Best Tomato for the Region? The Bitter Jest is a Good Fit
In the matter of growing tomatoes in this region it is best, as with all serious endeavors, to do your homework.
Decisions such as selecting the growing area – go for full sunshine if you possibly can – preparation of the soil so that your pH is in a neutral 6.5 to 7.0 range, selection of the correct fertilizer (I go for a 6-24-40 nitrogen/phosphorus/potassium ratio), and spacing of the plants can make the difference between success and failure in this engaging hobby.
No, not really.
None of this will do you any good.
As it turns out almost nothing you do at the front end with these stupid tomatoes will in any way contribute to their success.
Over the course of the growing season all these plants will almost certainly die, or alternately, develop into breeds so alien to human nature and even common decency that you will wish they had.
It is said to be a contest in the late hours of the night among undergraduate philosophy students to offer an opinion on which of the major philosophers has the bleakest outlook on human nature and the universe at large.
Schopenhauer usually makes the short list, along with Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and various Germans of smaller reputation.
The Stoics of the ancient Greeks simply accepted that the world was a harsh and unfriendly place and developed an entire system of thought that could be summarized as “bring it on; see if I care.”
Likewise, down the hall in the same dorm, literature majors go back and forth on the topic of which authors present the most hopeless version of reality, be that Kafka, Dostoevsky, Camus, Beckett, or their other colleagues in despair.
I don’t know the history of these fine people; all I can say is that none of them grew tomatoes in the Midwest.
They’re not sad enough.
If they had, their writings would be another 30% more despairing.
It is not for me to say that concluding that we are only random scraps of protoplasm floating through a mindless void only gets you so far. as these writers do with some repetition, but to me that is just the starting point for the man who looks out over the blasted remains of his garden later in the year and dwells upon the hopes, however modest, that he had begun the season with.
It is the old case of Nature herself turning against you, or better put, turning a completely indifferent eye to your puny efforts.
It could be said – in fact I say it here – that certain landscapes deserve the tomato breeds that they get.
Every region and every soil has its certain characteristics. This is part of the local charm and shows how each attribute of nature contributes to The Great Cycle of Life in a holistic way.
No, just kidding.
The soil here is in fact of a dense, claylike texture, determined seemingly not to nurture growth but to throttle it.
It would do well as a final storage place for caustic chemicals and nuclear waste. The general impression of observers is that after a few days the caustic chemicals and nuclear waste would simply give up and go inert.
It is surprising to more than one observer that the soil here doesn’t have a separate place on the Periodic Table of the Elements, but perhaps the scientific community just hasn’t gotten around to it yet, or is frankly afraid of the stuff.
And, to be fair, there are honest questions about classification, which is the passion of the true scientist.
Yes, it is called ‘dirt’ or ‘soil’ but in consistency and and what you might call moral properties is it not fairer to gather it under the heading of Grouting Paste, or Pavement Repair Compound?
This is why the cautious gardener is hesitant to buy tomato strains that claim that they are ‘specially bred for local conditions.’
I’m not certain I want to eat a tomato that is specially bred for local conditions.
To simply survive, much less meet and beat these local conditions, the breed itself would be such a outlier, and so contrary to human reason itself, that it would warrant a wary attitude.
Do you really want to be slicing into a vegetable that has spent the last the few months in mortal combat with the local soil?
It would be like car-pooling with a mixed martial arts champion with a temperament problem, interesting in its own way, I suppose, but unsustainable over the long run.
The gardener who considers himself a well-read man spends a certain amount of time among the gardening literature of this great country of ours, and can read at length about the various breeds, their characteristics and their uses, in other regions.
He reads of Better Boy, Big Beef, Celebrity, Early Girl, Jet Star, and Lemon Boy, their pictures laid out on the page like pinup girls, and he laughs bitterly. He is further told that this breed or that is better in salads or in cooking, in sauces or in jars, and he shakes his head wearily.
The breeds that thrive here – Death Star, Malice Aforethought, Fool’s Gold, Withering Scorn, Grim Reaper, Pruneface, Something Wicked, Shaper Than a Serpent’s Tongue, Hostile Takeover, Double Jeopardy, Widowmaker– are the ratfinks and the harpies of the vegetable world.
They have landed here, here in your very backyard, three-time losers in the larger respectable vegetable community, for their last ultimate battle with humanity. And they don’t care who they take with them.
Yes, they thrive, but to the gardener’s eventual regret. I mean, he had a modest liking of the birds and small animals that used to populate the yard. They are gone now, all gone, having crawled off to the underbrush to pass away privately after eating a bite or two from the garden, as elephants are said to do.
As to best uses these breeds can best be employed for, depending on their separate characteristics:
If unsliced, as missiles for throwing at vaudeville comedians who fail to amuse;
If sliced as hockey pucks on the ice arena, or clay pigeons on the shooting range.
It is no surprise that you don’t read much about Midwest tomatoes in the various literature anthologies, it just comes too close to the heart of the existential dilemma that is mankind’s fate. Students are a sensitive lot and it is best to not expose them to too much bleakness in the early laps of life. There will be time for that later, when they plant gardens of their own.
It is pleasing though to consider who might have taken up the topic and really made something of it, one of the masters of the absurd, like Kafka, or perhaps Poe, who had a liking for florid horror.
Some say in fact that his “Masque of the Red Death” is a hidden summary of his experience with growing backyard tomatoes, but this has never been pinned down to scholars’ final satisfaction.
And so we go on, trundling hopefully to the garden store and buying these ‘plants’ by the score, and trundling back to unload and affix them into the ground. You don’t – have I mentioned this? – dig into the soil here so much as you chip away at it, or spear it from the height of your upraised arms as you would try to slay a dragon or pierce the heart of the head vampire. I just wanted to mention that if I hadn’t already.
One of these guys really should write a play or a philosophical treatment of the subject. I think among a certain class of gardeners it would be a best-seller.
