Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes

What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes?

Only two things that money can't buy

That's true love & homegrown tomatoes.

--Guy Clark, “Homegrown Tomatoes”

First, let’s get the eggplant thing out of the way, so that in a minute, if you complain that you don’t like Swiss chard, collard, or kale, and I tell you you’re probably wrong, you’ll know that I’m speaking not only from authority, but with no small measure of empathy.

For some reason, I am unable to convince people that I don’t like eggplant. They simply refuse to believe it. It’s as if I’m saying, “I have a family of unicorns in my garage” or “Sarah Palin scored 800 on the verbal SAT” – i.e., they consider my not liking eggplant to be outside the finite set of possible realities at this particular time in this particular universe. “You’ve never had it cooked properly” is one explanation for this otherwise (to them) mystifying phenomenon, usually followed by “Well, you’ve never had it the way Imake it.” Then there’s “But eggplant has different tastes, depending on how you cook it,” “How long has it been since you’ve tried it?”, and (my favorite), “You can’t not like eggplant.”

I do not like eggplant. I’d eat green eggs and ham before I’d eat eggplant. I can even explain why I don’t like eggplant: I don’t like eggplant because, to me, it tastes terrible.

So, this is probably how you feel about Swiss chard, collard, and kale.

If you don’t like it, you’ve probably never had it cooked properly, or, at least, you’ve never had it the way I make it. Yeah, yeah, see above; I know what I said about eggplant and me. But really, have you ever seriously tried it? Here’s how I, an indifferent cook at best, prepare it: steamed, then laced with red vinegar – any vinegar, actually; or stir-fried with garlic and onions. That’s it. And it’s great. Especially – and here’s the key – when you picked it about half an hour ago.

Because this is San Diego. And you can do it.

You may say you have no talent as a gardener, and you may be right: I know I don’t. You may say you can’t make yourself read gardening books, and I’m with you: I have a shelf of them, every one barely cracked. You may say you can’t be bothered, and I sympathize: I really don’t put much work into my garden.

But here’s what I get out of a measly, semi-neglected, 12’ x 6.5’ rectangle of land in our small back yard:

From January through April, a lot more red leaf and green leaf lettuce, arugula, and romaine than we – a family of three – can eat, and enough Swiss chard, kale, and collard to supply us with a fresh green vegetable almost every night of the week. From July through September, it’s homegrown tomatoes; depending on the year, we either have almost enough (most years) or enough to give away to friends, putting them deeply, irrevocably, forever in our debt (see Clark, Guy, “Homegrown Tomatoes,” above).

I submit to you that you’ve never tasted lettuce, or any vegetable, unless you’ve had it straight from the garden. Every minute (almost) counts.

And if you have at your disposal a similar 78 square feet of dirt lying under a reasonable amount of sun, you can get the same yield. Probably more. I mean, I more or less stick seeds in the ground, wait a few weeks, and start harvesting. Okay, it’s “more,” not “less,” but not much more.

There’s compost, provided free by our city-owned (so far) Miramar landfill. When it doesn’t rain, I water. I stake the tomato plants, start up a few in pots as well as in the garden, spread mulch (again, free from the landfill) around them, and once a month give ’em some tomato food and dust for tomato hornworms (my only pesticide; without it, there’s no point in even trying to grow tomatoes around here). I thin the winter vegetables in their rows (takes maybe 15 minutes) according to the instructions on the seed packets. I weed the vegetables a couple of times (about 20 minutes each time), until they’ve got a good start, then say the hell with it.

The real time-consuming part, for me, is 1) harvesting – wading in and picking off the leaves for that night’s salad and veggies; and 2) standing around admiring the thing. (My wife, peering out the screen door: “What are you doingout there?” Me: “Nothin’.”)

Growing your own produce is a good thing for so many reasons: The food tastes better, it’s better for you, it saves money, it reduces your carbon footprint, and it’s so enormously gratifying that it’s just gotta be good for your soul.

But no matter how you slice it, I still don’t like eggplant.