[ submitted to Seed Stories, from The Splendid Table / APM ]
[ update: published! Seed Story number 8 on the Splendid Table :) ]
Last summer, I tried growing several varieties of heirloom tomatoes from seed. We live in Palo Alto; summers don't really get all that hot, except for a few days, and I didn't have a heating pad. The seeds never sprouted, and in frustration I tossed them in our compost a few months later.
In the meantime, though, I kept looking with despair at the empty plot of soil in our tiny back yard, wishing fervently that the tomato seeds would sprout and I could move them to their lovely, patiently dedicated spot. A few weeks before giving up on the seeds, I gave in and bought some cherry tomato starts from a local nursery.
Being a relatively new tomato parent, I watered and watered keeping the plants happily growing and rather leggy. Only after stories of dry-farming and how tomatoes burst if they get waterlogged did my girlfriend convince me to stop watering. But, by then it was too late; they reached over our heads (yet producing superbly sweet fruits), and a month-long fall vacation resulted in arriving home to a full-grown tomato monster crawling through a neighbor's bougainvillea, over the fence, to reach ten feet tall.
We vowed to cement our resolve to trimming next year's tomato bushes, and in the spring cleaned up the yard to redo the soil with fresh compost and build some raised beds. Tearing out the tomatoes meant whatever fruit remained fell on the ground; hundreds upon hundreds of small or large, orange or green cherry tomatoes. Great soil material, we thought! We turned over the decaying fruits with new compost and built up our beds, planted lettuce and chard and carrots and beans, and so began spring.
Once again, I tried growing heirloom tomatoes from seed. I left space, hopefully waiting, between the lettuce and chard and carrots and beans for these new seedlings. With a new cold frame I took more care of the seeds; a week later, they sprouted! The rest of the vegetables also sprouted; our back garden was looking to create a bountiful year.
While weeding the garden, we noticed a foreign visitor. Some sprouted weeds we were familiar with and easily pulled out. But one type of sprout we didn't recognize. Two long, slender leaves. Some had already started secondary leaves, fragmented but lush. They looked like... tomatoes?
Six months on, now, the second generation of cherry tomato monsters have almost surpassed our climbing beans. We have vowed to trim them this year, but as our resolve to thinning them did not turn out so well, I'm not entirely hopeful. Stone-hearted we removed the poor seedlings from the second half of the garden where the lettuce and chard lay; they lucked out to escape the tomato monster's wrath (merely to be eaten deliciously on our dinner table). To the bean's chagrin I have already stopped watering that garden, but by now the tomato's roots are so deep that they likely tap into the neighbors irrigation. The successful heirloom seedlings were relegated to large pots on the patio, but are still growing well; as Garrison Keillor jokes with squash, this year we will likely shower our friends with unwelcome amounts of tomatoes. Hopefully in the next month one resolve will deem fruitful: I resolve to learn how to jar and can tomatoes...