Tomato Flashback

Back in the early 1980s I got a job in the Centre of Latin American Studies at Cambridge University. It was on the top floor of the History Faculty building, one of James Stirling’s better-known flops. It was an L-shaped building with a half pyramid of glass leading up to my office door—single-paned glass, in a part of the world that was damp and cold in winter but whose gardeners could grow prize cucumbers in greenhouses in summer. (Air conditioning was not on anyone’s radar in those days.) We froze in winter but in summer I grew tomatoes outside my office on the south-facing windowsill.

I had no idea what I was doing so I asked one of the library assistants, a great gardener, for help. (The Centre at the time was a hotbed of Marxism and Phil was a Thatcherite, through-and-through; it made for interesting interactions.) Phil suggested a Growbag. This was a bag of peat you simply cut into and planted your tomatoes. Pick off the growth at leaf intersections, he said; tie the plants to canes; and pinch out all growth past the fourth set of flowers.

Tomatoes in this hemisphere seem to be grown much more anarchically. You encourage multiple, out-of-control, growths at leaf intersections. No canes, here: cages. Tame the anarchic beasts. I’ve been told to plant them in VERY deep holes because tomatoes put out deep, deep roots.

Some of my planted tomatoes have their first flowers now. I’ve never done the anarchic thing before, tomato-wise, but Johnny the Beekeeper says it’s really hard to kill tomatoes, especially in this climate…