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True Love and Tomatoes


By Paul James

“Only two things money can’t buy. That’s true love, and homegrown tomatoes.” So said the late, great singer/songwriter Guy Clark in his 1983 ode to America’s most popular backyard crop titled, appropriately enough, “Homegrown Tomatoes.” No doubt most of us would agree with him. But getting a good harvest of homegrown tomatoes can be tricky.

After all, tomatoes are vulnerable to a number of diseases, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Some diseases prefer cool spring temperatures while others prefer the heat and humidity of summer, which means the plants are vulnerable to attack throughout the growing season. Insects can wreak havoc on tomatoes as well, although they’re generally easier to control assuming you act before their populations get out of control. And there are other issues such as blossom-end rot and cat facing and sunscald, just to name a few.

But for many gardeners, including me, the greatest threats to homegrown tomatoes are squirrels and birds, both of which have the uncanny ability to attack the ripening fruit the day before we intend to harvest.

And yet, despite what seems to be a doomed-to-fail scenario, we continue to grow tomatoes because the lure of getting at least one ripe, juicy, round ball of deliciousness is as powerful as our quest for true love. Or the perfect BLT.

So by all means, let’s continue to plant tomatoes, and as we do, let’s take inspiration from these two lines from the same Guy Clark song.

“Plant ’em in the spring, eat ’em in the summer.

All winter without ’em’s a culinary bummer.”

Happy gardening, ya’ll.