They might be giants

About ten years ago Nathan and I grew some jalapeño peppers on the deck of our apartment. They were a success in that they didn’t die, which was a miracle considering how neglected they were. We didn’t use the deck much and would often forget the plants were out there. Occasionally we’d look outside, see the containers and their withered cargo and be like, “Oh, the peppers!” and finally water them. Luckily they’d perk right up and we wound up harvesting a nice bunch of hot peppers we shared with friends.

When we moved to the duplex, we tried to plant a small garden of cherry tomatoes, plum tomatoes and peppers in the patch of dirt that lined the back of our garage. The cherry tomatoes flourished, but the plum tomatoes and the peppers did not. The light just wasn’t very good in that spot and there was also the water issue. Plants need water, at least more than what the overflow from the rain gutters provided.

By now you’ve probably caught on that Nathan and I are lazy gardeners, and since we’ve been in our house we haven’t attempted to grow any more produce. We really don’t have the room anyway since two-thirds of our yard is occupied by the pool and deck. But since everything in the world is going up in price, we figured we’d plant a few things this year and see how it goes.

We wound up ordering something called Tomato Giant tomato trees from one of those “As Seen On TV” commercials. The plants are supposed to produce gargantuan tomatoes, and since the company is from Michigan we thought we’d give it a try. We ordered the plants in early April and eagerly awaited the arrival of our Giant Tomato trees.

Imagine our surprise when a smallish box arrived containing six planting containers, one brick of dehydrated mix-it-yourself soil and two packs of seeds. Seeds? Nathan and I looked at each other as we evaluated our purchase. You mean we’re going to have to grow these things? From scratch? We felt as though we’d been a tad misled. The commercial was all about the tomato TREE and how many pounds each tomato TREE would produce. We couldn’t help but feel as though a crucial bit of information had been left out as Nathan opened up the tiny white envelopes and poured the seeds into his hand. Seeds?

While we had imagined receiving something a little more robust and already grown, Nathan was a trooper and promptly mixed up the soil. He planted seeds in each container; three early plants that are supposed to produce tomatoes by early July and three of their regular stupendous giant trees. I have to admit to being incredulous because I’ve never grown anything from scratch save for the child who grew in my womb as I ate lots of pizza and ice cream. Sadly, you cannot feed pizza and ice cream to tomatoes and expect them to flourish as Autumn did.

Believe it or not, those plants have started to grow. A few days ago Nathan noticed a bit of green poking through the soil of one of the containers. This morning no less than four of the six containers had tiny sprouts poking their way through.

I don’t know what’s up with the ones that haven’t poked through yet, but at this point I don’t care because we have sprouts. We have sprouts! Our seeds have turned into sprouts and some day we might actually get tomatoes out of them. How cool would it be to know our salsa or pasta sauce or the tomatoes on our salad had once been tiny little seeds in a white envelope? I imagine we’ll feel a similar pride the day Autumn goes off to college.

We’re now so in love with our sprouts that we’re going to grow more things. We’ll probably try peppers, cherry tomatoes and jalapeños again. Unfortunately we still don’t have the yard space to accommodate a proper garden so I guess it will all have to be grown in containers. We’ve actually thought about getting some of those Topsy Turvy planters. Does anyone have any experience with those they’d like to share?

I’ll have to post a few updates here as the plants grow. Hopefully they do.