6.6.10

should never have bought that tomato plant.


Recently, given the massive amount of sunlight pouring into our house daily, I branched out from the normal houseplants into a more productive vein - I bought a tomato seedling. Figuring that all the other plants had done so well in this new urban hothouse, fruit-yielding greenery seemed the next logical step.

Originally 6 or so inches high, the little guy looked like the perfect "cat salad." It was tender, young and vibrant green - just the type to fall victim to Doyle, our resident scourge. However, once planted in its own deep plastic green 12" pot and placed in the middle of the living room, the tomato took root and grew voraciously. We probably brought it home a month ago and the plant is now a bit shy of two-and-a-half feet tall, with six noticeable buds that will one day be heirloom Brandywine tomatoes. Doyle has thus far only managed to eat two tomato leaves, tending more toward decimating the mint, basil and (oddly enough) the palm fronds.

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The trouble is not that we're share-cropping our condo-turned-apartment. It's that I don't want to stop. Combined with a recent foray into canning (and subsequent realization that food preservation is nearly idiot-proof), my planting has made me very attracted to the idea of finding a little plot of land on which to plant and tending to it.

I watched hours of PBS a weekend or two ago, learning all about various peppers and how to grow the "three sisters" (corn, squash and beans) together in a mutually beneficial and higher yielding grouping. I picked up Novella Carpenter's Farm City about a squat garden and later full farm of Oakland and find myself eager to move to a rundown neighborhood if only to reclaim any abandoned span.

Though that last bit seems a big jump, I can see this evolving and against my best intentions am worried I am becoming a bit (oh, just a bit) of a hippie. Maybe not so much a hippie, as a back-to-the-land purist who would absolutely love to eat only what she grows and feel the rewarding exhaustion of a productive day.

I'm no idealist - growing takes hard work and even here, indoors, pests have been a huge problem. But if I have come to learn anything, it's respect for how hard each plant works to overcome the obstacles presented to it. (I feel this the right time to take a moment of silence in remembrance of the adorable white miniature rose who recently succumbed to spider mite infestation. You will be missed, little friend... and they will pay for this injustice.) All in all, each of our plant projects have done leaps and bounds better than expected, in spite of my fumbling, moldy soil, predatory felines or the aforementioned mites.

So well, in fact, that I will be finding a trellis and some sugar-snap pea seeds in the next week to move forward with my indoor farm.