Perennial Tomatoes, continued

Brenda Barnes, Home Grown Food Network President

This morning at 8:30 I went out to sing to our tomatoes. They seem to like it. There are one semi-red and about 20 green tomatoes on 30 vines, each different. There also are at least 200 flowers.

This is the first time I have actually grown tomatoes more than once, for only one season. I thought about it for over 30 years, but mostly the only things I actually grew were perennials like citrus and avocado trees and artichokes. I studied Permaculture and natural farming, but mostly I was living the typical city life where there was no time or space to grow anything. Even myself, I see now.

I started thinking about growing tomatoes, the first time I remember, in my mid-20s, newly divorced, trying to cover by myself payments a couple chose. I was a teacher and started moonlighting bikini cocktail waitressing three nights a week in topless bars around my home in Manhattan Beach, California. It was awful as a lifestyle, but the money was ten times more than I had made at answering services and such, the only other places with night part-time jobs. The hours were also shorter, so I could get more sleep. It was unlikely parents of my Compton high school students would happen in to see me and jeopardize my career. So for a few years that’s how I made ends meet.

The places were sleazy then. I saw on Oprah the other day, now women can do such work in “gentlemen’s clubs” with lockers to protect your things, dressing rooms, change of costumes, real uptown stuff. Where I worked it was not at all like that, and not many gentlemen came in. So I kept trying a new place. There were lots. No resume was needed to start working the night I applied.

As I went in at dusk to about the tenth place, I noticed a straggling tomato vine growing by the sidewalk. It hit me I had seen tomato vines around most other places I had worked. Then it really hit me–drunks staggering out at two a.m. must have thrown up remains of cheeseburgers and beer at all those places, and tomato vines grew. I almost threw up then, myself. When I recovered I started thinking, if a drunk doing nothing but throwing up can grow tomato vines, it must be pretty easy.

Thirty years later I actually tried it (not throwing up—planting tomatoes), and I put in just about as little effort as the drunks. We grew all kinds of tomatoes from seed in deep lovely redwood planters Peter built for our balcony in Santa Monica. The tomatoes and experience of food growing were great, but we moved before planting time the next year. Later when I drove by even the planters were gone.

Years later we tried again. Results are not straggling. Instead, our tomato vines are the most prolific I have ever seen. We ate five great tomatoes since I squashed overripe ones from produce store dumpsters around soaker hoses on soil, one 110 degree day in the desert, last July. Since then, as I have written before here, all I did is tie vines up (with recyclables such as bird cages, metal and plastic shelving unit parts, abandoned real estate sign frames, and twisty-ties from other thrown away vegetables). Where we put those tomatoes seems perfect for perennial ones. I am so happy.

All I do other than keep vines up is sing and pull a weed once in awhile. Weeds I put back as mulch, since they have no seeds when they’re little, so there has been no waste and absolutely no expense except very little water, for this beautiful perennial tomato patch.

The garden is so charming. It’s a little 10′ x 50′ spot of heaven. Peter put a sports chair out there so we can sit and meditate or whatever.

The other day, just for fun, I put out two Halloween scarecrows I had found. I’ve never seen birds there, although I know they were there because there is millet growing, and the only place I’ve seen millet—I didn’t even know what it was—is in a neighbor’s garden about half a block away. I asked him after I saw it growing, and he said he plants it for birds, so I left it growing too.

Right after I put the scarecrows up, I found a many-colored tea pot made of wood glued to an upside-down terra cotta pot, and a planter with dried real red roses. “The universe rises up to meet you” when you take action. I wanted decorations; I got them.

When we came back from two weeks in New Orleans last July after I had squashed tomatoes and left them thrown on the ground, when there were little seedling tomato plants growing, I wrote I didn’t care if we never got one tomato, it was such a miracle those plants would grow themselves. Now I love having tomatoes and the experiment turn out to have fruit, so I don’t know what I was thinking then. Of course the basic purpose of growing food plants is to have food.

However, having food grow organically and easily is key. I think people want to grow their own food but get discouraged by what “experts” say you have to do, and don’t start. Test soil pH is my favorite. Soils west of the Mississippi are alkaline. Soils east are acidic. I’m sure there is a general rule of thumb for other countries. Go from there. Most plants are not picky. If you must grow a picky one, work. If you just want to grow tomatoes, though, our experience shows, as Nike says, Just Do It.

March 1, 2008

This post was first published on Home Grown Food Network’s website
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