In the middle of World War II, Australian prime minister John Curtin wrote a letter to every school kid: please plant tomatoes. He was right.
1. Tomatoes love hot dry summers. As long as you can give their roots a bucket of bathwater every few days they will thrive when lettuce wilts and cucumbers get downy mildew. Depressed by drought stained paddocks? Your tomatoes leaves will stay green, and the tomatoes juicy and even sweeter from the heat. Where there is harvest, there is hope.
2. If you want to look like a brilliant gardener, grow tomatoes. One well grown bush, fed with hen manure or its commercial equivalent and watered well can give you more than 50kg of fruit. I know, because that is how much I measured from one bush that grew out of the old manure pile by the chook house, till finally I gave up counting. If you are a generous gardener, grow tomatoes. Take baskets of them to every social occasion and in to work. (If your boss promotes you after a single taste, you may thank me.)
3. If you are a lazy gardener, grow tomatoes. Even neglected tomato bushes will still fruit. (One grew in a crack in the concrete at my high school). Cherry tomatoes are the easiest to grow, and climbing yellow pear tomatoes. Cherry tomato skins are slightly too tough for all but the most determined fruit fly, so they are less likely to need fruit fly netting as they ripen to keep the little wrigglies out.
4. If you are an orderly, disciplined gardener, plant tomatoes for a neat and satisfying vegie patch. Mulch them up to their lowest leaves so they can put out new roots along their stems; feed them once a week with hen manure or similar - it is very hard to overfeed a tomato - water at least twice a week and pick every day to discourage fruit fly. Stake them well, so it is easy to pick the fruit, and also because black snakes love to lurk under sprawled tomato bushes - it disguises their scent. If the bushes are well staked (you may need several stakes, to stake up the branches too) the snakes have nowhere to hide.
5. If you have kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews or young neighbours, grow three shapes or colour of cherry tomatoes so they can have the fun of picking them and eating them on the spot. Every kid needs to experience guzzling in a garden.
6. If you want to show you are a gourmet, grow tomatoes, the big thick-fleshed Roma ones or Beefsteak for cooking, Green Zebra, Black Krim: whatever is going to give you a multi-coloured plate of sliced tomatoes drizzled with excellent olive oil, two drops of genuine balsamic vinegar, a touch of garlic and torn up basil leaves. Top with sliced bococinni or scatter on goat's cheese.
7. If you want to help save the planet, grow tomatoes. Every one you eat, or that you give to others to eat, means fewer travel miles per calorie, less carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere, less toxic pesticide or fungicide as you can put fruit fly netting over them to keep out pests and if you pick and eat daily you won't need fungicide, especially if you plant more tomatoes in January - young tomato bushes are more resistant to blights, mildews et al.
8. If you want to encourage everyone you know to grow at last some tucker, even if it's on their patio, pots on the front steps, or sprawling from a hanging basket, or a luxurious ''green wall'' under grow lights, grow tomatoes. It is a cliché that a home-grown tomato is fragrant, juicy and divinely delicious. It is also true. Although I have not made a proper study of the subject, I suspect that 64.8 per cent of people who are given a basket of home-grown tomatoes will then decide they need to grow their own.
9. There is no point growing tomatoes if you don't have fresh basil to scatter on them. Grow tomatoes so you will be forced to grow basil too.
10. If you grow basil and tomatoes you will be enticed into eating luscious, easy-to-make salad meals, like alternating slices of tomato and avocado and bococinni cheese or goat's cheese, scattered with basil and pine nuts. You will be seized with a deep desire to make a tomato sandwich, the kind made with well-buttered bread, or where the tomato slices tops a hunk of sour dough, with a touch of black pepper, olive oil and basil on top.
11. Tomatoes are easy to freeze, though they will be soggy when they thaw - perfect for cooking. Toss them whole into the freezer, or in a rich, thick tomato and basil sauce for pasta, tomato soup in winter, or a sauce over cous cous, or to give cold day stews that ''umami'' flavour which is why tomato sauce is so popular: it adds flavour where there is none.
12. It really isn't a proper summer without tomatoes, the rich, juicy ''no way can I slice this neatly'' kind, the ones that have never appeared in a supermarket in the history of this planet, unless they are already in the basket of a gardener who has just popped into buy some milk on their way to present the world's best tomatoes to a friend.
This week I am:
- Mourning the two kiwi fruit vines that blew over in the gales. I planted them 38 years ago, and the trunks are twisted are wonderful. Bryan has cut them back, the trunks have sprung vertical again, so hopefully they will sprout. Kiwi are tough.
- Discovering that about half a tonne of kiwi fruit vine does not daunt a hippeastrum. It bent over then straightened up again as soon as the load was lifted. It has even put out another flagrant red flower.
- Glad that the wallabies and wombats enjoy kiwi fruit leaves in drought years. I can almost hear Wild Whiskers murmur: Mine! All mine!
- Delighted that chopped-up kiwi fruit vines makes an excellent mulch for avocado trees.
- Watching the deciduous trees put out a few cautious branches of leaves, no more, which is why these trees have already survived several droughts, and I hope this one as well.
- Rejoicing that Bryan planted a cutting from an old-fashioned purple bougainvillea 25 years ago. Purple bougainvillea is so rampant it can become a weed in hot climates, but it's the only kind that survives our cold winters. It's now covering about a quarter hectare of pittosporum trees and fence, and no matter how hot this summer gets, it keeps blooming.
