On Tomatoes, and How Love of Diversity Makes the World a Better Place

in Natural Medicine3 years ago

It's not been a good season for tomatoes. It's not just me - at the Wholefoods co-op we've been talking about how they aren't quite forming fruit, despite lots of bees.

In the greenhouse, the black cherries are doing extraordinary well - I'm bringing in fat handfuls. There's an early ripening roma that's grown a few green fruit in the front vegetable patch. Everything else though - meh. Great leaves, lots of bees - but not enough fruit for this time of the year. It hasn't been hot enough, we think. La Nina, I'm both grateful for you (the apples are plentiful) and I'm shaking my fist at you.

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As I pick warm cherries and black pot chillis in the greenhouse, exploding the sour fruit between my teeth, I think about how this world needs diversity more than ever. We appreciate it in nature. Monoculture is of the old ways - we simply cannot have one crop over many, because if changing weather patterns, disease or insects destroy that crop, there are others that might provide for us. Next year, I'll plant more in the greenhouse, and a lot of different varieties of tomato, trying to figure out which one does best in what season. Black cherries of course, are on the list. I've already saved the seed to pass on to the community at large.

This year though, tomato wise, my efforts aren't enough. I'm less than in the tomato growing world, jealously checking to see if anyone else has a better crop than me, if they are more tomatoe-ly rich than me. They aren't - thank god, as I'd feel so inferior. Yes, I'm joking - I just want more tomatoes.

I think about how we can agree that biodiversity is important. We know intensive farming and monocrops are bad, and companion planting, successive sowing, heirloom varieties that have stood the test of time, and various varieties that work in your area are good.

Somehow, we don't see this with people.

Bodies become political. America is founded on equality between men - that is, white landowner men. Black, disabled, LTBQI, fat, woman, poor - all less than. All needing to climb some hierachical ladder to prop up a system. Buy this, conform to that. Do as you are told. Stay where you are whilst the socially mobile enjoy the power they do. The rich, the famous, the beautiful - that's something we should all be working to attain to achieve happiness, wealth, social standing.

Yet we need diversity in people as much as we need it in nature. We need the strong in body as much as we need the empathetic, we need the rational just as much as we need the emotional, the artists as much as the scientists. We need to look upon others not with acceptance for who they might be, but with love. We need to find radical love for ourselves so that we can love others unconditionally, and thereupon not use them for our own gain, or keep them down to make ourselves feel better. In this way we stop striving to climb the imaginary ladder we've created with our institutions - capitalist, educational, relationships, all - we just don't need the ladder.

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In this way we achieve a more socially just world.

How beautiful the world could be if we understand that it took many varieties of tomatoes to make a productive, abundant and nourishing garden. Biodiversity is absolutely neccessary to feed us year to year. By this extension of my greenhouse musing, it takes all of us - every single one of us, no matter the body - to make the world a better place for all.

With Love,

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Oh, no! I have a hard time eating tomatoes; maybe it's because of supermarket tomatoes that are full of agrotoxics, which scare the living soul out of me.

I like what you've said about diversity. I don't like what the media pushes on us though--ya know, the minority narrative--, whose only purpose is to divide us even more. The ultimate minority is the individual, as awkward as we all are. If they put us in groups, we'll never be able to unite.

 3 years ago  

Yes, that's so true. And we believe the media instead of our hearts - make them 'those people' not 'us'. So many sorrows in the world could be avoided!

Oh yeah you can't beat homegrown.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Dad is growing stuff there, remember we had a problem with fruit trees; they wouldn't grow past a certain point due to our productive soil being too shallow. Looks like he solved the issue. It's sad though that it's 3 hours from here =/

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I bet those tomatoes taste amazing though.

 3 years ago  

They were!

Sending you some tomato love from last season! Don't despair and keep repeating the main tomato mantra: there is no such thing as enough varieties!

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(planning to reduce ours to under 25 this year tho)

 3 years ago  

Wow - what a selection! None of my yellow tomatoes self seeded this year - they normally do!

Well lucky you, we never have self seeding tomatoes! Best of luck with the tomato sets next year! 😉

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 3 years ago  

Oh! Even to have some fresh tomatoes to eat off the vine! We are so far away from even thinking about tomatoes!
Love the analogy for diversity - it does make for a much richer, fuller world with all the variations creating beauty in the whole!


Posted on NaturalMedicine.io