This year, for the first time, I have stepped outside of the comfort zone delineated by my little herb pots and decided to attempt tomatoes.
Full confession, I am not a gardener. Though I like pretty, well tended flower patches, I do not enjoy the work associated with them. In the past I have carefully planned and planted picturesque and fragrant flower gardens, each time swearing that this year it would be different. It has never been different. The novelty wears off; I get bored with the work. The garden becomes a tangled mess, where you can't see the flowers for the weeds. Finally, after years of failure, I have largely given up on flowers. But what to do with that sad little garden plot? Return my patio to the garden equivalent of builder's white by seeding grass? Wouldn't that be admitting irretrievable defeat?
Defeat? Never! If flowers don't work for me (although it is more accurate to say that I don't work for flowers), surely food will. The vegetable I love the most (yes, I know it is actually a fruit) is the tomato. So in early May, I went to a local nursery and carefully selected three plants: pineapple (an heirloom variety supposed to produce large yellow and red striped fruits), celebrity, and bonnie best.
I went home and planted them right away. "No," you shout, "Not in early May! Not in Ottawa!" But yes, that is what I did. The two most robust looking I put in what I thought to be the best location, getting the most sunlight possible on a patio that only gets partial sun, and the third, the runty one, a little off to the side, closer to the house. There were some tense times in those early days, as I anxiously went out in the chilly mornings to see if those poor tomatoes, disadvantaged by my naivete, survived the night. And they did. My hearty Ottawaan tomatoes were up to the challenge.
As the weather got warmer, and it rained (and rained, and rained), they started to grow. But an odd thing happened. The most robust in the beginning (I think it is the pineapple - foolishly, I didn't actually put the tags by the plants so I could keep them straight) did not keep pace. There is still no sign of blooms on this plant, in mid July. It is shorter than the others. The leaves are smaller. In all fairness, it is a plant that is supposed to produce later than the other two. This one, I have named Tiny.
The second tomato (which I suspect is the bonnie best) is everything I expect a tomato plant to be, and right now, she is industriously producing fruit to grow and ripen. Bonnie best is what my grandmother always planted, and when I think of how a tomato is supposed to taste, that is the taste in my memory. I have named her Goldilocks, because she is not too big, and not too small, but juuuuuusssst right.
And then there is The Beast.
This Beast stands 5 feet tall. She has completely outstripped her support system. I worry that she'll collapse under her own weight, particularly as the fruit get bigger. There are a few tomatoes coming along, though I am not sure how they will ever get enough sun to ripen, buried as they are in her shaded depths. I suppose it makes sense if this is the celebrity plant, because she is certainly the star of this garden.
I am anticipating my first fried green tomato in about a week, and my first homegrown caprese salad about a week after that.
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