Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA tray of Celebrity tomatoes on 5 June, ten cups grown so far together that the foliage reads as one mass, side shoots already breaking from every axil, and one cup gone empty where its plant has leaned right out of the frame.Week of 8 JuneCelebrity tomatoes on 14 June, five of them drawn up thin and leggy under strip lights with long bare stretches of stem and their leaves held out flat and thin, one carrying a tight cluster of unopened buds at its tip while the room behind stays dim.Week of 8 JuneCelebrity tomatoes on 14 June, ranged from spindly newcomers in front to one dark-green bushy plant at the back that climbs up out of the frame, a watering wand still lying coupled in the grass and a drift of small white flowers along the top.Week of 8 JuneA Celebrity tomato on 14 June, a truss of three or four hairy green buds hanging at one of its upper nodes with a sliver of pale yellow petal showing where the first is splitting, the stems below bristled thick with long white hairs, in dim flat light.Week of 22 JuneA Celebrity tomato on 25 June, one shallowly ribbed green globe still furred all over with fine hairs and cradled in a bristly star of sepals curving back off its shoulder, the withered flower still clinging underneath, back-lit by hazy sun.Week of 29 JuneA Celebrity tomato on 29 June with a truss of three round green fruit hanging clear of the leaves and two spent yellow flowers still on the same stalk, the lawn behind it bleached right out to the fence line by late-afternoon sun.Week of 29 JuneA Celebrity tomato on 29 June with two fruit set and the rest of the truss gone, only a spray of hairy sepals and shriveled brown flowers left where they hung, and droplets standing on the fruit and the young leaves in warm low sun.Week of 29 JuneA Celebrity tomato on 29 June with two fruit hung under one truss and a third just setting behind them, dew still along its right-hand leaf edges, and a row of canes standing empty in seeded grass under a bright sunlit treeline.Week of 29 JuneA Celebrity tomato on 29 June seen from ground level, one flattened fruit ribbed hard over the shoulders with a paler band across it and droplets standing on top, and a yellow flower still open on the same truss in warm low sun.Week of 6 JulyA Celebrity tomato on 7 July shot from underneath, three fruit hanging in one truss still pale green under a faint whitish bloom, sepals curled right back off every shoulder, and a spent flower left hanging beside them against a white sky.Week of 6 JulyA Celebrity tomato on 7 July still on a single downy stem, carrying its whole crop low — two green fruit on one truss, the broader of them ribbed at the shoulder and marked with a small corky scar at the stem end, both beaded with water.Week of 6 JulyA Celebrity tomato on 7 July working two stages at once — a truss of five hard green fruit shading deeper at the shoulders below, and above them open flowers with their petals swept right back off a blunt projecting anther cone.Week of 6 JulyA Celebrity tomato on 7 July, its one big fruit a flattened globe wider than it is tall and ringed darker across the shoulder, with the shriveled brown remains of two or three flowers that never set trailing off the end of the same truss.Week of 20 JulyCelebrity tomatoes on 20 July, three on one cluster, whitish-green going yellower at the shoulders with faint darker stripes radiating out from the stem end, each carrying a single hard specular highlight in direct overhead sun.Week of 20 JulyCelebrity tomatoes on 20 July, a truss of four hard green fruits crowding the frame so close the nearest runs off the bottom edge, their sepals curling and twisting back over the shoulders, one ruled by a thin russet line, in bright side sun.Week of 20 JulyA Celebrity tomato on 20 July, broad and flattened so it reads wider than tall, satin pale yellow-green with faint stripes and crossed by the hard shadows of the stems in front of it, a healed corky crack on the smaller fruit beside it.Week of 20 JulyCelebrity tomatoes on 20 July, four crowded tight against one another on one hairy truss with a swollen knuckle at every stalk, the front one a flattened globe banded darker across the shoulders and dimpled at the blossom end, in hard noon sun.Week of 20 JulyTwo Celebrity tomatoes on 20 July, hanging so low they nearly rest on the ground, pale yellow-green with hard white highlights and hairy sepals bent back over each shoulder, and between them the dried scar where a third flower came away.Week of 24 AugustThree Celebrity tomatoes on 26 August packed tight on one hairy truss, all smooth and round and pale green with the calyx spread flat across each crown, and a fourth truss already setting below them.
