The tomatoes aren’t cooperating. Instead of growing up the trellis, the plants are weaving all over the garden bed and arching, menacingly, toward a young grapevine. On a hot August afternoon, Pauline Benetti and Diane Kelsey are trying to coach the fruit upward by tying its stems to the wood-and-metal trellis.
It’s high season for the juicy red spheres, but these two volunteers – both shorter than the vines they’re trying to wrangle – aren’t just struggling with these plants for the final farmers’ markets of the summer. They want to train the tomatoes to grow in the right direction inside this greenhouse all year long.