Editorial: It's a Lot Like Growing Tomatoes

JULY 2023

During our first year as homeowners, we planted a vegetable garden.

The previous owner had installed a brick-paver patio near the garage, so we dug up some of the tiles, created four beds, mixed in bags of mushroom compost, and planted 6-packs of cherry tomatoes, Romas, and heirloom varieties.

We watered diligently and tied up the stalks as they grew, harvesting a colander of tomatoes every few days during peak harvest and making batches of my Dad's Sicilian sauce on the weekends. 🍝

The next summer was rainy and all the tomato plants got early blight, which stunted their growth. We tore them up in early August and called it a year.

The next spring, we rotated the plants to different beds, put bark mulch around the base of each plant, and sprayed the lower leaves with a copper fungicide as a preventative.

If it wasn't blight, it was leaf wilt. If it wasn't sunscald, it was shade, as the trees at the back of our property were beginning to shade the garden.

This year, we tried planting a few tomatoes in the sunny area of the garden and a few in big pots on the side patio. The ones on the patio are flourishing - perhaps the best we've ever had. The ones in the back are 1/5 of the size. 🤷🏻‍♀️

One thing I've realized through all this: growing tomatoes is a lot like music teaching and learning.

You start out with good intentions. You seek advice from people with experience. You read, take notes, and plan. 

And it works! (You get tomatoes! 🍅) You see the fruits of your labor and feel that your teaching methods have been successful. But then the conditions change.

Suddenly what worked last year doesn't work this year. You seek more advice. You modify your approach and try new things. And that works for a while... until the conditions change again.

It's a continuous cycle.

As teachers, we must remain flexible, responsive, and adaptive to the changing world around us.

We need to keep our eyes, ears, and minds open to new ideas, ways of thinking, and ways of doing. We need to continue learning ourselves.

What will you learn this year? How will you *grow* as a teacher, director, and musician? What musicianship skills will you cultivate in your rehearsals?

Comment below and let me know. I'd love to hear about your goals – for teaching and tomato plants! 🌿