Tomato Plant Quotes

The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.

My grandma used to plant tomato seedlings in tin cans from tomato sauce & puree & crushed tomatoes she got from the Italian restaurant by her house, but she always soaked the labels off first. I don't want them to be anxious about the future, she said. It's not healthy.

...To be honest, I'd be the last person who should be doling out gardeinng advice. I don't have the patience for growing things. Yes, I realize there's nothing quite as satisfying as eating food that you've pulled up from the ground and that's why, at the height of the planting season, I bury cans of tomato soup in my backyard and dig them up in late spring.

Dude, some of these kids have never even seen a fucking vegetable garden before. Can you believe it? And this one kid, he's never seen a tomato plant, right? But he makes coke into crack in his bedroom.

If you plant a tomato seed, you're not going to get corn. You can't sow one thing and hope to reap another. If you are planting and nourishing negative thoughts, you're not going to get positive actions or results. The seed determines the fruit.

My mother has told me once and for all the useful parts. She will add nothing unless powered by necessity, a riverbank that guides her life. She plants vegetable gardens rather than lawns; she carries the odd-shaped tomatoes home from the field and eats food left for the gods.

Vespers In your extended absence, you permit me use of earth, anticipating some return on investment. I must report failure in my assignment, principally regarding the tomato plants. I think I should not be encouraged to grow tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold the heavy rains, the cold nights that come so often here, while other regions get twelve weeks of summer. All this belongs to you: on the other hand, I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly multiplying in the rows. I doubt you have a heart, in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence, immune to foreshadowing, you may not know how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf, the red leaves of the maple falling even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible for these vines.

All law must be subjective; the soil knows how to take a seed and make a plant from it; it does not know whether it is making a tomato or a potato...It knows how to create without knowing what It creates.

He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the taxi driver, who knew him well and considered him a lovely man, and was free. "Back to the hard life," he said to Peter, and stretched out his legs. Back to the real life, he meant. The real world where there were no children lurking under tables, no wives wiping their noses on the ironing, no guinea pigs on the lawn, nor hamsters in the bedrooms, and no paper bags full of leaking tomato sandwiches.

It might seem like the easier way to get rid of a poet would be just to take him out to the backyard, have him kneel between the cans with tomato plants in them and put a bullet in his brain. But they knew from history that it doesn't work to kill a writer. Every time you shoot a poet,a dozen new ones are born. It's like plucking a grey hair.

Perishable, It Said Perishable, it said on the plastic container, And below, in different ink, The date to be used by, the last teaspoon consumed. I found myself looking; Now at the back of each hand, Now inside the knees, Now turning over each foot to look at the sole. Then at the leaves of the young tomato plants, Then at the arguing jays. Under the wooden table and lifted stones, looking. Coffee cups, olives, cheeses, Hunger, sorrow, fears- These too would certainly vanish, without knowing when. How suddenly then The strange happiness took me, Like a man with strong hands and strong mouth, Inside that hour with its perishing perfumes and clashings.

The gardener digs a hole in the ground and throws in a seed and waters it and he hopes something comes up. Now, he knows generally what’s going to come up. He knows whether he planted an acorn for an oak tree or a tomato plant to get some tomatoes for the summer. But there’s a lot of details he doesn’t know. It may not grow at all. It may grow a little and then die. It may go wild. A chipmunk may eat it during the night. You don’t know.

I believe in the inevitability of miracles. I believe it because I've come in contact with this reality many times. When childlike faith is combined with love and an unfailingly positive attitude, miracles are inevitable.

Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato seeds, at harvest time they can reap onions.

In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don't pick rocks and pull weeds, I'm not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these thing with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools, to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead into gold. That is the plants' responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate. Now there is a gift.

I reckon I always had been huntin' for a place to plant my feet and go down swinging.

I'm glad you are happy in your new job." "As you said I'd be, Mamm. How did you know?" "I've known you a long time." Eunice resumed hoeing, though she stayed close enough that they could continue talking. "You're pretty much happy wherever you are planted, sort of like these tomato plants. As long as they receive a little sun, some water, and a bit of care...they thrive.

The fact is, I was born an incurable dreamer, which is in and of itself fundamentally rebellious. No status quo for me. Waiting just around the next corner was something better, I was certain of it.

One of the things Peter loves about you, besides your modesty, of course, is the way you’re fearless. You’re not afraid of anything—zombies, tomato plants, or even to love with your whole heart. When

WE ALL DO IT, YOU know. Distract ourselves from noticing how time’s passing. We throw ourselves into our jobs. We focus on keeping the blight off our tomato plants. We fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping so that the weeks look the same on the surface. And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man. One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you’ve already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young. When this realization hits, you start doing the math. How much time do I have left? How much can I fit into that small space? Some of us let this realization guide us, I guess. We book trips to Tibet, we learn how to sculpt, we skydive. We try to pretend it’s not almost over. But some of us just fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping, because if you only see the path that’s right ahead of you, you don’t obsess over when the cliff might drop off. Some of us never learn. And some of us learn earlier than others. —

By the time the first Europeans arrived in the New World, farmers there were harvesting more than a hundred kinds of edible plants—potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers, eggplants, avocados, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cashews, pineapples, papaya, guava, yams, manioc (or cassava), pumpkins, vanilla, a whole slew of beans and squashes, four types of chili peppers, and chocolate, among rather a lot else—not a bad haul. It has been estimated that 60 percent of all the crops grown in the world today originated in the Americas.

Although nature has proven season in and season out that if the thing that is planted bears at all, it will yield more of itself, there are those who seem certain that if they plant tomato seeds, at harvesttime they can reap onions. Too many times for comfort I have expected to reap good when I know I have sown evil. My lame excuse is that I have not always known that actions can only reproduce themselves, or rather, I have not always allowed myself to be aware of that knowledge. Now, after years of observation and enough courage to admit what I have observed, I try to plant peace if I do not want discord; to plant loyalty and honesty if I want to avoid betrayal and lies. Of course, there is no absolute assurance that those things I plant will always fall upon arable land and will take root and grow, nor can I know if another cultivator did not leave contrary seeds before I arrived. I do know, however, that if I leave little to chance, if I am careful about the kinds of seeds I plant, about their potency and nature, I can, within reason, trust my expectations.

We all do it, you know. Distract ourselves from noticing how time’s passing. We throw ourselves into our jobs. We focus on keeping the blight off our tomato plants. We fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping so that the weeks look the same on the surface. And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man. One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you’ve already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young.

The situation is established not only to provoke defensiveness but to sidetrack the reformer into answering the wrong questions.... In this, the pattern of discourse resembles that of dinnertime conversations about feminism in the early 1970s. Questions of definition often predominate. Whereas feminists were parlaying questions which trivialized feminism such as "Are you one of those bra burners?" vegetarians must define themselves against the trivializations of "Are you one of those health nuts?" or "Are you one of those animal lovers?" While feminists encountered the response that "men need liberation too," vegetarians are greeted by the postulate that "plants have life too." Or to make the issue appear more ridiculous, the position is forwarded this way: "But what of the lettuce and tomato you are eating; they have feelings too!" The attempt to create defensiveness through trivialization is the first conversational gambit which greets threatening reforms. This pre-establishes the perimeters of discourse. One must explain that no bras were burned at the Miss America pageant, or the symbolic nature of the action of that time, or that this question fails to regard with seriousness questions such as equal pay for equal work. Similarly, a vegetarian, thinking that answering these questions will provide enlightenment, may patiently explain that if plants have life, then why not be responsible solely for the plants one eats at the table rather than for the larger quantities of plants consumed by the herbivorous animals before they become meat? In each case a more radical answer could be forwarded: "Men need first to acknowledge how they benefit from male dominance," "Can anyone really argue that the suffering of this lettuce equals that of a sentient cow who must be bled out before being butchered?" But if the feminist or vegetarian responds this way they will be put back on the defensive by the accusation that they are being aggressive. What to a vegetarian or a feminist is of political, personal, existential, and ethical importance, becomes for others only an entertainment during dinnertime.

I think about the pepper plant, the corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, and more plants. And I've noticed that while those seeds are living within the fruit or vegetable they can not grow. It is only when those seeds have died, that they can be planted and grow. And, I can relate this same process to the human body. In order to grow and thrive in the spirit, you must die to the flesh. Meaning, You have to rid your mind and body of toxic negative worldly things in order to grow and develop more spiritually.

TOMATOES THAT CAN sit in the pantry slowly ripening for months without rotting. Plants that can better weather climate change. Mosquitoes that are unable to transmit malaria. Ultra-muscular dogs that make fearsome partners for police and soldiers. Cows that no longer grow horns. These organisms might sound far-fetched, but in fact, they already exist, thanks to gene editing. And they’re only the beginning. As I write this, the world around us is being revolutionized by CRISPR, whether we’re ready for it or not.

So paint the walls, plant tomatoes in pots on the fire escape, but don't cling.

Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot.

While Mesoamericans were harvesting corn and potatoes (and avocados and tomatoes and beans and about a hundred other plants we would be desolate to be without now),

SCREE! the strix yelled, ruffling its feathers. "What do you mean 'you need to kill us'?" Grover asked. Meg scowled. "You can talk to it?" "Well, yes," Grover said. "It's an animal." "Why didn't you tell us what it was saying before now?" Meg asked. "Because it was just yelling scree!" Grover said. "Now it's saying scree as in, it needs to kill us." I tried to move my legs. They seemed to have turned into sacks of cement, which I found vaguely amusing. I could still move my arms and had some feeling in my chest, but I wasn't sure how long that would last. "Perhaps ask the strix why it needs to kill us?" I suggested. "Scree!" Grover said. I was getting tired of the strix language. The bird replied in a series of squawks and clicks. Meanwhile, out in the corridor, the other strixes shrieked and bashed against the net of plants. Black talons and gold beaks poked out, snapping tomatoes into pico de gallo. I figured we had a few minutes at most until the birds burst through and killed us all, but their razor-sharp beaks sure were cute! Grover wrung his hands. "The strix says he's been sent to drink our blood, eat our flesh and disembowel us, not necessarily in that order. He says he's sorry, but it's a direct command from the emperor." "Stupid emperors," Meg grumbled. "Which one?" "I don't know," Grover said. "The strix just calls him Scree." "You can translate disembowel," she noted, "but you can't translate the emperor's name?

...a profound opportunity to embrace impermanence. How those of us who are renters are perhaps in a better position to recognize that our time here on earth is a borrowed gift. That it's not ours to own, though it is ours to relish. That it's still worth beautifying, even though it's temporary. So paint the walls, plant tomatoes in pots on the fire escape, but don't cling. Because eventually we will all be asked to move on.

Ever since, two summers ago, Joe Marino had begun to come into her bed, a preposterous fecundity had overtaken the staked plans, out in the side garden where the southwestern sun slanted in through the line of willows each long afternoon. The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. Of plants, tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. Picking the watery orange-red orbs, Alexandra felt she was cupping a giant lover’s testicles in her hand.

The dozens and dozens of plant clippings I’ve been ignoring out here have mostly managed to survive, at least. Some things do that without always needing help. It’s pathetic as hell to be outdone by a cherry tomato bush.

Roses climbed the shed, entwined with dark purple clematis, leaves as glossy as satin. There were no thorns. Patience's cupboard was overflowing with remedies, and the little barn was often crowded with seekers. The half acre of meadow was wild with cosmos and lupine, coreopsis, and sweet William. Basil, thyme, coriander, and broad leaf parsley grew in billowing clouds of green; the smell so fresh your mouth watered and you began to plan the next meal. Cucumbers spilled out of the raised beds, fighting for space with the peas and beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and bright yellow peppers. The cart was righted out by the road and was soon bowed under glass jars and tin pails of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, and salvia. Pears, apples, and out-of-season apricots sat in balsa wood baskets in the shade, and watermelons, some with pink flesh, some with yellow, all sweet and seedless, lined the willow fence.

The breakdown of the neighborhoods also meant the end of what was essentially an extended family....With the breakdown of the extended family, too much pressure was put on the single family. Mom had no one to stay with Granny, who couldn't be depended on to set the house on fire while Mom was off grocery shopping. The people in the neighborhood weren't there to keep an idle eye out for the fourteen-year-old kid who was the local idiot, and treated with affection as well as tormented....So we came up with the idea of putting everybody in separate places. We lock them up in prisons, mental hospitals, geriatric housing projects, old-age homes, nursery schools, cheap suburbs that keep women and the kids of f the streets, expensive suburbs where everybody has their own yard and a front lawn that is tended by a gardener so all the front lawns look alike and nobody uses them anyway....the faster we lock them up, the higher up goes the crime rate, the suicide rate, the rate of mental breakdown. The way it's going, there'll be more of them than us pretty soon. Then you'll have to start asking questions about the percentage of the population that's not locked up, those that claim that the other fifty-five per cent is crazy, criminal, or senile. WE have to find some other way....So I started imagining....Suppose we built houses in a circle, or a square, or whatever, connected houses of varying sizes, but beautiful, simple. And outside, behind the houses, all the space usually given over to front and back lawns, would be common too. And there could be vegetable gardens, and fields and woods for the kids to play in. There's be problems about somebody picking the tomatoes somebody else planted, or the roses, or the kids trampling through the pea patch, but the fifty groups or individuals who lived in the houses would have complete charge and complete responsibility for what went on in their little enclave. At the other side of the houses, facing the, would be a little community center. It would have a community laundry -- why does everybody have to own a washing machine?-- and some playrooms and a little cafe and a communal kitchen. The cafe would be an outdoor one, with sliding glass panels to close it in in winter, like the ones in Paris. This wouldn't be a full commune: everybody would have their own way of earning a living, everybody would retain their own income, and the dwellings would be priced according to size. Each would have a little kitchen, in case people wanted to eat alone, a good-sized living space, but not enormous, because the community center would be there. Maybe the community center would be beautiful, lush even. With playrooms for the kids and the adults, and sitting rooms with books. But everyone in the community, from the smallest walking child, would have a job in it.

WE ALL DO IT, YOU know. Distract ourselves from noticing how time’s passing. We throw ourselves into our jobs. We focus on keeping the blight off our tomato plants. We fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping so that the weeks look the same on the surface. And then one day, you turn around, and your baby is a man. One day, you look in the mirror, and see gray hair. One day, you realize there is less of your life left than what you’ve already lived. And you think, How did this happen so fast? It was only yesterday when I was having my first legal drink, when I was diapering him, when I was young. When this realization hits, you start doing the math. How much time do I have left? How much can I fit into that small space? Some of us let this realization guide us, I guess. We book trips to Tibet, we learn how to sculpt, we skydive. We try to pretend it’s not almost over. But some of us just fill up our gas tanks and top off our Metro cards and do the grocery shopping, because if you only see the path that’s right ahead of you, you don’t obsess over when the cliff might drop off. Some of us never learn. And some of us learn earlier than others.

This is what happens when people like you get all carried away with follow-through: if you gardened like me and just bought a bunch of plants, brought them home and let them die you wouldn’t be in this kind of trouble.” “You don’t have any tomatoes,” she pointed out. Which is true enough, I suppose, but then—neither does she.

You pay homage when and where you can. I love the smell of the bulb as the earth opens and releases it in harvest, an aroma that only those who grow garlic and handle the bulb and the leaves still fresh from the earth can know.Anyone who gardens knows these indescribable presences--of not only fresh garlic, but onions, carrots and their tops, parsley's piercing signal, the fragrant exultations of a tomato plant in its prime, sweet explosions of basil. They can be known best and most purely on the spot, in the instant, in the garden, in the sun, in the rain. They cannot be carried away from their place in the earth. They are inimitable. And they have no shelf life at all.

A person has to have confidence in what he's going to do. If he don't, he's not going to do it long. He has to have confidence first in his idea and next in himself. Two men have different ideas and they go to work on them. Now the first fella's idea may come up soon. Your may linger a long, long time, but any idea, if it's well done, will come up in its own time. You can plant five seeds at the same moment - tomato, potato, cabbage, lettuce, beets - place them at the same moment. ANd they all don't come up at the same time. If the beet would get discouraged because the cabbage come up in front of him, then there wouldn't be no beets. And if the cabbage would get discouraged because the tomato come up before his program, then there wouldn't be no cabbage. Now the evidence of a test that's gonna come in your time of doing is the sacrifice. Hungry - that's in the making of the program. Broke - that's in the making of the program. All these things will discourage you. But you can't let them discourage you. I believed that I would do a thing, and I went to work doin' it. -Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller

The city enchants you, then brings you right back down to reality. I’ve never been anyplace that I want to capture so much. I spend a lot of time photographing things that seem uniquely Italian – laundry hanging in the alleyway, red geraniums planted in old tomato- sauce cans – but mostly I try to capture the people. Italians are so expressive: you never have to guess what they’re feeling.

And there were so many places to go. Thickets of bramble. Fallen trees. Ferns, and violets, and gorse, paths all lined with soft green moss. And in the very heart of the wood, there was a clearing, with a circle of stones, and an old well in the middle, next to a big dead oak tree, and everything- fallen branches, standing stones, even the well, with its rusty pump- draped and festooned and piled knee-high with ruffles and flounces of strawberries, with blackbirds picking over the fruit, and the scent like all of summer. It wasn't like the rest of the farm. Narcisse's farm is very neat, with everything set out in its place. A little field for sunflowers: one for cabbages; one for squash; one for Jerusalem artichokes. Apple trees to one side; peaches and plums to the other. And in the polytunnels, there were daffodils, tulips, freesias; and in season, lettuce, tomatoes, beans. All neatly planted, in rows, with nets to keep the birds from stealing them. But here there were no nets, or polytunnels, or windmills to frighten away the birds. Just that clearing of strawberries, and the old well in the circle of stones. There was no bucket in the well. Just the broken pump, and the trough, and a grate to cover the hole, which was very deep, and not quite straight, and filled with ferns and that swampy smell. And if you put your eye to the grate, you could see a roundel of sky reflected in the water, and little pink flowers growing out from between the cracks in the old stone. And there was a kind of draught coming up from under the ground, as if something was hiding there and breathing, very quietly.

The following houseplants are poisonous, some in very small doses: Dumb cane, English ivy, foxglove, hyacinth bulbs (and leaves and flowers in quantity), hydrangea, iris rootstalk and rhizome, lily of the valley, philodendron, Jerusalem cherry. Outdoor plants that are poisonous include: Azalea, rhododendron, caladium, daffodil and narcissus bulbs, daphne, English ivy, foxglove, hyacinth bulbs (and leaves and flowers in quantity), hydrangea, iris rootstalk and rhizome, Japanese yew seeds and leaves, larkspur, laurel, lily of the valley, morning glory seeds, oleander, privet, rhubarb leaves, sweet peas (especially the “peas,” which are the seeds), tomato plant leaves, wisteria pods and seeds, yews. Holiday favorites holly and mistletoe, and to a lesser extent, poinsettia (which is irritating but not poisonous), are also on the danger list.

Once inside the hedge, the garden, though sleeping for the winter, nevertheless seemed to glimmer with hidden life. A winding flagstone path made its leisurely way to the door of the house, lined on both sides with tufts of sage, thyme, rosemary, and lavender, grayed with cold. In place of grass, the earth on either side of the path was a riot of plants in varying stages of hibernation and decay. To this side, the dried stalks of full-grown asparagus rustled together. In the far corner, their roots sunk into the wood of the house, an array of nightshades — tomato plants, dried and brown, the gnarled tangles of henbane and moonshade lying in wait for spring. The webbed vines overhead cast the garden in long blue shadow, blurred at the corners, hard to make out, and yet strangely the air inside the garden was not as bitingly cold as it was in the outside world.

By Mendel’s time, plant breeding had progressed to a point where every region boasted dozens of local varieties of peas, not to mention beans, lettuce, strawberries, carrots, wheat, tomatoes, and scores of other crops. People may not have known about genetics, but everyone understood that plants (and animals) could be changed dramatically through selective breeding. A single species of weedy coastal mustard, for example, eventually gave rise to more than half a dozen familiar European vegetables. Farmers interested in tasty leaves turned it into cabbages, collard greens, and kale. Selecting plants with edible side buds and flower shoots produced Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli, while nurturing a fattened stem produced kohlrabi. In some cases, improving a crop was as simple as saving the largest seeds, but other situations required real sophistication. Assyrians began meticulously hand-pollinating date palms more than 4,000 years ago, and as early as the Shang Dynasty (1766–1122 BC), Chinese winemakers had perfected a strain of millet that required protection from cross-pollination. Perhaps no culture better expresses the instinctive link between growing plants and studying them than the Mende people of Sierra Leone, whose verb for “experiment” comes from the phrase “trying out new rice.

Of all the herbs, Jasmine thought, basil was her soul mate. She rubbed her fingers over a leaf and sniffed deeply at the pungent, almost licorice scent. Basil was sensuous, liking to stretch out green and silky under a hot sun with its feet covered in cool soil. Basil married so well with her favorite ingredients: rich ripe tomatoes, a rare roast lamb, a meaty mozzarella. Jasmine plucked three leaves from her basil plant and slivered them in quick, precise slashes, then tucked them into her salad along with a tablespoon of slivered orange rind. Her lunch today was to be full of surprises. She wanted to impress as well as amuse this particular guest. They would start with a tomato soup in which she would hide a broiled pesto-stuffed tomato that would reveal itself slowly with every sip. Next she would pull out chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese and mint. Then finish with poached pears, napped heavily in eau-de-vie-spiked chocolate.

Oh, look at that—tomatoes. Harvested by hand, from plants nurtured in perfectly tilled soil by perfectly bearded hipsters, in the land of organic milk and asshole honey, where everyone was happy and in tune with the earth, and the entire world narrowed down to slow, sustainable, and the concept du jour—local. Fuck local. I’d fucked local, and look where it got me. Angry/not angry, listening/not listening for a phone call or text, feeling/not feeling overwhelmed, confused, betrayed, and slightly . . . used?

The Sparrow Sisters' roses still bloomed on New Year's Day, their scent rich and warm even when snow weighted their petals closed. When customers came down the rutted road to the small eighteenth-century barn where the sisters worked, they marveled at the jasmine that twined through the split-rail fence, the perfume so intense they could feel it in their mouths. As they paid for their purchases, they wondered (vaguely, it must be said, for the people of Granite Point knew not to think too hard about the Sisters) how it was that clematis and honeysuckle climbed the barn in November and the morning glories bloomed all day. The fruit trees were so fecund that the peaches hung on the low branches, surrounded by more blossoms, apples and pears ripened in June and stayed sweet and fresh into December. Their Italian fig trees were heavy with purple teardrop fruit only weeks after they were planted. If you wanted a tomato so ripe the juice seemed to move beneath the skin, you needed only to pick up a punnet at the Nursery.

I dreamed not long ago of that market with all its vivid textures. I walked through the stalls with a basket over my arms as always and went right to Edita for a bunch of fresh cilantro. We chatted and laughed and when I held out my coins she waved them off, patting my arm and sending me away. A gift, she said. Muchas gracias, señora, I replied. There was my favorite panadera, with clean cloths laid over the round loaves. I chose a few rolls, opened my purse, and this vendor too gestured away my money as if I were impolite to suggest paying. I looked around in bewilderment; this was my familiar market and yet everything had changed. It wasn't just for me—no shopper was paying. I floated through the market with a sense of euphoria. Gratitude was the only currency accepted here. It was all a gift. It was like picking strawberries in my field: the merchants were just the intermediaries passing on gifts from the earth. I looked in my basket: two zucchinis, an onion, tomatoes, bread, and a bunch of cilantro. It was still half empty, but it felt full. I had everything I needed. I glanced over at the cheese stall, thinking to get some, but knowing it would be given, not sold, I decided I could do without. It's funny: Had all the things in the market merely been a very low price, I probably would have scooped up as much as I could. But when everything became a gift, I felt self-restraint. I didn't want to take too much. And I began thinking of what small presents I might bring to the vendors tomorrow. The dream faded, of course, but the feelings of euphoria and then of self-restraint remain. I've thought of it often and recognize now that I was witness there to the conversion of a market economy to a gift economy, from private goods to common wealth. And in that transformation the relationships became as nourishing as the food I was getting. Across the market stalls and blankets, warmth and compassion were changing hands. There was a shared celebration of abundance for all we'd been given. And since every market basket contained a meal, there was justice.

Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl's hair let loose from a braid. In front there's a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties' gardens, and my nonna's when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs- dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It's wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size. The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory- playing in Aunty Rosa's yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies'.

Most plants—from a potted snapdragon to a giant sequoia—will develop differently when grown with different communities of mycorrhizal fungus. Basil plants, for example, produce different profiles of the aromatic oils that make up their flavor when grown with different mycorrhizal strains. Some fungi have been found to make tomatoes sweeter than others; some change the essential oil profile of fennel, coriander, and mint; some increase the concentration of iron and carotenoids in lettuce leaves, the antioxidant activity in artichoke heads, or the concentrations of medicinal compounds in Saint-John’s-wort and echinacea.

To all the vegetarians/vegans just because a tomato doesn't scream when you pluck it off it's tree doesn't mean it doesn't feel as all other living creatures do. Saying that animals have the right of life is saying that plants do not have the same right. We are all living creatures within the spectrum of the universe and all part of a food chain. We humans just happen to be on the top of the food chain. So eat what you will in order to sustain life and do not worry whether it is a plant or animal for both have been stripped from their families and killed in order so we can live. Eat hardy, eat healthy, and eat what you want!!!

Alongside the house he planted orange and grapefruit, two more pomegranate trees, and one unbelievable tree that yielded oranges, lemons, tangerines, and other citrus fruits that I do not recall-- perhaps grapefruit and, perhaps, according to the storyline nature of my family, avocado or tomato. Either way, that tree aroused awe and excitement within me, and this is only increased when I asked my mother how her father had managed to create it. 'He's a magician,' she said. Years later I discovered it was a perfectly ordinary grafting of bitter orange understock, but my mother's words were already engraved upon me, and the impression had never dissipated.

Calgene's FlavrSavr tomato was the first genetically modified whole food. When Calgene brought it to the FDA in 1992, the tomato was subjected to $2 million-worth of testing by the FDA on top of the testing done by Calgene. In a public meeting the FDA scientists brought the results of their extensive and sophisticated chemical analyses to a panel of external advisers; the panel included representatives of public interest groups and industry, as well as scientists whose specialties ranged from nutrition to basic plant science. The concluding slide of the FDA's presentation had a simple message: Calgene's transgenic tomato … is a tomato. Mendel in the Kitchen: A Scientist's View of Genetically Modified Food

YOU WEREN’T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that’s waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don’t miss a thing; then there’s the desk and the person behind it who thinks he’s an admiral, or it’s a she and she thinks she’s now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you’re kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you’ve been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you’ve laid awake in bed gettin’ goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But

My eye keeps escaping towards the big blue lacquered door that I've had painted in a trompe-l'oeil on the back wall. I would like to call Mrs. Cohen back and tell her there's no problem for her son's bar mitzvah, everything's ready: I would like to go through that door and disappear into the garden my mind's eye has painted behind it. The grass there is soft and sweet, there are bulrushes bowing along the banks of a river. I put lime trees in it, hornbeams, weeping elms, blossoming cherries and liquidambars. I plant it with ancient roses, daffodils, dahlias with their melancholy heavy heads, and flowerbeds of forget-me-nots. Pimpernels, armed with all the courage peculiar to such tiny entities, follow the twists and turns between the stones of a rockery. Triumphant artichokes raise their astonished arrows towards the sky. Apple trees and lilacs blossom at the same time as hellebores and winter magnolias. My garden knows no seasons. It is both hot and cool. Frost goes hand in hand with a shimmering heat haze. The leaves fall and grow again. row and fall again. Wisteria climbs voraciously over tumbledown walls and ancient porches leading to a boxwood alley with a poignant fragrance. The heady smell of fruit hangs in the air. Huge peaches, chubby-cheeked apricots, jewel-like cherries, redcurrants, raspberries, spanking red tomatoes and bristly cardoons feast on sunlight and water, because between the sunbeams it rains in rainbow-colored droplets. At the very end, beyond a painted wooden fence, is a woodland path strewn with brown leaves, protected from the heat of the skies by a wide parasol of foliage fluttering in the breeze. You can't see the end of it, just keep walking, and breathe.

I want to plant a garden, Dewey,” I said. “Can you tell me the best place on the hill to do it?  I keep trying to remember where Nana had hers, but none of the soil looks good enough to me.” “What you want to grow?” he asked. “Nothing much. Tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, some summer squash. Whatever the season isn’t passed for.” “I’ll come up tomorrow and string you a spot,” he said, “if that works for you. You might have to do some serious clearing afore you can plant, though. Almost too late for planting tomatoes, but the rest ought to do fine. You can have all the tomatoes you want from my garden. I always get more than enough.” “Thanks. If you have green ones, I’ll take a few tonight. I’ve wanted to fry some ever since I got home. Remember how Nana used to serve us fried green tomatoes and squash?” “Made the best cornbread in the county,” he said. “Her cornbread was like eating cake.

Sinyukhin began by cutting one branch from each of a series of tomato plants. Then he took electrical measurements around the wound as each plant healed and sent out a new shoot near the cut. He found a negative current—a stream of electrons—flowing from the wound for the first few days. A similar "current of injury" is emitted from all wounds in animals. During the second week, after a callus had formed over the wound and the new branch had begun to form, the current became stronger and reversed its polarity to positive. The important point wasn't the polarity—the position of the measuring electrode with respect to a reference electrode often determines whether a current registers as positive or negative. Rather, Sinyukhin's work was significant because he found a change in the current that seemed related to reparative growth. Sinyukhin found a direct correlation between these orderly electrical events and biochemical changes: As the positive current increased,cells in the area more than doubled their metabolic rate, also becoming more acidic and producing more vitamin C than before. Sinyukhin then applied extra current, using small batteries, to a group of newly lopped plants, augmenting the regeneration current.These battery-assisted plants restored their branches up to three times faster than the control plants. The currents were very small—only 2 to 3 microamperes for five days. (An ampere is a standard unit of electric current, and a microampere is one millionth of an ampere.) Larger amounts of electricity killed the cells and had no growth-enhancing effect. Moreover, the polarity had to match that normally found in the plant. When Sinyukhin used current of the opposite polarity, nullifying the plant's own current, restitution was delayed by two or three weeks.

Time passes, and as the hot midday sun and cool mountain nights alternately bake and freeze the blackened landscape of Vesuvius, something remarkable happens. Gradually, the streams of cold lava are colonized by a lichen, stereocaulon vesuvianim. This lichen is so tiny that it is almost invisible to the naked eye, but as it grows, it turns the lava from black to silvery gray. Where the lichen has gone, other plants can follow- first mugwort, valerian, and Mediterranean scrub, but later ilex and birch trees, along with dozens of species of apricot. Meanwhile, the clinkers and ash that covered the landscape like so much grubby gray snow are slowly, inexorably, working their way into the fields and the vineyards, crumbling as they do so, adding their richness to the thick black soil, and an incomparable flavor to tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, fruit and all the other produce which grows there.

Vinyasa has three parts: arising, abiding, and dissolving. And the dissolving of one thing is the arising of the next. Every day turns into night turns into day. Winter becomes spring becomes summer becomes autumn becomes winter. Waves roll in and slip back out, tides ebb and flow. Every breath is like this. Every life is like this. Each flower buds, ripens, and blooms, wilts and fades away. The leaves fall to the earth and create the ground for a new plant to grow. The Sanskrit word vinyasa means "to place in a special way". It means that everything is connected and the sequence of things matters. It means that every action, thought, or word that arises now is planting the seed for future fruit. "In a special way" means the unfolding of life is logical. If you plant a tomato seed, you will get a tomato. If you plant an apple seed and you wait long enough, you will get an apple tree. And if you plant a hard thought, you will get a hard heart.

Working with chocolate always helps me find the calm centre of my life. It has been with me for so long; nothing here can surprise me. This afternoon I am making pralines, and the little pan of chocolate is almost ready on the burner. I like to make these pralines by hand. I use a ceramic container over a shallow copper pan: an unwieldy, old-fashioned method, perhaps, but the beans demand special treatment. They have traveled far, and deserve the whole of my attention. Today I am using couverture made from the Criollo bean: its taste is subtle, deceptive; more complex than the stronger flavors of the Forastero; less unpredictable than the hybrid Trinitario. Most of my customers will not know that I am using this rarest of cacao beans; but I prefer it, even though it may be more expensive. The tree is susceptible to disease: the yield is disappointingly low; but the species dates back to the time of the Aztecs, the Olmecs, the Maya. The hybrid Trinitario has all but wiped it out, and yet there are still some suppliers who deal in the ancient currency. Nowadays I can usually tell where a bean was grown, as well as its species. These come from South America, from a small, organic farm. But for all my skill, I have never seen a flower from the Theobroma cacao tree, which only blooms for a single day, like something in a fairytale. I have seen photographs, of course. In them, the cacao blossom looks something like a passionflower: five-petaled and waxy, but small, like a tomato plant, and without that green and urgent scent. Cacao blossoms are scentless; keeping their spirit inside a pod roughly the shape of a human heart. Today I can feel that heart beating: a quickening inside the copper pan that will soon release a secret. Half a degree more of heat, and the chocolate will be ready. A filter of steam rises palely from the glossy surface. Half a degree, and the chocolate will be at its most tender and pliant.

The time the first Europeans arrived in the New World, farmers there were harvesting more than a hundred kinds of edible plants–potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers, marrows, aubergines, avocados, a whole slew of beans and squashes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, cashews, pineapples, papaya, guava, yams, manioc (or cassava), pumpkins, vanilla, four types of chilli pepper and chocolate, among rather a lot else–not a bad haul. It has been estimated that 60 per cent of all the crops grown in the world today originated in the Americas. These foods weren’t just incorporated into foreign cuisines. They effectively became the foreign cuisines. Imagine Italian food without tomatoes, Greek food without aubergines, Thai and Indonesian foods without peanut sauce, curries without chillies, hamburgers without French fries or ketchup, African food without cassava. There was scarcely a dinner table in the world in any land to east or west that wasn’t drastically improved by the foods of the Americas.

Joe had always pretended indifference to flowers. He preferred fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, things to be picked and harvested, stored, dried, pickled, bottled, pulped, made into wine. But there were always flowers in his garden all thee same. Planted as if on an afterthought: dahlias, poppies, lavender, hollyhocks. Roses twined among the tomatoes. Sweet peas among the bean poles. Part of it was camouflage, of course. Part of it a lure for bees. But the truth was that Joe liked flowers, and was reluctant even to pull weeds. Jay would not have seen the rose garden if he had not known where to look. The wall against which the roses had once been trained had been partly knocked down, leaving an irregular section of brick about fifteen feet long. Greenery had shot up it, almost reaching the top, creating a dense thicket in which he hardly recognized the roses themselves. With the shears he clipped a few briars free and revealed a single large red rose almost touching the ground. "Old rose," remarked Joe, peering closer. "Best kind for cookin'. You should try makin' some rose petal jam. Champion." Jay wielded the shears again, pulling the tendrils away from the bush. He could see more rosebuds now, tight and green away from the sun. The scent from the open flower was light and earthy.

(1 = best, 11 = worst) 1. Raw fruits and vegetables (preferably organic) such as apples, grapes, melons, bananas, avocados, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, kale, tomatoes, etc.; raw honey, stevia (a natural sweetener) 2. Lightly-steamed, low-starch vegetables (all vegetables other than white potatoes, acorn and butternut squash, and pumpkin); pure maple syrup, agave nectar *Note that corn and legumes are starches, not vegetables. 3. Organic raw nuts and seeds (almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, macadamia nuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, etc.) 4. Raw stone-pressed or cold-pressed plant oils (especially olive oil, though hemp seed and flax seed oils are also acceptable) 5. Cooked starchy vegetables (sweet potatoes, butternut and acorn squash, pumpkin, etc.) 6. Raw unpasteurized dairy products (particularly from goats and sheep) 7. Whole grains (brown rice, millet, whole wheat, buckwheat, etc.) 8. Pasteurized dairy and animal flesh (preferably limited to organic fish and minimal organic meat and poultry products) 9. All non-whole grain flour products (white bread, white rice, white pasta, white pizza dough, flour tortillas, etc.); sugar (white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, etc.) 10. Cooked animal fats/hydrogenated oils (lard, cooked oils, etc.), mainstream meats, poultry; soy products 11. Chemicals, artificial coloring and sweeteners (aspartame, saccharine, unnatural additives of all kinds)

A Girl's Garden" A neighbor of mine in the village Likes to tell how one spring When she was a girl on the farm, she did A childlike thing. One day she asked her father To give her a garden plot To plant and tend and reap herself, And he said, 'Why not?' In casting about for a corner He thought of an idle bit Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood, And he said, 'Just it.' And he said, 'That ought to make you An ideal one-girl farm, And give you a chance to put some strength On your slim-jim arm.' It was not enough of a garden Her father said, to plow; So she had to work it all by hand, But she don't mind now. She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load, And hid from anyone passing. And then she begged the seed. She says she thinks she planted one Of all things but weed. A hill each of potatoes, Radishes, lettuce, peas, Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn, And even fruit trees. And yes, she has long mistrusted That a cider-apple In bearing there today is hers, Or at least may be. Her crop was a miscellany When all was said and done, A little bit of everything, A great deal of none. Now when she sees in the village How village things go, Just when it seems to come in right, She says, 'I know! 'It's as when I was a farmer...' Oh never by way of advice! And she never sins by telling the tale To the same person twice.

Indian farmers grow maize in what is called a milpa. The term means “maize field,” but refers to something considerably more complex. A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama (a tuber), amaranth (a grain-like plant), and mucuna (a tropical legume). In nature, wild beans and squash often grow in the same field as teosinte, the beans using the tall teosinte as a ladder to climb toward the sun; below ground, the beans’ nitrogen-fixing roots provide nutrients needed by teosinte. The milpa is an elaboration of this natural situation, unlike ordinary farms, which involve single-crop expanses of a sort rarely observed in unplowed landscapes. Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks digestible niacin, the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, necessary to make proteins and diets with too much maize can lead to protein deficiency and pellagra, a disease caused by lack of niacin. Beans have both lysine and tryptophan, but not the amino acids cysteine and methionine, which are provided by maize. As a result, beans and maize make a nutritionally complete meal. Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, “is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.

Planted in apple orchards they are of benefit in preventing apple scab,

The water had got into the seams and joints of the world and washed away the glue. Lives and little universes broke their banks, mingling and bubbling over and flowing out to join the river. Plastic tricycles with peeling sticker eyes, photograph albums, Bic pens, dish brushes, barrettes, uprooted tomato plants. Comics spun giddily, socks sulked against windowsills.

Karma is nothing but the law of action. Whatever is our action, so will be the reaction. If we plant a tomato, we shouldn’t expect a mango. What we reap is what we sow!

Squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, and pumpkin are actually fruits. By definition these fruit-vegetables are considered fruits, since the meat of the plant surrounds the seeds. The fruit-vegetables contain both fructose and glucose so they absorb into the blood system slower than a vegetable of pure glucose. The fruit-vegetables are low in starch and cellulose, and have a low PUFA content.

An old man sat down next to me on the bus and noticed that I wasn’t from around there. “Who are you looking for?” “Well,” I began, “there used to be a camp here.” “Oh, the barracks? They dismantled the last of those buildings two years ago. People built themselves sheds and saunas out of the bricks. Took the soil back to their dachas for planting. Put camp wire around their gardens. My son’s place is out there. It’s so, you know, unpleasant…In the spring, the snows and rains leave bones sticking out of their potato patches. No one is squeamish about that sort of thing around here because they’re so used to it. There are as many bones as stones in this soil. People just toss them out to the edge of their property, stamp them down with their boots. Cover them up. It happens all the time. Just stick your hand in the dirt, run your fingers through it…” It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. Like I had passed out. Meanwhile, the old man turned to the window and pointed: “Over there, behind that store, they covered over the old cemetery. Behind that bathhouse, too.” I sat there, unable to breathe. What had I expected? That they had erected pyramids? Mounds of Glory?*4 The first line is now the street named after someone or other…Then the second line…I looked out the window, but I couldn’t see anything, I was blinded by tears. Kazakh women were selling their cucumbers and tomatoes at every bus stop…pails of blackcurrants. “Fresh from the berry patch. From my own garden.” Lord! My God…I have to say that…It was physically difficult for me to breathe, something was going on with me out there. In a matter of just a few days, my skin dried out, my nails started chipping off. Something was happening to my entire body. I wanted to fall down on the ground and lie there. And never get up. The steppe…it’s like the sea…I walked and walked until finally, I collapsed. I fell next to a small metal cross that was up to the crossbeam in the earth. Screaming, in hysterics. There was no one around…just the birds.

described my tomatoes and growing process to Alan (the tomato guru). He thought I might be watering my plants too much. When I wailed, “How can anyone tell what the right amount is?” He said, “You let them suffer. Hold off on the water until they just start to wilt—and then you save them. Suffer and save.

A plant can be pulled in many directions at once. Sunlight hitting a plant at an angle caises it to bend toward the rays, while the sinking statoliths within the plant's bending branches tell it to straighten up. These often conflicting signals enable a plant to situate itself in a position that is optimal for its environment. The tendrils of a vine, searching for a support to grab onto, will be attracted to the shade of the neighboring fence, and gravity will enable the vine to rapidly twirl around it. A plant on a windowsill will be pulled by the light and grow to one side, toward the sunny part of the sill, while the force of gravity will influence it to grow up at the same time. The smell of the tomato will pull Cuscuta to the side, while gravitropism will push it to keep growing upward. Just like Newtonian physics, the position of any part of the plant can be described as a sum of the force vectors acting upon it that tell a plant both where it is and which direction to grow.

Plant transplants outside according to the spacing the fully grown plants will need. Pay attention to the depth of the hole, and ensure that you don’t bury the stem in the soil (except in special cases—see Growing Tip on the following page). Take the temperature of the soil to make sure it is warm enough. (The soil should be at least 60 to 65 degrees F for planting warm-weather vegetables such as tomatoes or peppers.) Before planting any transplants outside, prepare them by hardening them off. GROWING TIP Tomato plants should be planted deep. Strip off all but the top four sets of leaves. Plant the entire rest of the plant below the soil line. Tomato plants will grow roots from the stem, making them stronger and healthier. Hardening off before Planting out Vegetable transplants grown inside a greenhouse (or your house) need to be hardened off (acclimated to the change in temperature and light) before they’re planted outside. Even if you buy plants that were sitting outside at a garden center, it’s a good idea to harden them off before planting. For all you know, the plants were taken from the greenhouse, loaded on a truck, and brought to the garden center on the same day you saw them sitting outside. How to Harden Off Transplants 1. Place plants in a sheltered location such as a porch or patio for the day, and bring them in at night. Do this for three or four days. 2. Next, leave them outside all day in the protected location. Do this for about a week. Don’t forget to water while you’re doing this! 3. Finally, move the plants from the sheltered location (the porch or patio) to a more exposed location (the front sidewalk or driveway). Leave them there for three or four days. 4. Wait for a cloudy day (if possible) and plant your plants in the garden. Planting out on a cloudy day will lower the stress that the plants experience.

Whether you grow your own transplants or buy them, here’s what you should plant outside as transplants and what you can grow from seed. Seeds Transplants Bean Basil Carrot Broccoli Chives Brussels sprouts Cucumber Cabbage Dill Cauliflower Lettuce Celery Okra Collards Parsley Eggplant Parsnip Kale Onion Leek Pea Pepper Pumpkin Spinach Radish Swiss chard Turnip Tomato Watermelon

Through the years I experimented with all different types of materials and frames. Finally, I settled upon one that was so simple, easy, and inexpensive to use that it was almost ridiculous. Then I began growing all different types of plants vertically. I originally thought I would need to design some special way to hold up and accommodate heavier fruits such as winter squash and pumpkins, but as it turned out, these plant vines seemed to understand the situation; the stem supporting the heavy fruit grows thicker and heavier as the fruit becomes larger. If you have a framework and support that will hold the plant, the plant will hold the fruit; it is as simple as that! Mother Nature always seems to know best. Pea and bean netting can be stretched taut across a box frame and held in place by four metal posts. Plants will then grow up through the netting and be supported. Best Material I use the strongest material I can find, which is steel. Fortunately, steel comes in tubular pipe used for electrical conduit. It is very strong and turns out to be very inexpensive. Couplings are also available so you can connect two pieces together. I designed an attractive frame that fits right onto the 4 × 4 box, and it can be attached to the wooden box with clamps that can be bought at any store. Or, steel reinforcing rods driven into the existing ground outside your box provide a very steady and strong base; then the electrical conduit slips snugly over the bars. It’s very simple and inexpensive to assemble. Anyone can do it—even you! To prevent vertically grown plants from shading other parts of the garden, I recommend that tall, vertical frames be constructed on the north side of the garden. To fit it into a 4 × 4 box, I designed a frame that measured 4 feet wide and almost 6 feet tall. Tie It Tight Vertically growing plants need to be tied to their supports. Nylon netting won’t rot in the sun and weather, and I use it exclusively now for both vertical frames and horizontal plant supports. It is very strong—almost unbreakable—and guaranteed for twenty years. It is a wonderful material available at garden stores and in catalogs. The nylon netting is also durable enough to grow the heavier vine crops on vertical frames, including watermelons, pumpkins, cantaloupes, winter and summer squashes, and tomatoes. You will see in Chapter 8 how easy it is to train plants to grow vertically. To hold the plants to the frame, I have found that nylon netting with 7-inch square openings made especially for tomato growing works well because you can reach your hand through. Make sure it is this type so it won’t cut the stem of the plant when it blows against it in the wind. This comes in 4-foot widths and can easily be tied to the metal frame. It’s sometimes hard to find, so call around.

You can buy plants and seeds that have some level of resistance to common diseases affecting those types of plants. Look for these types of abbreviations on plant tags, labels, and catalog descriptions: BCMW: Resistance to bean curly mosaic virus CMW: Resistance to cucumber mosaic virus Foc, Foc 1: Resistance to fusarium yellows PM: Resistance to powdery mildew PVY: Resistance to potato virus Y TMV: Resistance to tobacco mosaic virus ToMV: Resistance to tomato mosaic virus TSWV: Resistance to tomato spotted wilt virus V: Resistance to verticillium wilt Those are some of the most common abbreviations for the most common diseases, but it’s not an exhaustive list.

Certain vegetables will grow up trellises (wood, metal, or string). Certain plants need to have trellises to grow. Vegetables That Can Grow up Trellises Cucumber Pumpkin Squash Vegetables That Must Grow up Trellises or Lattices Pole bean Garden pea Vegetables That Need Stakes Eggplant Okra Pepper Vegetables That Need Cages Tomato

Spring flew by and summer quickly arrived; my belly grew right alongside the daylilies, zinnias, and tomatoes Marlboro Man’s mom had helped me plant in a small garden outside the house. For Marlboro Man, the coming of the baby proved to be an effective diversion from the aftermath of the previous fall’s market woes. More and more, it looked like Marlboro Man might have to sell some of his land in order to keep the rest of the ranch afloat. As someone who didn’t grow up on a ranch, I failed to feel the gravity of the situation. You have a problem, you have an asset, you sell the asset, you solve the problem. But for Marlboro Man, it could never be that simple or sterile. For a ranching family, putting together a ranch takes time--sometimes years, even generations of patiently waiting for this pasture or that to become available. For a rancher, the words of Pa in Gone With the Wind ring beautifully and painfully true: Land is the only thing worth working for…worth fighting for, worth dying for. Because it’s the only thing that lasts…The thought of parting with a part of the family’s ranch was a painful prospect; Marlboro Man felt the sting daily. To me it seemed like an easy fix; to Marlboro Man, it was a personal failure. There was nothing I could do to make it better except to be there to catch him in my arms every night, which I willingly and eagerly did. I was a soft, lumpy pillow. With heartburn and swollen ankles.

CHART 11.2: NUTRIENT COMPOSITION OF PLANT AND ANIMAL-BASED FOODS (PER 500 CALORIES OF ENERGY) Nutrient Plant-Based Foods* Animal-Based Foods** Cholesterol (mg) — 137 Fat (g) 4 36 Protein (g) 33 34 Beta-carotene (mcg) 29,919 17 Dietary Fiber (g) 31 — Vitamin C (mg) 293 4 Folate (mcg) 1168 19 Vitamin E (mg_ATE) 11 0.5 Iron (mg) 20 2 Magnesium (mg) 548 51 Calcium (mg) 545 252 * Equal parts of tomatoes, spinach, lima beans, peas, potatoes ** Equal parts of beef, pork, chicken, whole milk   As you can see, plant foods have dramatically more antioxidants,

HOW MUCH ROOM? Plants Per Square Foot Plants Per Two Square Feet Gourds (1) Melons (1) Tomatoes (1) Pumpkins (1) Cucumbers (2) Summer Squash (1) Pole Beans (8) Watermelon (1)   Winter Squash (1)

WE LEAVE THE DORM, and Ethan shows us the gym, where he proudly informs us that in one month he’s already doubled the weight he can curl, then the community room, which has an enormous flat-screen TV and a bunch of pinball and video games, then the computer room, and then his little corner patch of their big community garden, where he’s growing lettuce and beets. “But you don’t eat vegetables,” David says. “Sammy says food tastes better when you grow it yourself.” “It’s true,” I say. David rolls his eyes and makes a snorting sound. “It is,” I insist. “I once had a tomato plant, and I hate tomatoes, but I ate the one little tomato I succeeded in growing, and it was delicious. Then the plant died.” “I didn’t want to grow tomatoes,” Ethan says. “I don’t blame you. It only leads to heartbreak.

At least 90 percent of your diet should be from whole plant foods such as the following: Green vegetables—including kale, Swiss chard, broccoli, artichokes, string beans, asparagus, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, snow peas, and peas Yellow/orange vegetables—including carrots, butternut squash, winter squash, spaghetti squash, sweet potato, and corn Beans/legumes—including chickpeas, red kidney beans, lentils, and adzuki beans Fresh fruits—including blueberries, strawberries, kiwis, apples, oranges, grapes, pears, watermelon, and pomegranates (Eat dried fruits, including raisins and dates, only in small amounts.) Nonstarchy vegetables—including eggplant, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, and onions

Exciting, isn't it? The season? They're rare or unique breeds of plants and animals. Once all our tomatoes were like that. Before preservatives and supermarkets and this commercial food production hell we're living in. Breeds evolved in places based on one evolutionary principle: they tasted better. The point is not longevity or flawlessness. All of our vegetables were biologically diverse, pungent with the nuance of their breed. They reflected their specific time and space---their terroir.

a combination of all childhood memory / fields of / rice / sugarcane / wheat / barley / cows & buffaloes tilling soil / the red light / of dawn / and tomato plants...

[W]e may infer that it is also not possible to gather pink grapefruit from your juniper bushes, or pine nuts from your tomato plants, or lemons trom youur box hedge. Pursuing the analogy relentlessly, we may also surmise that you cannot send your child to a culinary school and expect to get back a mechanical engineer. You cannot send them to art school, and wonder why your son never became a doctor like you wanted. You can't pay for law school, and then be surprised when an attorney eventually shows up. We often act astonished when we have no right whatsoever to be surprised in any way. We say, wide-eyed with Aaron, that all we did was put in a bunch of gold, and "out came this calf" (Exod. 32:24). That has to rank as one of the lamest excuses in the Bible, and here we are, still using it. All we did was put in hundreds of billions of dollars, and out came this misbegotten culture. How could this have happened? We are frankly at a loss. And lest I be accused of being too oblique in the point I am seeking to make, you cannot send all the Christian kids off to be educated in a school system that is riddled with rank unbelief, shot through with relativism, and diseased with perverse sexual fantasies, and then wonder at the results you get.

I would be much wiser to cultivate the tomato plant rather than expend my life attempting to transition it into a stalk of corn. For in the attempt to do so, both will die and neither will feed me.

TIP: Want to get organic but budget and/or availability has you down? Get selective. Here’s the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) 2017 list of the “Dirty Dozen”—the top non-organic foods to avoid, due to their high content of potentially harmful pesticide residue as well as their “Clean 15” list of conventionally grown plants with the least amount of potentially harmful pesticides:*10 DIRTY DOZEN CLEAN 15 Strawberries Sweet Corn Spinach Avocados Nectarines Pineapples Apples Cabbage Peaches Onions Pears Sweet Peas Cherries Papayas Grapes Asparagus Celery Mangoes Tomatoes Eggplant Sweet Bell Peppers Honeydew Potatoes Kiwi Cantaloupe Cauliflower Grapefruit

My garden grows in its own good time. Every plant has its season. Lettuce comes up early and must be picked or else it will bolt. Kale gets planted late in the season because it loves the cool weather of fall. Asparagus takes years to prosper, and strawberries can take up to two seasons to provide a harvest. Frost-sensitive crops like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and zucchini love the sweltering, sultry heat of the depths of summer, when they propagate so passionately that the bees can barely keep up. Even though I know all of this, sometimes I can't wait to find out what's going to happen next.

Sunsets. Stargazing. The dream of a home with a garden. Tomato plants. Sunshine. Strawberry ice cream. New tattoos. Road trips. Mangos. All the books you haven’t read yet. Days spent at the beach. Violets. Saltwater. Plane tickets. Poetry.

When the frost is coming, she learned, the way to ripen tomatoes on the vine is to twist their roots. Pull until the earth cracks, until the spider-hairs below snap like cut strings. This tells the plant: Your end is near save what you can. Give up on growing taller; give up on leafing wide. Think only of the fruit, dangling in hard green fists. Exhaust yourself. Let your leaves shrivel and yellow. Nothing else matters. Push until there is nothing left of you but a dry stalk holding a round red globe aloft. Wither, pushing that one sweet fruit into ripeness, hoping that in summer something of you will sprout again.

I know my mother loved being a scientist, but she always said that she was born too late. Her real calling, she was sure, was to be a nineteenth- century farmwife. She sang while she canned tomatoes, stewed peaches, punched down the dough for bread

Recently, as I came across in my reading, researchers had found promising indicators of memory in plants. Others found that a wide variety of plants are able to distinguish themselves from others, and can tell whether or not those others are genetic kin. When such plants find themselves beside their siblings, they rearrange their leaves within two days to avoid shading them. Pea shoot roots appeared to be able to hear water flowing through sealed pipes and grow toward them, and several plants, including lima beans and tobacco, can react to an attack of munching insects by summoning those insects’ specific predators to come pick them off. (Other plants—including a particular tomato—secrete a chemical that cause hungry caterpillars to turn away from devouring their leaves to eat each other instead.)

Crop science is typically seen as the domestication of scrawny wild species to turn them into plump, useful food machines, a testament to human will and ingenuity. But Baluska objects to it being true "domestication" at all. "Domestication would be when one partner has more influence than the other one. But there is no evidence for this," he says. "A better word would be coevolution. We are changing them, but they are changing us." Clearly plants are capable of complex manipulation. Baluska winkingly hints at the thousands of natural plant chemicals we unwittingly ingest every time we eat a fruit or vegetable. "We don't know what they are doing with our brain," he says. "We can never be sure, when we are eating something nice and tasty, that there is not something in this tomato or apple that makes us believe it is the best food.

When the frost is coming, she learned, the way to ripen tomatoes on the vine is to twist their roots. Pull until the earth cracks, until the spider-hairs below snap like cut strings. This tells the plant: Your end is near—save what you can. Give up on growing taller; give up on leafing wide.

If I were to till the soil in my backyard, plant tomato seeds, and nourish the seedlings that sprout from them, I would have created an environment where tomatoes can thrive. The spirit realm is not so different. If I regularly worship in my home, then I have created an environment where the presence of God is attracted and can thrive. If I consistently get into angry arguments with my wife, then I have created an environment where the spirit of division and strife can thrive. These actions and thought patterns determine our spiritual environment.

The tomato crop growth variables were measured manually in eight plants randomly located in the greenhouse [339]. The following measurements were taken at a frequency of 8 days: Number of nodes, number of nodes of the first bunch, flower birth, curdle of fruits, number of nodes within the first fruit, number of nodes with the curdle of the first fruit, and its growth dynamics. On the other hand, six different plants were selected every 23 days to measure the leaf area, dry weight, and biomass of the different plant elements (roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits), where destructive methods were used to estimate their values.

Tomatoes: contain atropine which can cause dilated pupils, tremors and irregular heartbeat. The highest concentration of atropine is found in the leaves and stems of tomato plants, next is the unripe (green) tomatoes, followed by the ripe tomato.

A Sun-Blocker Rotation Trellised tomatoes, beans, peas, and cucumbers, along with corn, can grow 8 to 10 feet tall. To avoid these taller plantings casting shade on other crops, keep these in one rotation on the northeastern side of the garden.

Stagger Plantings for Better Control Even in the smallest garden, an important technique for keeping the work manageable is to plant in dribs and drabs: Plant a little lettuce seed now and a little more two weeks later. Though you’ll want to plant some crops all at one time — like peppers or tomatoes — planting small batches of many crops is a good garden habit to cultivate. Whatever size garden you tend, you’ll find that staggering the planting spreads out the harvest, and much of the attention that plants need in between, too. Instead of having a 20-foot-long row of lettuce or beets to thin on a given day, you’ll have only a foot or two of seedlings to thin. Cover with plastic soil that’s not yet planted to help it warm up, or cover it with grass clippings to keep it moist and suppress weeds. Or let the weeds germinate as a short-term cover crop and then slice them off before you plant your seeds.

Think for a moment of a tomato plant. A healthy plant can have over a hundred tomatoes on it. In order to get this tomato plant with all these tomatoes on it, we need to start with a small dried seed. That seed doesn’t look like a tomato plant. It sure doesn’t taste like a tomato plant. If you didn’t know for sure, you would not even believe it could be a tomato plant. However, let’s say you plant this seed in fertile soil, and you water it and let the sun shine on it. When the first little tiny shoot comes up, you don’t stomp on it and say, “That’s not a tomato plant.” Rather, you look at it and say, “Oh boy! Here it comes,” and you watch it grow with delight. In time, if you continue to water it and give it lots of sunshine and pull away any weeds, you might have a tomato plant with more than a hundred luscious tomatoes. It all began with that one tiny seed. It is the same with creating a new experience for yourself. The soil you plant in is your subconscious mind. The seed is the new affirmation. The whole new experience is in this tiny seed. You water it with affirmations. You let the sunshine of positive thoughts beam on it. You weed the garden by pulling out the negative thoughts that come up. And when you first see the tiniest little evidence, you don’t stomp on it and say, “That’s not enough!” Instead, you look at this first breakthrough and exclaim with glee, “Oh boy! Here it comes! It’s working!” Then you watch it grow and become your desire in manifestation.