The following appeared in the Austin American Statesman in March–my debut gardening column. 

Now is a good time to think about tomatoes.

Not that there’s a bad time.

Thinking about tomatoes beats pondering such bland matters as life and death. Sure, we all have to go some day, but in the meantime, what about the quest to grow a one-pound heirloom tomato with slices thick and bloody as prime rib? Or a bowl of tiny currant tomatoes? Or everything in between? All winter, I obsess over plans for our two short, intense growing seasons. And this particular week, more than any other, is my chance activate my own plans, and a lot of other people’s besides.

To start with, now is time to put plant tomato seedlings in the ground. I know, because I did it three weeks ago, losing exactly half my plants to frost. I was understandably impatient. My friend Louise shares her seedlings with me, and this year she went even more overboard than usual, ordering 18 varieties of tomatoes to start under lights at home. All the varieties she picked were:

• indeterminate, to provide a steady supply of fruit instead of a bumper crop all at once.
• self-consciously disease-resistant, with lots of Vs, Fs, Ns and Ts after their names. Louise used to plant only heirlooms, but she’s also the kind of gardener who rips out plants at the first sign of disease, and she’s had to do a lot of ripping over the years. This year, she found herself ordering quite a few hybrids.
• full of promise—of flavor, especially, but also of abundance and even beauty.

Louise and I have more plants than we need, but we may not be able to resist buying a few more. The stock at Gardens is about 60% heirloom, including such varieties as Jaune Flamme, Opelka and Big Zebra. “And of course we have Cherokee Purple,” says manager Angie Motal. “It’s a big meaty fruit. People rave about it.”

Before moving to an apartment last year, Angie grew several successful tomato crops of her own in partial shade against the wall of a house, neither of which practice she recommends. “But I had no problems,” she recalls. “Like, two tomato hornworms, and I just picked them off.” Perhaps it was the handful of cornmeal she put in each planting hole to act as a natural fungicide. Or maybe the regular applications of Rabbit Hill Farm’s Tomato-Pepper Food?

Lauren Bryant at Barton Springs Nursery is free with tomato advice. “Full sun,” she recites. “Always plant after March 15. Use a lot of good compost, and bury the plant up to its lower leaves. Once it get to be three or four feet tall, remove the leaves from the bottom foot of the stem.”

That sounds good to Jo Dwyer at Angel Valley Farm in Jonestown, but with 4000 tomato plants to tend, who has time? Jo grows hybrids—including Celebrity and Sun Sugar—and such heirlooms as Prudens Purple and Brandywine. The image is idyllic, but doesn’t always look that way, she says.

“If you walk through our field, you might see a whole row with dead brown leaves, but the tops will still be green. Sometimes we just have to walk by and say `that’s a shame.’ You can have some crummy-looking tomato plants that still produce quite well,” she says. “But we also spray religiously with kelp mixture.”

The Dwyers use kelp from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (www.groworganic.com), and now I’ll do the same, because I never ignore other people’s closely held tomato secrets. A Delta pilot told me never to grow tomatoes in the same place twice. A nursing home administrator suggested scattering tomato plants throughout the landscape like ornamentals.

I always plant marigolds around the edges of the tomato bed, because I hear they repel bad bugs. This year, I’ll also poke some organic garlic bulbs in next to the tomatoes, because garlic greens have a powerful smell, and power may be my only shot at driving away stink bugs. Last year, they drilled little holes everywhere—not just in my tomatoes, but my soul.

“They can be awful,” Jo Dwyer agrees. “And there’s nothing you can do but squish them. Nothing else works. If you look at them closely, you’ll see that a stinkbug is really a little armored tank.”

Ah, so we’re talking weapons?

Chris Chirasis at The Great Outdoors proposes Spinosad, an organic pesticide that’s been shown to make a dent in beetle populations, though it doesn’t distinguish between good beetles and bad. He also recommends spraying a light mist of Neem Oil in the morning, to make the bugs easier to catch and squish. And he swears one of his supervisors goes after them with a vacuum cleaner.

Some gardeners may balk at extension cords and industrial noise. Go figure. In fact, I wonder–if a shop-style vacuum cleaner is good, wouldn’t a hand-held model be better—certainly more nimble?

Reached by phone at Black and Decker customer service HQ, a rep takes up the challenge. Though not a gardener, he agrees to speculate. A “moderately powered Dustbuster” fitted with a crevice tool would do the trick, he decides. “Not much that you suck up with a Dustbuster is going to fly away from it,” he says, making me want to throw my credit card at the problem.

But then, in the politest way possible, he suggests that all this seems like a lot of work to go to for a few tomatoes.

Oh, sonny! I want to say. Have you ever really tasted a tomato? A BLT? Home-made marinara?

But I know better. You might as well try to explain love itself.

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