My Tomatoes

By G. E. Shuman

Last year, at right about this time, I started planning.  It had been a very long, very gray winter here in the North, and I was the victim of a severe case of cabin fever.  I could not wait to see something green besides my wife's badly neglected Christmas cactus that somebody should have put out of its misery years ago, and a death-defying rubber plant that sits beside our fireplace, silently mocking me and daring me to not water it.   I didn't care, because, in spite of many previous failed attempts, I knew that this would be the year.  This year, (last year,) I would finally grow the huge and beautiful tomatoes I had attempted to before.  This time... I had a plan.
Just the thought of putting seeds into some rich soil and seeing those first tiny signs of life poke their heads toward the sun, (Even if it would be sun coming through a dining room window.) made me head for the hardware and garden supply stores.  "Those other, disastrous years were probably just because I used already-started tomato plants," I thought to myself.  "This year I'll grow my own, from scratch!"  Or, from seeds, to be more precise.
I love shopping for seeds, although I have little reason to do so since we have no room for a garden.  Our house is in the city, small city as it is.  I'm pretty sure I could toss my wife's dachshund puppy right out a side window and hit the neighbors house, although that would amuse the puppy little, and my wife less.  I'm not sure why that thought came to mind.  Anyway, someday they will invent a Roomba for outdoors, and I will no longer have to mow.   To my point, seed-shopping is great, and is almost as much cabin fever therapy as actually planting the little buggers.  Here's a hint, if you're new at this.  Tomato seed packages are the best.  They always show those huge, red, luscious-looking fruit, and the tomatoes are sure to have names like Big Boy, and Beef Steak!  I could almost eat those tomatoes right off the package!
That very day I bought everything to grow the biggest, best tomatoes ever.  I filled a cart with bags of Miracle-Gro soil, a seed starter tray, two big porch pots, drainage rocks, tomato cages, (The strong ones, to hold all my heavy tomatoes,) and a huge plastic watering can.  Oh yes, and I carefully selected a pack of seeds that were guaranteed to grow the largest, juiciest, most delicious tomatoes anywhere!  (It said something like that on the label, and they couldn't print it if it wasn't true.)  This  time, (last year) I had all the bases covered.  I would practically force tomatoes to grow on those vines.   After all, God made things to grow the way they do, I thought, so even He could not keep my tomatoes from growing.  ( I did later read that the builders of the Titanic had, likewise, said that even He couldn't sink her...       Hum.)
I got home from buying all of my tomato-growing ammo.,  and planted the seeds from that yummy-looking package, in my new starter tray.  I then placed the tray on a stand  in front of that dining room window.  I watered the fertile soil, and I waited.    Within a week or so, the first tiny plants broke through the soil!  Eureka!  I could nearly taste the fruits of my labor already, as I lovingly watered the growing plants, carefully rotating the tray to insure that my tiny ones would become big, straight, tall plants, basking in the sun.  I wondered if those tomato cages would be strong enough.
All seemed well on the day I proudly transplanted the tomatoes into the large, prepared pots of soil already sitting on the sunny end of our front porch.  Throughout the summer I faithfully carried water in that big plastic waterer, never letting my charges go thirsty.  And, just as I knew they would, those plants grew, and grew.  In fact, they got so large, so fast, that I nearly couldn't get the tomato cages over them.   On windy days I pulled the big pots back under the protection of the covered porch, but was sure they received every ray of full sunshine available to them, every bright day of summer.   I eventually had some of the best looking tomato plants I have ever seen.  There was only one problem.
To me, there is nothing like a huge crop of red tomatoes.  What I got for my labors was exactly that; nothing like a huge crop of red tomatoes.  In fact, among all my green, musky-scented tomato vines, there were almost no tomatoes at all.   Still, I watered, and I waited.  In fact, I watered and waited until nearly Halloween, before giving up on my tomatoes.  I swore then that I would waste no more time and money on plants, and next year, (this year,) I would get my fresh tomatoes at the farm stand.  

Today it is snowing, and it has  been a very long, gray winter here in the North.   I sit here beside the fireplace, wishing for summer, and writing this column.  (That rubber plant is  mocking me again.)  But I don't care.  You know, I've been thinking.  My Miracle-Gro soil last year was probably no miracle, and I might have gotten the wrong kind of seeds.  I need to go to the hardware store.  This year... I have a plan.