Little Shop of Horrors

There are many diffuse reasons for why I haven't updated in the last two weeks, but the great thing about the internet is that you can never talk about yourself. In doing so, you either pass for a narcissistic egoist or an angsty teenager who doesn't realize all of his abandonment problems could be solved with a haircut and a basic attempt at socializing. So instead, I thought I'd talk about something close to me. A little too close, so much so that it's started to become somewhat unnerving.

Recently, I decided that growing vegetables would be a cheap, fun and worthwhile pursuit. Of course, the initial investment of a bag of compost and a few plants didn't seem like much of an issue. I don't know if anyone else has done this, but the important thing to remember is that plants don't spontaneously grow food for you on a whim. You have to wait, months and months, before it squeezes out even the tiniest vegetable for your meagre dinner plate.

Anyway, I decided to get two tomato plants, a few baby corns, and some spring onions. Initially, it went well. None of them have died yet, apart from a few spring onions which are so numerous and inconsequential they could be pointless internet bloggers. As an aside, apparently spring onions grow faster than disease. Yes, that's what it says in my gardening book. You can out-grow disease. But onion-diseases are the last thing on my mind at the moment. More recently, things have become a little more frightening, and the front room of my house is starting to look like a set from Day of the Triffids.

Why hello thar!

Tomato plants, for anyone who doesn't know - like myself - actually grow into towering monstrosities in a frighteningly short space of time. Having swiftly passed the four and a half foot height allowed by my window, they show no signs of decreasing their growth, and no signs of bearing fruit. What I'm left with is a front-facing window completely covered in plant growth, which has started attaching itself to the curtain-rail and pressing against the windows like an overcrowded Japanese subway train.

The most harrowing detail is that the plants exude a tomatoy miasma which threatens to choke anyone getting too close. They seem resistant to any attempts to curb them, and refuse to produce tomatoes. All I have so far are a bunch of green baubles that could be tomatoes eventually, if they don't turn into pod-people first. I have to say, I'm disappointed.

Outside, the sweetcorn and spring onions have taken a more leisurely attitude towards growing, having climbed about three inches in seven weeks. They too show no enthusiasm towards being harvested any time soon, so I'm sort of at a loss. I'm not worried, though, I expect I'll have been eaten by flesh hungry Sungolds long before I'm missing sweetcorn. If no one sees me for a couple of weeks, don't go round to my flat. Just destroy it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

I was later told that apparently they don't stop growing until you decapitate them with knives. So I cut off the top of the tomato plant. Hopefully now it'll give me some tomatoes, before I have to cut off it's toes, one by one.