He was not always kind about the fruit. When a beautifully striped tomato split almost in his hands, he called it "a fancy package with a broken bottom." When a dark plant grew an enormous number of leaves and only two ripe tomatoes, he asked whether she intended to sell salad greens instead. Mary Ann sometimes wanted to throw him out of the field. Then she tasted the fruit he had asked her to compare and usually found him inconveniently correct.
The most difficult stretch of the second year came in July. A heat wave settled over the county, with afternoons so hot that even the cicadas seemed to stop working. The old garden hose could not reach the farther rows without leaking, and several plants wilted before Mary Ann could finish watering. She tried moving water in buckets, a poor solution for a sixty-acre property even when the garden occupied a tiny corner of it.
She had an old water tank near the barn that Walter used for cattle, but its outlet needed repair and the line to the garden had been disconnected years ago. Buying a new system would cost money she did not have. Mary Ann priced irrigation supplies at work, put the list away, and tried persuading herself that she could manage with the hose until fall. The next afternoon she found three promising plants damaged beyond recovery, and the false economy suddenly seemed more expensive than the repair.
Hollis offered her a spare length of tubing. Larry found fittings left from an old project at the cannery. Mary Ann bought the remaining parts with money earned from an extra shift at the feed store. She spent a Sunday connecting the tank to a modest drip setup, working slowly because of her knee and testing each section before covering it. The result was not elegant, but it delivered water where the roots needed it without soaking the whole bed.
For the first time she noticed what a difference consistency made. Plant growth was more even, and the soil surface did not stay wet for hours after she watered. She still lost plants to weather and disease, but fewer losses came from problems she already knew how to prevent. The work gave her a satisfaction different from simply harvesting a good tomato. She was building the conditions in which a good plant had a chance to prove itself.
In August the four experimental groups began producing fruit. Mary Ann kept the best-tasting tomatoes on separate trays, each marked with the parent plant number. She tasted fruit at different stages of ripeness and made herself record disappointments even when she had spent months hoping for better. Several plants were vigorous but flavorless. One yielded beautiful purple-red fruit that became watery after a day on the counter. Another produced a tomato with a sharp, smoky sweetness she could hardly describe, but the vine was so weak that she feared saving its seed would repeat the wrong trait.