The Despair of Tomatoes

Annie Sklar

My tomatoes are not cooperating. All summer, they have been weedy, leggy, spiraling in long, single stalks along the twine frames that I so thoughtfully set up for them. For hours I carefully laced lines from the porch railing to the wall, drilling holes into the side of the house so they could have a sturdy anchor. I wanted the best for my garden. But these tomatoes, they are ungrateful. Like bratty trophy wives, they demand constant attention and a small fortune to be spent upon them. And what have they given me? One, maybe two tomatoes per week. I feel ridiculous gingerly slicing a single, marble-sized Sundrop to scatter over a salad. Beautiful Black Plums, whose striated mahogany bottoms fade to dark green tops, as though each one had been painted by hand, never made it into the exotic sauce I planned for them.

As I planted, visions of a rainbow of jars lined up on my shelves teased me, sauces to be bestowed as holiday gifts. Salsa, hot sauce, marinara. I would wave off the praise of my friends and relatives with humility, “Yes, I grew them on my porch. But really, it was nothing. The plants do most of the work.” During the height of the August rush on tomatoes, I harvested a grand total of three Black Plums in one picking, which threw me into a fit of agricultural excitement. “High Yields”, the now faded and weather worn tag says, “Steady Producer”. Whatever. My tomatoes taunt me. As the sunlight leaves the porch earlier and earlier in the day, they have now, of course sprouted dozens of fruit, perfect green specimens with taut skin and an air of optimism.

My peppers are no better. The no-brainer ornamentals do okay; the ostentatious Bolivian Rainbow covered in little nubs that range from creamy yellow to eggplant purple, sports a pepper on nearly every stem. The Peach Habeneros, technically edible but in reality not very tasty, are numerous but very oddly shaped, long and pointy and wrinkly. I question their genetic heritage; I suspect a little varietal crossbreeding went on amongst the pots on my porch. But the true edibles, planted lovingly in colorful glazed terra cotta pots whose prices bordered on the obscene, they mock me. I have never seen Habenero plants grow so tall, so vibrant. The stems are full of glossy green leaves, with new sprouts appearing almost daily, even now in the waning months of the growing season. But there are no peppers. Oh yes, there are flowers. Beautiful white stars that always like to face the porch door, so that when I walk outside with my watering can (a retired Brita water filtration system, for the record), their dozens of little eyes stare at me. The Anchos, I was told, would ripen from dark green to cherry to deep, bruised reddish brown. As I am looking at them now, the two fruits currently on the waist high plant have been, for the last month, a lovely shade of grocery store red bell pepper red, with no signs of another change coming. The pepper plants have all become so tall that they have bowed and woven through each other’s forked arms, joining forces against me.

Various herbs crouch among the larger pots, floral snowbirds who winter over in my kitchen window and spend the warm, languid summer days sunning on the porch. Low maintenance and easy to please, they do fine. Reigning over the whole scene, not suffering from anyone’s expectations of agricultural bounty, are the trees. My Baby Blue Eucalyptus tree reaches towards the sunnier side of the porch. Frosty green arms are rhythmically spaced with spade shaped leaves, tiny new shoots and leaves, no more than the length of a blade of grass, delicate, exact miniatures of the larger arms, some of which are several feet long. A Lemon Verbena tree towers nearly six feet tall (okay, six feet including pot), branches sprouting long, pointed leaves in sets of three. Each branch ends in a conical fuzzy white flower cluster, arranged on sprouts that become progressively shorter until they create a point, like a Christmas tree covered in snow. But I love the Verbena best for it’s smell; when you walk by, the aroma of lemons is overpowering. I acquired it in hopes that it would cover up the funky smell of my old, third floor attic apartment over the winter.

The unfortunate drawback to the trees is the thing that makes them cool: their size. The pots are huge, many gallon affairs that one cannot move on one’s own without a lot of profanity and spilled dirt. And of course, our unforgiving New England climate being what it is, at a certain point in the year they have to come inside at night for fear of frost. I dread the days to come when I have to get up extra early to lug pots in and out, and trip over them in the kitchen at night when I forget, in the dark, that they are there. A few poor souls lost their unfortunate herbaceous heads that way last fall.

But not this time. This time, I will be ruthless. Any plant, even a perennial that could come back next year, will have to perform in order to make the cut. Habeneros choose not to make a late showing? Into the lawn bag. Vietnamese Coriander doesn’t add a few inches? Pesto. As the season progresses, and we get closer to winter, when keeping fussy plants alive is a complete pain in the ass, my garden had better get with the program. Or, next year, it will be compost.

Annie Sklar is a tenor saxophonist and jazz composer from Moretown, Vermont. She currently resides in Somerville, MA.