Sep 1, 2023 4 min read

Every morning I open the patio door and walk out to find a couple of sad little tomatoes waiting for me. On a good morning, the day after lots of hot sunshine, I’ll pick a handful of fruit the size of jawbreaker candies. On bad days, as this morning, my harvest is paltry: just a few cherry tomatoes the size of blueberries.

What happened to my tomato crop this year?

Not having a yard, I grew them in planters – several bucket-shaped ones and a large rectangular one I built from wood. All contained high-quality potting soil and holes for drainage. The plants were started in the greenhouse of a friend who knows more about growing tomatoes than I ever would.

One day in early summer we planted the babies, gave them a good watering and a talking to, and pushed them out into the sunshine. By July they were covered in yellow blossoms.

“We’re in for a good crop,” I told myself each time I went out there to water, which was often. Even the day after a rain, I would poke my fingers down to find dry soil and would water. All through July, the blossoms bloomed.

That first little green marble appeared one morning, and I declared my patio garden to be off and running. I’d visit several times a day, counting each green fruit as it erupted overnight as if by magic.

Sunny days would turn them orange. One morning I found an unexpected little yellow pear-shaped fruit, the result of some confusion in the greenhouse, I suppose. They hung there like bells, waiting to be picked.

I love tomatoes the way some people love wine. My favorite part of working on a farm during college summers was tomato time, when I would carry salt packets in my pockets to season the tomatoes I’d occasionally eat while picking. My favorite breakfast is a half a bagel topped with cream cheese and a slice of tomato, with salt and pepper. I’ve been known to miss that treat so much in the off-season that I would get an inferior bagel and top it with a woefully inadequate store-bought stem tomato.

To avoid all the carbs now, I usually have scrambled eggs for breakfast, with some tomato. That’s what sends me out to the patio every morning.

The San Marzano tomatoes have succumbed to blossom rot. There’s fruit, and it’s ripe, but brown holes cover the bottoms. I break off the bad parts and toss them over the hill for my yard bunny to enjoy. Some mornings I’ll get a few of the jawbreaker-sized fruit. I’ll slice it up for breakfast, but they are bitter and woody. And the teensy ones are hardly worth the effort. I pick them, and then pop them into my mouth. They’re sweet – sorta.

What climate factors are at play on my patio? Were the hot days too hot? Were the plants doomed from the start? Did I water too much? Did the spotted lantern flies do this?

My parents have a lovely tomato crop from their garden this summer. And my friend Gina, who got some of the same seedlings that I got, has a bumper crop. She’s spent the summer canning and roasting and freezing.

Me, I’m limping through breakfasts with a lowly home-grown or two. I go out there each morning hoping to to find a couple more of the yellow pear-shaped ones, because they are tasty. But that plant is selfish.

Thankfully, my parents are not. Each time I visit, I see a row of beautiful, heavy, ripe tomatoes on the kitchen counter.

“Take some home,” my mom says, offering something my own plants have chosen not to give me.