Second best by a royal mile in quest for horticulture’s Holy Grail

YOU will not hear Her Majesty, the mother-in-law, proclaim her superiority in public pronouncements or assert grand claims by way of regal edict. Her Majesty does not brag. Neither does she boast. Her Majesty feels no need to resort to any such coarse, uncouth and ungracious behaviour in order to make her point.

Her point in this case is that the royal tomato plants are in every way better than the tomato plants of any loyal subject. Specifically, the royal tomato plants are stronger, greener, bushier and bigger than the tomato plants of her plebeian son-in-law. It is as yet too early in the year to have any actual tomatoes but things are already shaping up as they have in previous years.

A loyal subject such as the plebeian son-in-law may aspire to grow the finest tomatoes in all of the realm. The loyal subject makes every effort he can conceive of to fulfil his ambition, investing hours upon hours in the quest for perfection. So he spent the winter plotting his campaign with all the intensity of a field marshal setting out his strategy.

With thousands of varieties of tomato to choose from, much of this plotting phase was devoted to choosing the correct ones. Catalogues and brochures from plant nurseries and garden centres, all hyping up their stock: ‘Baby Brill – a sure-fire miniature favourite with heavy cropping guaranteed.’ ‘Mummy Maker – never known to fail, producing tasty fruit and loads of it.’ ‘Golden Goose – a sun-blessed tomato of surpassing flavour and un-matched elegance.’

This was becoming ridiculous. Whoever heard of an elegant tomato? The catalogues touted varieties blessed with all sorts of unlikely virtues. There were classical tomatoes. Refined tomatoes. Champagne tomatoes. Do not rest content with a round and red tomato, urged the writers of these breathless brochures. Try chocolaty brown tomatoes. Or maybe tomatoes with zebra-like stripes. Or blue tomatoes – did he really read of a blue tomato? In the end, the bewildered loyal subject brought the shilly-shallying to an end, making his choice by jabbing a pin at random into the long-list of likely candidates.

It was time to roll up the sleeves and get going or, rather, get growing. Judicious mixing of fresh compost. Careful selection of immaculately clean clay posts. Addition of secret cocktail of manures devised under up-to-date scientific guidelines.

Planting was followed by weeks of hands-on care, with particular attention paid to daily watering and regular addition of a liquid feed. The results, he thought, were quite encouraging, though a slight yellowing of leaves was a disappointment and the Jumping Giant variety was not quite living up to its name.

Then came the phone call from Her Majesty: ‘Hello, Medders. I hope you are well. I have a little favour to ask…’ It turned out that HM was performing some royal function or other out of the county and she would be away for a day or two. Could a loyal subject possibly see his way to watering the tomato plants in The Greenhouse during her absence, she wanted to know.

She called it a greenhouse though behind her back it is often referred to as the Crystal Palace. She insists it came flat-packed on special offer from the local hardware store but surely no mass-produced greenhouse boasts flying buttresses and gargoyles in the likeness of the Three Tenors.

So it came about that the loyal subject found himself, watering-can in hand, stepping into the holy of horticultural holies. He did his duty there and returned home.

With no appetite for lunch, he trudged to the scruffy plastic polytunnel where his own plants awaited their daily drink. As he tended to them, he considered in melancholy all the time spent caring for them, nurturing them, loving them. He was weeping quiet tears over the pygmy Jumping Giant when his phone rang.

‘Medders, dear boy, how were my tomatoes, did you notice? They seem a little backward this year maybe.’ Backward?! ‘Your Majesty, they looked as though they were on steroids.’ She had no need to brag. Her plants, tall and strong and green, did the talking for her.