My Lonely Indoor Tomato

PASSIONS | by MOLLY MARTIN

LIVING IN A DOWNTOWN APARTMENT WITH NO DECK, I sometimes get a hankering for more gardening that our many houseplants just can’t satisfy — particularly of the edible kind.

© MOLLY MARTIN

Some herbs do just fine, especially rosemary, thyme and (sometimes) basil. Once I tried to grow mesclun in an indoor window box, only to discover that aphids like mesclun, too, and being on the third floor didn’t keep them from finding it.

Years ago I tried some fast-ripening cherry tomatoes and wound up with at least a few, but most didn’t get past the green stage. Last year the tomato itch struck again, and I scratched it by buying a plant more than a foot tall, with a couple of flowers already in bloom.

Just one of those flowers yielded a tomato, but it grew nicely, and I moved it to an even sunnier window, and watered faithfully, and staked it when it got a little heavy. It even turned red and everything looked so promising.

But then: When to pick it? There was only one, and I wanted it to be just right. Certainly I didn’t want to pick it too early and have it ripen on the kitchen counter, like store-bought tomatoes do all year long.

So I watched, and waited, and watched. And one day I saw that the skin was puckering a little. Egads. Yep, I’d waited too long, and it had started to rot. And my lonely tomato went not even into a compost pile (since we have none) to nourish someone’s future vegetables, but into the garbage. It was like flushing a dead pet goldfish down the toilet.

This year, I think, farmer’s market tomatoes.