How to grow a tomato on a filing cabinet

The original Office Farmer tomato was not a greenhouse project. It was a Cherokee Purple in a cracked nursery pot, sitting on a beige cabinet under a south window that nobody had claimed. It lived because the light was honest and the watering was the same time as afternoon coffee.

If you have a window and a surface that will not mind a little runoff, you can do this. Use a pot at least twelve inches across. Fill it with a potting mix that drains — garden soil in a pot is a slow death. Sow two seeds. Keep the stronger seedling.

Stake early. A tomato that fruits indoors will still try to be a vine. A bamboo cane and two strips of cotton twine are enough. Water when the top inch is dry, not on a calendar. Feed lightly once flowers set.

The harvest will not look like a farm stand. It will be six or nine fruits that taste like August, eaten standing up between emails. That is the whole point.