Survival of the Species

Puttering in the garden is the only activity that sets my brain free from the daily concerns of running a farm business, wondering what’s for dinner, will I have time to bathe my dirty dog tonight, what are those (bleeping) politicians going to screw up next, and so on.  It’s impossible to have stress in the garden, and that’s one of the reasons I spend so much time out there.  Time to recover from daily brain damage, time to listen to the birds, time to touch the dirt/compost/vermiculite/peat mixture that our veggies love to sink their feet into, to feel the cool greenness of our growing “children” who want nothing more than to end up on our dinner plates.

We had “Dad’s Old Fashioned” tomatoes growing out there… seeds from my father’s farm in France… and they always produce monster fruits that we hope will mature before the first frost.  But sadly, I usually underestimate the amount of space each plant would require, and the tomato beds end up massively overpopulated and crowded to the choking point. 

Last year, some of our babies didn’t make it because of this “overpopulation” situation.  A few of the weaker plants succumbed to stem rot, a mysterious malady that strikes when air circulation at the base of the plant is insufficient.  This causes the bottom part of the plant to begin to die, while the upper part remains unaware, at first, and continues to bud, bloom and set fruit.  This past summer, however, was very successful, with the exception of a tomato virus injected by tiny thrips in early spring.  But we ate our last delicious, juice-running-down-your-arms BLT the first week in December this year, so no complaints.

But what’s really interesting is that I have discovered that fruiting plants appear to have intelligence.  I’m talking about real intelligence, programmed into their DNA over millennia, which helps ensure the survival of the species even under the most disastrous circumstances.  Somehow, at some point in the progression of this stem rotting process, the entire plant becomes self-aware, accepts its impending doom, and begins to gather its remaining energy for one last burst:  the plant selects the ripest or healthiest of all its fruits and channels EVERYTHING toward that one fruit, casting off all others, banking everything on ensuring that one loaded seed packet will mature and become a garden full of new baby plants. 

All the main stems then begin to turn brown, the leaves die, and the only remaining green areas on the plant are surrounding that one desperate fruit.  It seems impossible for this to occur with no sustenance able to enter the plant from its rotted roots.  How does the plant know?  And how does the plant manage this?

And the baby tomato fruit continues to grow, begins to fade into yellow, and orange, and quickly to red, just as the last gasp of stem support dies away, and the tomato drops off onto the ground.  Alive.  Healthy.  Full of ripe seeds.  Ready to procreate.

It’s indeed one of the major miracles of life.  The supreme sacrifice of the parent for the future of the offspring.  The unquenchable drive to produce seed, to create a new generation. 

I think about this often, and am a bit obsessed by it, perhaps.  First the idea of crowding and overpopulation, and comparing that to our planet and our own species.  And thinking about similar conditions affecting domestic and wild animal behaviors, and how their health may be affected also. 

We can easily control the populations of our domestic animals and of our garden plants, and I leave it to the readers to consider the rest of it… the most important part, about human population and health and behaviors.  There is much to think about here.  But for now, I’m going to step back into my garden, with my oblivious little furkid, and ponder such things for a while longer.