THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407070207
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: COASTWISE
SOURCE: Ford Reid
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
When last we left the tomato patch, the words of a Guy Clark song were ringing in our ears, mocking us with each step we took.
``Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes. What would life be without home grown tomatoes?''
Not much, Guy. Believe me, I know from experience, not much.
For all of my adult life, I have tried to grow tomatoes as well as my father did. By the Fourth of July each year we would be eating delicious bacon and tomato sandwiches.
By late July, we would be giving tomatoes to all of the neighbors.
By mid-August, we would be begging total strangers to please take a few more tomatoes. Anyone who took a whole grocery sack full would become a friend for life.
I want to be like that. Call me greedy, but just once I want to have more tomatoes - way more tomatoes - than I can possibly eat all by myself. I want to give them away by the grocery sack. I want to be the Tomato King of my neighborhood.
But, alas, it was never to be.
Last year, I fussed over my tomatoes like a mother over a sickly child. I watered them. I fed them. I talked to them. I loved them.
They responded by rejecting me.
Their leaves turned brown and their stalks remained pencil-thin. Buds wilted and dropped off and no tomatoes appeared.
This year, I gave up. I have had enough rejection in my life without allowing lousy plants to get the best of my emotions.
``What kind of tomato plants do you want me to get?'' my wife asked back in April.
``None. Zero. Zilch,'' I said. ``I am through with tomatoes forever. They only break my heart.''
She got some anyway and planted them down at the end of her flower garden.
I tried not to look at them.
Now, my wife does not have a tomato-growing gene in her body. Zinnia-growing genes, yes. Some of the best. She is a thoroughbred when it comes to growing flowers.
But, to the best of my knowledge, none of her ancestors were tomato growers of note. Certainly none were in a class with my father.
Still, the tomatoes that she planted have grown. And grown and grown and grown. They are huge, bushy plants, covered with leaves and beautiful tomatoes that we will be eating by the time you read this.
They look like the tomatoes that you see in seed catalogues or on the little plastic sticks that come with the plants.
She swears that she had not done a thing to encourage them. She hasn't watered the plants, fed them or talked to them and it should be obvious from that that she does not love them.
And yet they produce for her.
I think that in my 51st year on this planet I have finally discovered the secret of growing great tomatoes. The secret is benign neglect. Tomatoes, I think, want to be left alone.
I wonder why my father never told me that. by CNB