Searching and Sifting

My process began with the experience of growing really good tomatoes, and wondering what made them so good, when right next to them another plant was making ones that weren’t nearly as good.

When doing anything creative, the end result is influenced by the quality of the starting materials, and so I sought out what I considered to be the best existing varieties to my tastes (and taste is subjective).

There is a transformative magic that happens through craft, with the kinds of hands-on creative work in which there is an intimacy and close attention with the subject. There comes to be an instinctual recognition when an exceptional one appears, an instinct that can be honed through the benefit of experience.

By crossing two new varieties, it opens up a new pool of possibilities, and introduces some chaos. There is a balance to finding the right amount of chaos conducive to your particular process, the amount that allows unexpected results to occur, but still allows tracking what happened, and being able to conserve the precious time put into it.

If there is a promising lead in terms of possibilities, I continue following it and growing that developing variety until it becomes stable over time.

As above, so below

Just as there are little dances within the tomato chromosomes creating new combinations of genes— there is a bigger dance going on, with the bumblebee, you and me (the “human bumblebee” — thank you, Michael Pollan), the universe, energy.