Tomatoes are HARD: or, my season of growth
Hello, dearest.
How fitting it is to start this on the first day of fall, a season I have been resisting against up until this weekend. There are two reasons for this: summer is my absolute favorite, with the long, drawn-out days of light and the way everything stays bursting forth and alive. The other is that I have long been accustomed -- both by this world, and in the industry I work in, to constantly be thinking of "what's next": what's the next deadline, what's the next thing I have to plan for, what trip do I need to pack for, what event do I need to prepare for. This summer I resisted that, languishing in the season's glow as long as I could, not once wishing for fall until this weekend, when the heat was so great I felt I could barely take it anymore. Dear reader, I came so close. I feel like I did my due diligence, respecting nature's time without trying to superimpose my own clock upon it.
So now we're here, on the edge of a new season. This has always been a time of reflection for me, but especially this year. We bought our house in May, moving in about a week before Memorial Day, so we've existed within its walls for a full season -- and it's been a true season of possibility and growth. The week we moved in, my parents drove down to help us. They slept on an air mattress for several days, unpacking boxes, setting up the kitchen, the bathroom.
My father changed all the lightbulbs to energy efficient LEDs. He walked through the yard and identified the trees that would become problematic, and offered tips for removing or trimming them. He and my stepdaughter planted zinnias, sunflowers, and watermelon. (Spoiler alert: the sunflowers didn't survive, because despite multiple plantings, a robust network of chipmunks dug them up each time.) He and my husband changed a dead outlet. I helped him install a motion-sensor light in the backyard. We took near-daily trips to Home Depot. We ate a lot of takeout food and I made a pasta casserole for everyone one night, the first official dinner in our new house.
And on the anniversary of my brother's death, my husband, parents and I sat outside in the dark, at the new picnic table my father brought us, having drinks at the end of another long day, and we held hands and cried together. It was chaotic and all-consuming and so, so worth it.
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A couple of weeks after moving in, a dear friend gifted me with three small tomato plants she had seeded. I immediately went to Home Depot and bought large pots, tomato cages, and fertilizer. I had tried growing tomatoes a couple years earlier at our last house -- a falling-apart rental that served its purpose, but was disastrously located among huge walnut trees and directly next to a well-meaning neighbor who fed the army of squirrels with bags of peanuts she'd set out -- but my careful efforts seeding them indoors over the course of weeks were quickly decimated by the squirrels, who had ripped them out of our above-ground bed within days, despite us creating a makeshift cage around it.
In other words, I was determined to get it right this time. I wanted to make sure the plants wouldn't get too leggy, and that they had proper support from the start so that I wouldn't destroy the root network by putting in the cages too late. At the encouragement of my father, I also made sure to get Miracle-Gro, feeding them once a week. They quickly cycled through several growth spurts. I marveled at the spicy, earthy scent they gave off, especially when I touched their leaves. I studied them up close, watching the spiky buds appear before the yellow flowers, watching as the blooms shriveled up and then gave way to small, hard green nubs. They were thriving and healthy, and I was a proud plant mama. And then came the blossom end rot.
Anyone who's raised tomatoes knows it when they see it: a tiny, softening area that turns from brown to black as the fruit grows. And on my first crop of tomatoes, almost all of them -- I'd say a solid 70% -- had the signs. After consulting my garden pro friend and some online research, I went with a calcium treatment. The thing about blossom end rot is that it can usually be corrected. It generally means something is out of whack in terms of how water is being circulated through the plant -- either that it's not enough water, it's too much water, or the plant's water pathways are not efficient enough. And if the plant grows rapidly, sometimes most of the water is diverted to the foliage and not the fruit.
So I plucked off any rotting fruit, and continued with the weekly calcium treatment. About halfway through the season, once the leaves began looking quite crispy and dry, I learned that you're supposed to prune tomato plants. This was the final magic key, because once I did this, the plants came roaring back with several new flowers.
If this seemed laborious, it's because it was. But it was also enjoyable. Watering the tomatoes every morning was a bit like meditation, or setting a daily intention. I enjoyed going out with scissors and snipping off the dead weight, piling the clippings into bags. I noticed things about the different stages of growth, about the fine hairs that protect the plant, and even discovered more than one praying mantis camouflaged in its foliage. I enjoyed the first bite of a perfect tomato I had grown and tended myself -- dusted with kosher salt, dripping with olive oil.
I think it's important to contextualize this experience, to share why it was so meaningful for me. It wasn't just the process of raising and tending. The me of five years ago would have given up at the first sign of decay, at the first dark spot on the bottom. I would have walked away from the project altogether. But I didn't. Being here at this house, with these plants I chose, has given me the permission to slow down -- and the spark of creative curiosity that accompanies that. It reminded me of the part of myself that's excited to learn. It's felt like parts of me waking up.
may your season be of growth,
ashley