A Tomato Grows at Ground Zero
The harshest conditions are no match for life itself
“Tomatoes don’t grow here,” said Mark, a personal-injury lawyer with whom I used to share a terrace garden in Lower Manhattan. Mark doesn’t lose arguments. When the neighboring Twin Towers collapsed he defied evacuation orders, shoveling debris by hand until our terrace was clear. That experience had caused him to adopt a survival-of-the-fittest theory about what could grow in our harsh urban environs. Cucumbers? He’d tried them. Eggplant? Forget about it. But summer after summer of planting inedible begonias got old. Last year I vowed that a tomato would grow at ground zero.
True, obstacles existed. For starters there was the 743-foot black monolith at One Liberty Plaza, which robs us of all but four hours’ sunlight — two shy of the tomato-growing minimum. All summer long a salty, gritty wind rips up from Staten Island and the New York Harbor. (“It’s a harsh marine environment,” Mark used to say.) Clearly, I needed a tough mother of a tomato.
I chose a variety called Cosmonaut Volkov. Created by Soviets, it accommodates short summers and other deficits. Hedging my bets, I also bought a little bruiser named Mexico Midget and a tomato known simply as Ace. But no matter how tough the tomato, I would need more light.
