Reflections

Winning the Tomato Lottery

Story and photography by Tom Adkinson

Summer means fresh tomatoes but is it possible to win the tomato lottery two years in a row?

I’ve planted tomatoes, okra, and peppers for years with only modest success, but 2020 surprised me. I won the Tomato Lottery. I didn’t do anything special, but I had so many tomatoes that there were weeks I had to give them away. Other years, I would have hoarded every luscious one. Early Girls, Better Boys, Golden Cherries, Super 100s. They all flourished. It was as if they were telling the Coronavirus, “Take that, you lousy virus! We’ll not let you rob Tom of all joy. We’re destined for salads, BLTs, and ’mater sandwiches, and we’ll make him happy.” The tomatoes truly were a blessing as the pandemic put a damper on normal life. They fostered extra conversations with neighbors and generated new acquaintances. One morning as I was plucking my newspaper from the end of the driveway, a jogger whom I didn’t know passed by. “Want some tomatoes?” I hollered out of the blue. She laughed and then nodded affirmatively. “I’ll have a sack of cherry tomatoes by my mailbox when you return,” I called out as she plodded away. The sack disappeared, and I never figured out who the jogger was, but the encounter certainly started that day well. Some of my plants were what I called rescue tomatoes — four seedlings found in a Kroger supermarket parking lot. I suspect they had fallen from someone’s cart, and they definitely were the worse for wear from sitting on the hot asphalt. I took them home, quickly planted two that were not mortally wounded, and re-rooted the other two. They all flourished. I have no idea what variety they were, but they made excellent spaghetti sauce. Tomatoes weren’t my only garden success. Early in the spring, I met Sammy the Skink and enjoyed watching him bask in the sun, skitter away when spooked, and change colors as he matured. He posed regally for me one morning when he was dressed stylishly in orange and gray. Winning the Tomato Lottery was so inspiring that I devoted serious thought and energy to this year’s tomatoes. Last fall, I sowed clover, peas, and oats for a soil-nourishing cover crop, which matured nicely. Through the winter, an emerald green island glowed in the ugly brown sea that was the rest of my yard.

When pandemic worries persisted this spring, my 2021 tomato quest energized me. My garden isn’t all that big, but I took extra time turning the soil. On warm days, I’d devote an hour or two to spade work, step back to admire my progress, and save the next section for another day. There was no reason to hurry.

I bought several varieties, worried about late frosts, fenced off the plants from marauding rabbits (which are not cute, no matter what you say), and now am eager for red jewels to mature. Just for insurance, I planted extra okra, because okra thrives almost without regard to the skill of the gardener. A bumper crop of okra will be some solace if I don’t win the Tomato Lottery two years in a row.

Travel and outdoor writer Tom Adkinson tempts the gardening gods annually in Nashville, Tenn. He is a Marco Polo member of the Society of American Travel Writers and author of “100 Things to Do in Nashville Before You Die.”

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