Dental Hygiene For Tomatoes

"What on Earth are you doing?"

In this case, I was searching for an electric toothbrush for my tomato plants, but these words have followed me around for many years, spoken in partnership with the same puzzled expression.

My teachers asked me this question all the time. In the UK there is no such thing as middle school, so at eleven years old I went straight into high school, where my experience was very similar to what I have read about life at Hogwarts. Replace quidditch with rugby, and swap magic lessons with French, Shakespeare and the long and tedious history of the British Monarchy, and essentially Harry Potter and I shared exactly the same childhood.

The school building itself was old, filled with ancient wooden desks fitted with inkwells, presumably for the quill feather pens that used to be all the rage when the school was new. Ornate panels high on the walls listed the names of former students who had died in wars that ended long before my father was born. Some of our teachers still wore the long, scary black robes of their predecessors, and between lessons, they strutted around the school corridors like arrogant vampires on the hunt for a meal. Once in a while they would stop to berate a child for standing too still, or to simply let them know that they were stupid.

The school maintained high standards of achievement, excellence and discipline, coupled with a winning tradition at rugby. The primary method of teaching used a tone of sneering sarcasm, intended to scare teenagers into becoming tomorrow's bankers, accountants, and the occasional politician.

In this staunchly academic environment, I decided that I wanted to go to art school. One amazing teacher and both my parents supported this ambition, but to the rest of the school, it was like telling them that I wanted to play music on the streets of Jupiter's least hospitable moon.

At a careers advice evening to discuss my future, I sat sandwiched between my parents, as the aptly named Mr. Brown stared at a piece of paper, where I had written that I wanted to do: “something in the field of television, film or photography". He digested this appalling information for a while, before staring up at us over his half-glasses, and asking the inevitable question:

"What on Earth are you doing? The film world is a CLOSED DOOR!"

Undaunted by this fantastic discouragement, I stubbornly moved forward with my plan. As a result, I am sure my name was given a very special place at the top of a list of disgraced students, who had absolutely NOT brought honor to the school.

Five years later I couldn’t help raising an invisible toast to my alma mater, when I was offered a job working for Steven Spielberg and Disney Animation on the movie: “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”. When that was complete, I worked on other cartoons, which led to a job in visual effects, defining a career that has never quite been what others might call “normal”.

Maybe this professional journey has given me the training to live through recent crazy times. In this topsy-turvy new Coronapocalypse pandemic world, we are comforted at the sight of masked people walking into banks, but frightened to go shopping for groceries or to get a haircut. Offices have relocated to our homes, and colleagues are now people we see on video screens, sometimes carrying small babies, pets, or in my case, fending off teenagers. Everything has shifted, so in order to restore some sense of normality, I take comfort and peace from my passion, growing fruits and vegetables in my home garden.

But even in this natural world, things are not what they once were.

For example, I always believed that plants could only grow from seeds that came in small paper packets, but in my garden the sunflowers are blooming from bird seed, and corn stalks originated as kernels that were saved from being popped into a movie snack. Bell pepper seeds were salvaged during a preparation for dinner, and some seeds recovered from tomato slices that were too old for a salad, have now grown into six beautiful young plants.

Meanwhile, this week I did something drastic to a cayenne. Having cultivated it from seeds recovered from an old pepper that I found discarded on the ground, it grew to around 10 inches tall. However, rather than allow it to continue progress, I followed advice to “top” it, which literally means to cut the top off. It was tough to behead this plant, because it had been looking so perfect and wonderful, but I did as instructed, and within three days the main stem thickened, and new leaves started to come in, setting the plant on a path to become bushy and strong.

Based on different advice, I am doing the opposite with my tomato plants, which I am encouraging to reach as high as they want to go. To give them more room and support to grow vertically, I have now staked the plants against tall bamboo poles, using strips of soft material to secure them, rather than wire which can sometimes scar the fragile stem of a tomato plant.

Oh, and I have also been looking for an electric toothbrush for their small yellow flowers.

Until now, my favorite home gardening tip has been to put blueberry seeds in the freezer for two weeks, to trick them into thinking it is winter. The theory is, that this encourages them to germinate quickly in the warmer time that happens when you take them out of their sub-zero environment.

In the same category of bizarre and strangely appealing pieces of plant care advice, I heard this week, that if you use an electric toothbrush on your tomato flowers it thinks that bees have come to visit, which stimulates the growth of new flowers, producing more fruit. I’m not sure if this is actually true, but I very much wanted it to be, so I searched until one of my children asked me what on Earth I was doing.

Unfortunately, my answer did not give them the kind of comforting reassurance that they deserved from a parent, but I did come to realize a couple of important things. First, I learned that we do not own an electric toothbrush. More importantly though, I also received confirmation that I have a pioneering child, who suggested using the buzzing alarm on my phone, to substitute for a toothbrush, substituting for a bee.

I’m not certain that this idea is innovative enough to earn the approval and respect of my old high school, but if I do manage to produce new tomatoes by waving my phone at them, that might just qualify me for entry into Hogwarts.