The tomatoes that wouldn't stop

My non-stop tomato plants, soaring eight feet high into the laurel hedge, have provided me with lots of entertainment this spring. On Friday, I got some sensible advice about how to, maybe, end up with actual tomatoes. Photo by John Denniston.

“Poor things!” Georgeann burst out when she saw my tomato plants this week. Andre stood by and laughed and laughed. Yes, I regret to say that’s how my SFU book-group friends – kind and sympathetic as they are – responded Friday when I showed them my pioneer efforts to grow tomatoes in my Dunbar back yard.

My plants – bought as seedlings way too early in a Covid gardening panic this spring– started out long and leggy. In the month I had to coddle them inside, they shot up to the top of the dining-room window. Once outside, they just kept growing higher. Within weeks, they outgrew their support frame and were hightailing it into the 10-foot-high laurel hedge behind them. At a certain point, they doubled over and began swooping out sideways. I was entranced. What would they do next? Not produce tomatoes, I suspected, given that blossoms were few and far between.

 “All the energy is going into the stems and leaves,” said Georgeann, who knows something about growing tomatoes. “You’ll have to cut these back, way back, if you’re going to get anything at all.” Andre didn’t offer any advice; he just looked and looked.

An evening with my secateurs and a vast tangle of clipped vines later, my tomato plants look bare and shaven, cut down to size. I may get some tomatoes now, but the thrill is gone; I miss the spectacle of my over-the-top greenery. Part of the excitement of pioneer efforts, after all, is just not knowing what might happen next.

From this...

... to this. So much more sensible. But alas, not nearly as entertaining.