For Successful Outcomes – Just Add Water 

I’m a gardener – not a world class one, maybe more enthusiastic than anything, but I love doing it.  It’s different than how I spend most of my day — at a desk.  To me, digging in the dirt is relaxing.

I enjoy the whole process of growing things.  In past springs I’ve had those little peat pots on the dining room table (much to the chagrin of my wife) for 4-6 weeks (no dinner parties!) – filled with annual flowers I’m growing from seed.  It takes patience and it keeps me out of trouble.

The last few years I’ve taken to growing tomatoes again – this year just three plants.

A conversation this past weekend got me thinking about how we miss the obvious sometimes.   A neighbor, who’s a serious gardener, came by and asked whether I had any tomatoes yet.  I said we’ve been eating tomatoes for a month. He said his plants are filled with tomatoes but they haven’t ripened yet.  Meanwhile, my 3 little plants gave me 4 lbs. only yesterday (photo above).

So my friend asked – are you spraying for bugs?  I don’t have any, I said.  He asked where I bought my seeds (I knew from previous conversations that he bought his heirloom tomatoes via a high end seed company).  I explained that I bought my plants in pots at Home Depot in early April and put them under a grow light for three weeks before putting them outside. (Mind you, putting tomatoes outside in late April in the northeast is REALLY risky – but I figured the grow light would make them strong enough to weather a cold snap if there was one.  Who knows whether that’s true but there were actually three of them in late April and the plants survived just fine.

He had a few more questions and I finally said – I really have no secret – I fertilize every three weeks and I am adamant about watering.  Watering was where my friend fell down.  He wasn’t doing it every day (like so many other parts of the country, it’s been dry here in the northeast for the past two months – watering is vital).  I think it may have been an aha! moment for him.

My friend took off down the street, though not before I gave him a few ripe tomatoes. But the conversation got me thinking about successful outcomes and reminded me of something I learned long ago about plants: you can obsess all you want about all kinds of stuff – the variety of plant, fertilizer, pests, disease, etc. – but the answer to successful outcomes with plants is simply – water.  They need some fertilizer now and then – but if they’re properly watered – that’s 90% of the battle.

Is there a larger lesson here?  I think so.  Successful outcomes in other realms occur in large measure by doing some very basic things (like adding water).  Whatever we try to accomplish, there’s always some fundamental action that drives a successful outcome.  And if the results are less than we’d like, it’s time to look to see whether we’ve missed the obvious.  Chances are we may be making things more complicated than they need to be.