By: Angela Gillaspie © 1998-2010

I have the homegrown tomato blues. For months I endured the plastic bland tomatoes from my local grocery store, and this summer I'm gonna do something about it. You'd think the produce manager would know that you are supposed to leave tomatoes at room temperature, because as soon as tomatoes are cooled off, they lose their flavor.

Straight from the vine to sliced and dressed with a bit of oil and vinegar is a delight to my palate. Yes, a garden filled with my own homegrown tomatoes is what I need. For my budding family of five, about twelve plants should take care of our fried green tomato and nacho needs. As I imagine smelling homemade tomato sauce bubbling on the stove, I place my mail order for twelve tomato plants.

Around the first of May, my plants arrive, and I rip open the box and find all the plants to be accounted for. I fuss over them like a new mother. My six-year-old helped me mist the roots and place the plants in a dark cool place until we could plant them.

The following weekend was designated as Family Planting Time. I called and rented a tiller, and spent the next two days pumping my husband about our garden-to-be. The night before Family Planting Time, he was ready. Visions of BLTs and tomato pies danced in our heads while we slept. When we awoke the next morning, we were refreshed and ready. We were on a mission.

The first step was to choose the portion of our manicured lawn to dig up. We made sure that this part of our yard had good drainage and was within shooting distance of our BB gun. While my husband retrieved the tiller, the kids and I partitioned off an eight by twenty rectangle that was to be the garden. I drug the mattock out to the yard and began a trench around our garden-to-be. The kids assisted me by punching each other, pouring dirt down the baby's diaper, and filling the wheelbarrow with balls and headless Barbies.

When my husband returned with the tiller, he wrapped his hands in gauze, donned work gloves, and tilled the soil for two hours straight. He stopped only to dig up rocks, scream "NO," rake grass clumps, and throw a child or two out of the way. I assisted him by pointing out the spots that he missed and pulling the kids out of the tiller's pretty blue smoke cloud.

After the rich soil was turned, my husband went to take the tiller back to the rental shop while the kids and I threw the rocks out of the dirt. The one-year-old really enjoyed throwing dirt and piling it on top of his head. Later, I decided to reuse the ten pounds of dirt I found in his diaper as potting soil for my dahlias.

With much effort, I made three squiggly rows that resembled snakes with epilepsy. I carefully measured the distance between plants allowing three to four feet between them for future growth. Next, I gently laid the plants in their new habitat, while I sprinkled fertilizer on the roots and covered them two-thirds of the way with soil. My husband returned from dropping off the tiller just in time to water our new garden. Our eyes grew misty at the thoughts of the bounty we were going to harvest in the coming months. We turned to walk in the house to rest after our hard labor, and then we heard cackling behind us. Turning around we saw the one-year-old sitting in the muck with a tomato plant in each hand, and grinning a muddy smile at us. I scooped up 'Dirty Harry' and my husband replanted the tomatoes.

In the coming weeks, we noticed small yellow blossoms, and then little green pearls that appeared in their place. Each day we would stroke the infant tomatoes and compliment them on their growth. When the tomatoes reached the size of golf balls, the kids noticed them. I thought the kids were as taken by the beauty of the tomatoes as I was, but my sweet offspring was more interested in the "splatability" of my tomatoes. It seems that these tomatoes fit easily into small hands making them easy to transport without detection. In addition to this, they can bounce off a younger sibling's head without damaging the tomato too badly, thus making them reusable.

By the end of July, there were four small pale orange tomatoes that survived the heat, Mockingbirds, Blue Jays, mice, and children. My husband and I carefully picked our hard toiled over vegetables and placed them in a bowl on our kitchen table. He took pictures while I videotaped.

The tomatoes turned a deep red a few days later and I gingerly sliced up three of them and placed them between lettuce and bacon. After saying the blessing, my husband and I shared our BLT sandwich made with our very own homegrown tomatoes. The fourth tomato had a small blemish on it and my indecision on what to do with it lasted too long. Alas, white fuzz began to appear on one side, and hesitantly and filled with much emotion, I wrapped it in a Ziplock baggie burial shroud and threw it away.

There were to be no more tomatoes from the dried up plants. Looking back over our gardening experience, we learned several lessons. Birds and other varmints will eat tomatoes no matter what. We covered our precious plants with netting. We hung tin pie plates next to the garden, and we put rubber snakes next to the plants. We even played the Hank Williams Jr. CD loudly and repeatedly while we shot the BB gun at the critters. One little field mouse looked as if it was slow dancing with the rubber snake to 'Old Habits' while munching on a green tomato. I saw a Mockingbird preening in front of a pie plate and checking to see if there was a tomato seed stuck in her beak. I swear I saw one chipmunk use the netting as dental floss for her tomato-juice-stained teeth.

Next year, we will buy dirt from Wal-mart, drill some holes in the bottom of ten-gallon buckets, and grow porch tomatoes! There would be no renting tillers, no blistered hands, no large dirt parties, and virtually no weeds. Besides, no critter would ever venture up on our porch due to the presence of 'Dirty Harry' and the gang. Now, if I could just interest the kids in water balloons or June Bugs instead of green tomatoes, I might actually enjoy more than one BLT next year.

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