The center piece, the greatest focus, in my organic vegetable garden, is my heirloom tomatoes. Every year around mid-January, I pour over my tomato bible, Amy Goldman’s, The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World’s Most Beautiful Fruit
In February, I order organic seeds from Seeds of Change, the Seed Savers Exchange, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Tomato Fest, and my favorite, Laura Baldwin’s, Garden In the Koop.
By March, I’m spending hours starting the seeds, repotting and making sure the emerging plants have just the right light, food and water, and through April, I fastidiously tend to my promising crop.
By late May, my organic tomato plants are begging to go outside, and after a few days of hardening off – the process of acclimating the fragile tomato plants to the outdoors – I plant my 25 or so heirloom varieties in the well worked and organically fed soil.
Several years ago we did some work for Breyers® Ice Cream, and sitting in their company cafeteria, a brand manager asked me, “Why in God’s name would you spend hours, weeks, and months on growing tomatoes when you can buy them in the store?”
I often ask myself the same question when I’m struggling with the weeding, staking, and incessant bug removal from my emerging tomato fruit, until sometime around mid-July, when I taste my first ripe tomato, and like a teenager after his first soulful kiss, I get weak in the knees and fall in love with my garden once again.
This year, though, as I began my first major weeding process, I discovered hundreds, truly hundreds, of emerging heirloom tomato plants. Between the blue Peruvian potatoes, Red Zeppelin onions, cilantro, cucumbers, marigolds, dill, Calabrese broccoli, kale, Genovese basil, red and yellow carrots, French breakfast radishes, purple pole beans and gorgeous shell peas, were countless tomato volunteers, self-seeding plants returning to life after winter dormancy.
For all my inside and outside work through the year, including starting the seeds, feeding and turning the compost, allowing all the plants to return their energy back into the soil in the Findhorn tradition, planting marigolds and other flowers and herbs as a natural pest deterrent, mulching, pruning and surrounding every plant with love and light, with absolutely no effort from me, I am rewarded with an abundance of healthy, productive, and multi-variety heirloom tomato volunteers.
Although I don’t garden for profit, if I did nothing this year but turned the soil, my garden would now be producing enough heirloom tomatoes to feed our neighborhood, and at standard Hamptons farm stand (Plum TV video) prices, create a very substantial annual revenue.
Sadly, I won’t be keeping but a few tomato volunteers, as we need the space and light for the other vegetable and flower plants. Yet, as I gently pluck each volunteer from the ground, returning it back to the compost, I silently give each plant my thanks and gratitude for growing in my garden with the promise, if I so desired, of effortlessly fulfilling my heart’s longing: luscious, delicious, plump and juicy fruit.
I need to give more thought to the volunteers in my life.
Candace, my bride, after 22 years of marriage, often volunteers a hug, a book, a reminder, an idea, or inspiring offer to walk the ocean beach together with our family and dog. Son, Connor, volunteers his time, smile, and humor even when he’s exhausted, and favorite daughter, Molly, volunteers her voice, compassion, and patience almost every day.
For over 115 years, Volunteers of America empower at-risk youth, the disabled, released prisoners, the homeless, addicts, and many more to live happy, healthy, productive lives.
The teachers at our schools, police, fire fighters, emergency and military personnel, along with doctors, nurses and neighbors across the globe, especially now in time of natural disasters, volunteer some form of love and grace every day.
My clients volunteer ideas, feedback, and referrals helping us grow a sustainable, profitable, business model, and now, as I round the corner on finishing my book, One Less, One More™ – Follow Your Heart, Tell Your Story, Change the World, both colleagues and friends volunteer their thoughts and deeply personal insights on their life experiences, intimately contributing to the work.
I won’t stop the process of planning, preparing and harvesting my garden. Still, I will look harder for the volunteers in my life, encouraging them to grow and flourish within the safety and protection of my care, as they, without asking, contribute to my well being, happiness and success. And in so doing, I will also look for opportunities to serve, to volunteer, to positively come from my heart and change lives.
Join me and follow your heart, tell your story and change the world.
So, where are your volunteers?
