple. The Jhertzes were a "pleasant" couple that lived next door. Everything we did in our rented house needed to be approved by the landlords. When Christine wanted a vegetable garden, the Jhertzes, after careful consideration, said,


"No."

Eventually, Christine negotiated one pot that could be placed by the back door of our little rented house. Christine quickly honed in on the advantages of a potted versus an earthbound garden. We wouldn’t have to actually garden, that is, get down on our hands and knees in the dirt. We wouldn’t be bothered with weeding, that tiresome job of removing all the indigenous plant growth.

Christine went on at length over the joys of flavorful, vine ripened, red tomatoes. How stupendous they are in salads and sandwiches, what a great and healthy snack they make, how much better they are than those pink golf balls one purchases at the grocery store, the endless amount of sauce we would certainly make. We were sure that the volume of tomatoes would overwhelm us by July’s end, forcing us to empty our refrigerator of superfluous food items like milk and eggs to make room for the hordes of tomatoes which would soon be pumped out of the pot by the back door. She could hardly wait.

Admittedly, I was less enthusiastic. Even less when we were shopping for dirt. First stop was the local nursery in search of the right type of potting soil for our spoiled little plant. We needed two types per my father’s recommendations. My father had been gardening since the dawn of time. He was the gardener in Eden. I have always held the belief that the first plant life on earth was introduced by my father in his backyard garden. With decades of experience tilling the soil, Christine certainly counted on his guidance for her project. He carefully explained to us what type of dirt we needed to acquire, the consistency, the contents, the density, the atomic weight. Christine listened enthusiastically. I was thinking that dirt couldn’t be too expensive since after all, it was pretty much everywhere.

After picking out a little plastic bag of dirt, we moved onto the pot. The dude at the nursery selected two options for Christine who sized each up carefully before making her informed selection. We didn't want the plant to become "root bound" in its plastic prison. We had also been advised to purchase tomato plant food, the equivalent of carbo-load for the tomato world. As far as I could tell, tomatoes eat red sugar. That's what tomato food looks like. I had visions of this enormous, caged tomato plant screaming, “Feed me, Seymour!” while I carefully slipped raw meat between the bars.

The last decision was what type of tomato plant we would pot. Our bank of greenery experts all agreed that the cherry tomato had the best chances of success. We bought a small cluster of four plants, and off we went. At home, we dumped the dirt into the pot in the correct volumetric dose as prescribed by the directions on the back of the dirt bag. We hollowed out a hole for the sprout, covered it with the mixture of Tomato Miracle Carbo Drink, locked down the cage, then sat back and waited for the bounty to overflow. I envisioned a veritable cornucopia of vegetables spilling forth upon my feet. I was certain that the soil was so rich and fertile, Christine would conceive if she stuck her finger in the pot.

Being in retirement, the Jhertzes were scholarly gardeners themselves. They gladly took the extra plants we bought under their care. Unlike our plant, their's went into the traditional ground where they would be embraced by Mother Earth. Mrs. Jhertz couldn’t help but offer a bit of challenge to us, suggesting that we ought to note whose plant produced the first green tomato. Christine is never one to back down from a challenge, especially one that doesn’t involve any effort on her part. She accepted the contest, confident that our superior, techno soil would make a bitch out of Mother Nature and her gritty brown earth.

Soon after the pot was christened, the growing advice began to flow unsolicited. Everyone knows not to ever talk about politics or religion, but conversing about how to grow tomatoes is completely acceptable in civilized society. Never before in my life did I receive such a stern and profuse collection of unsolicited bad advice then when we planted tomatoes in a pot. The first bit of sage tomatoes wisdom came in the form of watering recommendations. Christine's friend, Ricky, a square jawed jock, visiting one afternoon, informed me that I was watering too much.

"The roots are gonna rot," he declared.

Ricky is a dumbass, who I think pines away for Christine although she claims they're just friends. I backed off the watering anyway. Apparently, I also used too much plant food. I fed the tomato plant every time I was hungry, which back then was like every twenty minutes. The mailman told me,

"You're gonna burn the roots."

So I cut the plant chow as well. In a few short weeks, the little tomato plant turned yellow. I was no expert gardener, and the internet wasn't widely accessible in those days, but I figured something was wrong. I made what I didn't know at the time was my last trip to a public library. There I read in a book on gardening that a dwindling, yellow plant needs water. So I decided to go back to watering and feeding the plant a lot. Mrs. Jhertz scolded me sternly, but I figured she was just trying to win our little neighborly contest. I wouldn't put it past her to dump Drano in the pot in the middle of the night.

So I watered more often and the plant responded with a growth surge so evident that I swear you could see it sprouting. By days end, the height difference from morning was readily notable. I thought if I stayed there quietly I could hear the plant growing as is often said about corn during hot summers. I imagined rows and rows of corn in our backyard, each stalk in a single pot of potent, dark soil and me tending to the crops in the back 40 buckets.

As the plant grew, the notion of extended sunlight was offered by one of Christine's colleagues who suggested that since our tomato plant was in a pot, I ought to move it to geographically superior positions throughout the day in order maximize the exposure to the sun. It seemed like a good idea at the time. This would certainly give us the edge over the earth bound plants we gave the Jhertzes. Each afternoon, I shifted the plant to a clearing open to the sky until sunset. It was as though the plant was retiring to the backyard for the remains of the day. I continued shifting the plant to its afternoon positions until it grew tentacles, which rooted into the ground.

As unfettered photosynthesis fueled the miracle of unbridled growth, the plant easily exceed the confines of the cylindrical cage now supporting an abundance of branches reaching forth to scoop up the morning sun. We had plenty of impressive foliage, but the plant lacked any actual tomatoes. My father insisted that bees were not pollinating our tomato bush. He advised that we drag the plant near the Jhertz's garden to take advantage of the ample bees, busy pollinating the various victory vegetation.

Many Tomatoes

As I contemplated this, I was concerned that the plant was gripping the ground. I tried to pry the branches free. I was also concerned that I might be stung by the many bees that tended the tiny yellow flowers. It took me some effort and time to realize that bees were obviously not an issue. Mrs. Jhertz insisted that the extensive foliage on our plant was preventing any tomatoes. She instructed us to cut off the "suckers" which sprouted in all directions from the top of the plant.

"You won't get any fruit," she authoritatively declared.

As I approached the plant in the pot with a pair of scissors, bend on giving it a haircut, I paused as I looked over the potted tomato bush before me.

"What's the matter?" Christine asked.

"I'm not gonna do this," I answered.

"You have to cut off the suckers, or we won't get any tomatoes," she instructed.

"I think the plant knows what it's doing," I responded.

"We won't get any fruit," Christine warned.

True, I didn't think we would get bananas, but I wasn't going to cut back that plant.

"Leaves are important," I surmised, "the more leaves, the more sunlight, the more tomatoes."

"But the suckers!" Christine chimed.

"The only suckers are us," I exclaimed.

I looked down in amongst the mass of foliage to find a cluster of green tomatoes. Mrs. Jhertz approached.

"We have green tomatoes!" Christine triumphantly exclaimed.

"So do we," Mrs. Jhertz responded.

The first green tomatos must have arrived late at night, on little cat feet, rendering the victor undecided. Unhesitatingly, Mrs. Jhertz offered to extend the challenge to the first red tomato. Christine had done so well in the preliminaries that she committed us to the contest without any discussion. At this point, I had a laissez faire attitude towards our potted, tomato plant. I would give it all the water and plant food it could hope for while letting it spread it wings and fly. And fly it did.

One morning, Christine went outside to check the plant. She returned with fifty red tomatoes a week ahead of Mrs. Jhertz. Mrs. Jhertz painstakingly fussed over her three tomato plants which she pruned incessantly. We had a tomato factory in bush form in a pot outside of our back door, and she had three spindly, stressed out plants, that all looked like they wanted to lay down due to a bad migraine. We quickly went up to one hundred cherry tomatoes a day. More than we could cope with.

Mrs. Jhertz would come over to our plant and stare at it for extended periods of time. I imagined she was trying to cope with the fact that she pruned her plants into submission. Christine would offer her our extra tomatoes, which she took because she grew up during the Great Depression, but this seemed to spawn a great depression with Mrs. Jhertz. It's hard to accept that you're wrong when you've been doing something the same way your whole life. I felt sorry for Mrs. Jhertz, especially after a mild cold spell dispatched her three sickly plants.

"You're gonna have to get rid of that plant soon," Mrs. Jhertz instructed.

"No, I'm going to just let it go for as long as it can," I explained.

This angered Mrs. Jhertz, not doing what she suggested. The yield began to slow down. First eighty a day, then before long, fifty, then twenty. The last tomatoes we ate at Thanksgiving when the tomato plant finally succumbed to the elements.

Jan 15, 2017

Today, we have a vegetable garden adjacent to our own home. Each year, I try to get the biggest, "hot house" tomato plants in the ground as early as possible to get a jump on the season. I decided to start my own tomato plants by seed inside under a window in January. My theory is that the seeds don't grow in the bag so get them in the soil as soon as possible. Everyone told me that it can't be done, that the seeds will rot, that there isn't enough sun, that they won't germinate until there is sufficient daylight, that they'll come up, then die.

I'm going to put the seeds in soil now, water them everyday, and give them all the plant food they can hope for because, in the end, I figure they know what they're doing...

Way more than me.

Editor's Note: It worked. Originally posted on February 2, 2017.

May 16, 2017

This year's crop. Mar 29, 2019