Tomatoes Today

Tomatoes! Home grown tomatoes, not those expensive, tasteless ones we can buy in the supermarket. Tomatoes that make a sandwich with a single, thick slice. Yum! That’s why we do it, at a considerable expenditure of time, effort and expense. So on March 24th I sowed the seeds for this season’s tomato plants. That is a week earlier than I would normally plant the seeds if the ultimate destination for the plants to be the veg garden. But I have the luxury of being able to grow them inside our greenhouse. The advantage is extra warmth, dry foliage and better control over growing conditions. First I had to move some plants out of the greenhouse and others to the other bench inside.

Then I dismantled to bench slats and support to store the in our garage attic. There was a colony of ants under a slat that had to be displaced.

Each tomato plant has a metal stake and a bamboo pole zip tied to it to be tied to the tomato as it grows up to the roof.

There are ten plants. Each has two feet of space. This year I am growing sungold (a yellow cherry tomato), super sweet 100 (a red cherry tomato), early girl, brandywine (my favorite beefsteak), coustralee (a French heirloom), ten fingers of Napoli (a paste tomato) and a new one tonopah, a determinate beefstake tomato. Determinate means that it produces it its fruit all at once and then dies. We enjoyed the tomatoes last summer and I hope we will again this year.