I didn’t know that tomatoes were tropical plants until I looked it up recently. If tomatoes are tropical plants, then why do the tomatoes I get at the supermarket here look so sad and anemic compared to, let’s say, a random tomato from ASDA in the UK? Little Farms here sells heirloom tomatoes for SGD31.98 per kg, so I refuse to buy tomatoes from them on principle.
Now that I’m very free, I spent a lot of time this week learning about tomatoes and also started attempting to pirate a supermarket tomato (“Sweet Cherry Tomatoes on Vine” by Meadows, which is Cold Storage’s house brand). I’ll see how that goes. I’ve never grown anything edible before, so this will be a first. I’m also thinking of growing basil as I read that it’s a good companion plant for tomatoes, and also because it’d be really cool to make a tomato basil soup from scratch.
Due to space constraints, I’ve been looking at dwarf tomatoes (see: Dwarf Tomato Project), which grow vertically a lot slower compared to some other varieties that might take a lot of pruning and supporting.
Interestingly, the seeds for dwarf tomatoes grown from the Dwarf Tomato Project are released under the Open Source Seed Initiative. The OSSI Pledge is as follows:
You have the freedom to use these OSSI- Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this Pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.
And it turns out that they were inspired by the FOSS movement in creating this:
‘Today, only a handful of companies account for most of the world’s commercial breeding and seed sales. Increasingly, patenting and restrictive contracts are used to enhance the power and control of these companies over the seeds and the farmers that feed the world.
Patented and protected seeds cannot be saved, replanted, or shared by farmers and gardeners. And because there is no research exemption for patented material, plant breeders at universities and small seed companies cannot use patented seed to create the new crop varieties that should be the foundation of a just and sustainable agriculture.
Inspired by the free and open source software movement that has provided alternatives to proprietary software, OSSI was created to free the seed – to make sure that the genes in at least some seed can never be locked away from use by intellectual property rights. '
Perhaps my marinara will someday be open sauce.
Tomato wishlist
Random links
The Window-Knocking Machine Test - By Ines Montani (cofounder of Explosion). Are you building a better window-knocker, or an alarm clock?