Songfacts®:

• "Planting Tomatoes" is Lucy Dacus' reflection on mortality, but its destination isn't despair. Against a soft, subtly glitchy rock arrangement, Dacus considers the frightening side of loving people, places, and memories deeply, before arriving at the idea that the threat of loss is worth the experience of having them in the first place.
• The key turning point comes in the bridge:
  
  There is so much that I have not lost
  Someday I know I will pay the cost
  
  Dacus recognizes that having a full life is something of a double-edged sword. The more people she loves, the more memories she makes and the more places she feels attached to, the more she stands to lose. If she had already suffered greater loss, perhaps the prospect of future grief wouldn't seem so overwhelming.
  
  Rather than retreat from connection, Dacus stays grounded in the small things that make life worth living. That is where the tomatoes come in.
  
  Planting tomatoes is a simple act of hope. Gardening requires patience, attention, and the basic belief that there will be a future where something you planted actually grows. You don't put a tomato plant in the ground expecting to harvest it in time for dinner. That makes the activity a fitting counterweight to thoughts of death: planting tomatoes is a small vote of confidence in tomorrow and an acceptance of life's temporary pleasures.
• Dacus wrote the track while playing a show in Berlin. "I love the shows we play there, but I'm not comfortable there, and I think cities that I'm uncomfortable in are where I tend to write a lot of music," she told i-D. "I wrote 'Planting Tomatoes' in the green room based on some of the ideas I'd had for a while, about being older now than someone was when they passed, and thinking: 'What would they be like at my age?' I was reflecting on people I've lost and wondering about how easy it is for me to get caught up in thinking about death throughout the day."
  
  Her way through it was to "lock back into life" by focusing on her "little ideas," one of which grew into the song.
• Dacus wrote "Planting Tomatoes" and co-produced it with Dominic Angelella, Melina Duterte, and Alan Parker.
  
  Angelella is Dacus' longtime touring bassist and an established songwriter.
  
  Duterte is the multi-instrumentalist and producer better known as Jay Som, who previously contributed bass and production work on Boygenius's album The Record.
  
  Parker is a Richmond-born, Los Angeles-based session player, who is Dacus' guitarist.
• Dacus directed the music video herself, filming it in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. The locations, including Dogwood Dell, Hollywood Cemetery, James River Park's Pony Pasture and the homes of friends, is a visual extension of the song's attachment to people and places.
  
  The cast includes Dacus' father, her friends, and students from SPARC, the Richmond youth performing-arts organization she attended when her mother taught there. "It was important for me at that age to be taken seriously by adults, to have people I looked up to believe in me, and to be taught that it's a worthwhile goal to express oneself," Dacus noted of SPARC. "That would have been a major lesson whether or not I ended up doing music, but I'm sure it's no small part of why I'm comfortable doing what I do."
• The track connects with themes Dacus explored on her 2025 album Forever Is a Feeling. In "Ankles," she reflects on the privilege of having "so much to lose," while "Bullseye" looks back on an ended relationship and finds value in having experienced it. Both tracks suggest that impermanence doesn't ruin an experience; sometimes it is the very thing that makes it special.
  
  "Planting Tomatoes" takes that perspective directly into grief and daily life. You know the tomatoes won't last forever. You plant them anyway.