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IF YOU COUNT THE STEPS from my back door to the vegetable garden, you’ll arrive at somewhere between 70 and 80, depending on the size of your steps. On most mornings, the journey is all business—head down, basket in hand, off to snip yellow crookneck squash and short, fat pickling cucumbers before they swell like balloons in the heat and humidity. The taste of those tender sweet squash never having graced refrigeration is unlike anything you can buy at the store. And slender, prickly Japanese cucumbers have never known a bitter day in their life.
But truthfully, I’d walk miles just for the tomatoes—big red Amish Brandywines as well as smaller, orangey Jeune Flames, clustered on the plant like 15-year-old debutantes at a first dance. Blushing Bradleys and mottled Cherokee Purples have hidden in the bush most of the summer, but now, bright red, they can’t hide anymore and are finally ready to land on soft bread, mayonnaise, and a sliver of crispy bacon.
I hadn’t tasted a faintly acidic Black Beauty tomato with a dark purplish crown on top before this summer, or fat, sweet yellow Pineapple tomatoes. I know the jolly golden Sungolds, and I love to pop a ripe one in my mouth. They seldom make it back to the kitchen, somehow. If you wait to pick them until they are deeply golden, they move past fruit and into something more from the dessert menu.
The garden is mostly about tomatoes, but I always grow beans. Pole beans—flat Kentucky Wonder—have intertwined up the sides of two arched trellises. Italian Romano beans have slithered up a wall made from three posts and stretchy plastic netting. You can’t miss the half dozen sweet basil plants with leaves the size of your palm. They soak in this heat like snowbirds new to Florida, and all summer long their leaves are trimmed and ground into pesto with garlic, salt, and olive oil. Two rogue acorn squash plants mistakenly replaced the butternut squash in my spring plant order, and these vagabonds are snaking out of their bed and down the wood-chip path. I wonder if they’re planning an escape while I sleep.
It’s a locked-in situation, this garden. I live surrounded by nature and have lost too many blackberries to deer and spinach to invading rabbits, so this year an 8-foot black net fence surrounds it all. At the front is a white picket border and gate, that along with the cedar raised beds adds a down-home yet organized feel. There is some room for whimsy—like planting a beloved kale in one corner with partial shade. This Red Russian kale has been with me for four years, providing fall leaves for salads and soups and reappearing reliably each spring. I’ve named it ‘’mother kale’’ for its perseverance. On the way back to the kitchen, I walk under a red cedar tree that’s nearly as old as I am, tread on brown river rock crunching under my tall green garden boots, past rosemary reaching to the sun, the unmistakeable aroma of French lavender, variegated hostas surrounding another old red cedar tree, to the cool gray stone path leading to the back door. I’ll take those same 76 steps tomorrow for tomatoes and the next day and the next until they’re gone.
How about you? How far will you walk for a homegrown tomato?
Hope you’re savoring summer tomatoes in your neck of the woods, whether they’re peeled, unpeeled, salted, sugared, or drizzled with olive oil. I’ve unlocked my pan con tomato recipe from last year for everyone to make right now. Today, I’m at the Atlanta Gift Mart with my new book, but I’ll be sharing more tomato recipes when I return, and in particular, a fabulous Calabrian peach and tomato sauce. Enjoy! 🍅 - xo, Anne
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