On 27 February 2020, I received a gift of 24 different heirloom tomato seeds from a gardening friend in Florence, Italy. They were enjoying the last days of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and we were enjoying the last days of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The seeds were cleared by the South African customs office and on that second last day of February, I collected the brown padded envelope from my post box at the bottom of Signal Hill, Cape Town.
When I saw the Firenze postal stamp, I had an idea of the contents of the envelope. Somehow, it is still exciting to receive post from overseas. Opening the envelope, I was greeted by two dozen individually labeled little plastic bags of tomato seeds. Reading the foreign sounding names of these little seeds inspired a new level of excitement.
I could not wait to see what the tomatoes would look like and researched them immediately. I recorded the different names matched with photos on a spreadsheet for reference purposes. I decided to dedicate two vegetable beds to tomatoes in the summer vegetable garden of 2020/21 at Towerwater.
Because our homemade compost tends to contain a lot of tomato seeds, I decided not to risk sowing them directly in the beds as I usually prefer. I decided to rather buy clean ‘uncontaminated’ soil in which to sow them in individual pots. I labelled each pot, carefully repeating the names on the packets of seeds. The pots containing their well-traveled seeds were nursed in Cape Town until the newly sprouted seedlings were strong enough to be planted in their designated beds at Towerwater.
The courtyard at Elmwood in Cape Town
proved not to be the best place to nurse seedlings that need a lot of sun and a
constant soil temperature. The germination went well and soon every seedling
came up. But the progress to the vegetative stage was terribly slow. Although
the seedlings were rather small, I decided to take them to Towerwater and plant
them out.
I enlisted my dibber to make the holes for the planting. When I wanted to record which plant was being planted in which position in each bed, I discovered to my horror that snails had eaten all the pot labels. Keith helped me to record as many as we could decipher from the half-eaten labels. The seedlings from the pots where the labels had been destroyed, would have to be identified as much as possible using the spreadsheet that I made that included photos of the different tomatoes.
Towerwater did its name proud. Like magic the seedlings bolted more in one week than they had in four, in Cape Town. I could sigh a sigh of relief. After a slow start, and with snails destroying the labels on the pots, the seedlings which had sprouted from the seeds of Florence were going to survive.
The seedlings loved the African summer. Like seasoned travelers they were making the best of the long days and warm nights. The first sign of something completely different was the blue tinted tomatoes that appeared in the two beds.
In their orderly rows, the variety of assorted heirloom tomatoes were a pleasure to behold. One could not help but be enchanted by their various delicious colours and shapes. I am enjoying my tomato gift from Florence, almost as much as I enjoyed visiting the Uffizi Gallery there some years ago.
Like Neruda, my tomatoes make me want to write odes to the simple things in life. To sing the praises of a fruit that enchants a meal with its colour and simplicity. A slice of tomato on a slice of freshly baked bread with farm butter and a crack of salt and pepper, is a feast fit for a king.
I am rich with the generosity of a friend in Florence who gifted me more than heirloom seeds. It is a gift of the enchanted experience of flavours, textures and colours. The lifecycle of a simple seed that spans four seasons and two continents, where two gardens meet in a shared passion for the earth and her heirloom vegetables.
