Fighting the standard tomato

The leaves are still wet from the last rain shower, but the sun is already making the foliage in Joy Horsman's garden shine bright green again. Joy, in a pink T-shirt and jeans, pulls her red flowered rubber boots over her feet before descending the stone steps to the vegetable garden with us. She has just fetched a tray full of plant seeds from the house and placed them on the terrace table, small fluffy seeds, pea-sized wizened, yellow long and black and white grooved sunflower seeds with a few yellow petals mixed in. They are still mainly flower seeds that she and her husband have been collecting since June: zinnias, sunflowers, mallows, nasturtiums. Among them are a few grains of physalis, the tomato seeds are still lying in their juice in a jar, in preparation for drying.

Joy and Milli have lived here in Bissen for two years and cultivate a farm garden behind the house. "My grandmother used to have a big farm garden with flowers and vegetables, and we children used to scurry through it", Joy says. They post what she and her husband do in the garden on Instagram. There, about 2,000 people follow their gardening tips on the account jm_doheem_am_gaart. "We want to pass on our passion. There's a lot of interest from young people." Joy and Milli post what they harvest, when they sow and how they create a raised bed or fight pests. Loyal followers have seen the whole transformation of the simple lawn behind the house into a real farm garden.