This got me thinking.  How many other people don’t know how a tomato grows?  I set out to document how the process works.

First, you plant a beautiful little plant that has a very distinct odor when you touch it.  Did you know that?  The stems of the plant also feel rather moist when you touch them.  They are also toxic.  Every part of a tomato is toxic except the fruit.  Odd huh?

Anyway, when the conditions are right (meaning it’s warm enough) the plant will flower.

The flower could be a single one (as shown in the above photo) or double, or triple.  I’ve had very sparse flowers and large frilly flowers.  It just depends on the plant.  In any case they are all the same shade of bright yellow.  The flower needs to be open during the day time to be pollinated.  They close up when the air temperature is cool so if you live somewhere that the days are colder you’ll have later or never setting fruit.  We were lucky to have a massive heat wave in July that caused my plants to put on massive amounts of fruit.

That is one cluster of hundreds of cherry tomatoes I have.

Once the flower is pollinated the fruit will form behind the flower (actually inside).  The flower wilts and a little tomato is formed.

This was the smallest one I could find.  It’s about the size of a petite pea.

As the warm weather goes on the fruit gets larger and larger and once it reaches its mature size it will begin to color.  Typically the fruit colors from the bottom to the top.  Every so often you’ll get a strange variety that colors from the top down or the side over.  I have fruit doing all of those.  The Azoychka (yellow)  colors from either the side over or the whole thing at once.  All of my red varieties color from the bottom up and the orange Juan Flame colors from the top down.  The white Snow White Cherries color from the bottom up too.

I tend to pick my tomatoes a little on the green side.  Heirloom varieties ripen fast once they are brought inside and can quickly become over ripe (sometimes overnight).  I keep all of mine on a paper towel on the kitchen counter.  I lay them stem side down and never on top of each other.  However, right now I have about 10 pounds and not enough counter space.  The ripe ones are in a basket on the kitchen table and will soon become salsa.  The greenish ones are holding their place of honor on the counter.

At the end of the season, when the weather man threatens frost I run outside and pick all of the green tomatoes that are close to mature size.  I put them on sheet pans and put the pans all over the house.  They will ripen up.  It just might take a week or more.

So now you know how you go from a little flower to this.

You would think that since I’m such a tomato nut I would be in a panic.  Blight and all.  It doesn’t seem to be phasing me.  I do have a nasty case of blossom end rot on my Brandywines, but for the most part the majority of my plants are doing quite well.  I checked on the Juan Flame and it looks a little sad, but the fruit is fine.

All of my tomatoes have all fallen over, but no broken branches.  The best part is the masses of fruit.  What makes it even more crazy is now that the weather has cooled down the tomatoes are actually starting to color.  Last night we pulled a 1 pound Cherokee Purple, a 6 ounce Black Russian and a 6 ounce Azoychka.  For the season we are over 5 pounds of tomatoes.  If all of the fruit currently on the vines ripens I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up with almost 100 pounds.

Last year the tomato crop was dismal.  The cold spring and summer kept the plants from setting fruit and once they did not a single fruit would color.  At the end of the season I harvested about 5 pounds of green tomatoes.  It took 2-3 weeks for them to fully ripen.

This year I was optimistic.  I planted my hoards and hoped for the best.  So far I’m not disappointed.  My plants are so overloaded with fruit they are falling all over.

(These are the plants grown in 100% Tagro, an experiment this year)

I knew I had to be patient when it came to my little fruits.  Some plants were slower than others to set fruit.  Some set right away.  It wasn’t until yesterday that I actually picked my first tomato (and a wee little pepper too).  I planted Snow White cherries and 3 were showing signs of being ripe.  I was tempted to snatch it off of the vine and gobble it up on the spot.  However, being the good gardening blogger that I am I took a photo first.  I don’t think I set down the camera before eating one.

This afternoon I picked an Azoychka and sliced it for my salad.  By Thursday I should have about 50 pounds of ripe tomatoes.

Last year I started my experience with heirloom tomatoes. I grew three and all of them bent the cages over by the end of July. We ended up using wooden stakes and fashioning makeshift cages. That worked until the end of summer.

This year I had planned to do the same thing, but since I was growing 10 varieties the cost of stakes was going to be more than I could really afford. Instead I came up with a plan to do it the old fashioned way. Stake and tie. Each plant was staked when it was planted (no plant was over 18″ tall at that point) and I used hemp twine to affix the vines to the stake. Each week I go out and survey the plants. I tie up where necessary and let the rest roam around in the beds. I did cage one variety that was supposed to be a smaller one, but I used one of the little cages instead of my big sturdy one (which is currently being used as a peony cage). The branches quickly outgrew the cage and the stems started to snap under the weight of the fruit.

I am quickly realizing that stake and tie was not the best plan. Ok, maybe it’s the stakes or maybe the size of the tomatoes. Either way we are now putting out support lines to hold the stakes up. I am going to have to rework my cage plan for next year. I would like to purchase Texas Tomato Cages, but at the price they are asking I simply cannot afford them. I may devise a PVC pipe plan.

This time of year the garden is much more work than in months past. This afternoon I will be weeding the bare spots, digging in a little more Tagro and replanting. I’m not exactly sure what I intend to plant. I have to survey my seed stash and make a few selections. I am trying not to spend any money so going out to buy seeds is off the list. Next year we have a grand plan to expand the garden to accommodate many more plants and give everything a little more breathing room.

When I started the season this year I thought I had enough space to grow enough food for the three of us and still give some away. I was very wrong. I could have grown so much more and had a much bigger variety. Granted, I didn’t have to plant 10 varieties of indeterminate tomatoes or 6 pepper plants, but I did and I don’t regret it.

For the time being I will be happy with the amount that I have and continue to eat more peas and broccoli than I normally would.

No matter the cost I will always grow something to eat. It may only be herbs, but I love the satisfaction of wandering through the garden and being able to pick a snack on my walk.

We don’t grow enough vegetables to prevent us from purchasing things from the farmer’s market or collecting our vegetable box from Terra Organics, but we grow enough to make a dent. This was very apparent last night as we wandered the 6th Avenue market. I walked out with 2 ears of corn, 1 zucchini, a beautiful arrangement of edible flowers, 2 Walla Walla sweet onions and a loaf of bread. I currently have an over abundance of peas (shelling and snap), lettuce, beets, carrots and herbs. Within the next few weeks I’ll add peppers and tomatoes to the list.

So how do you go about figuring if you are growing $64 tomatoes? The key is to keep track. In the end it is a complicated equation that figures in the cost of water, time, and supplies. I’ll go over that at the end of the summer. In the mean time I simply weigh everything that pick from the garden with a small kitchen scale. When calculating the final total I’ll add 10% to the amount to account for mouth loss (the food I eat as I go).

Yesterday’s totals are as follows:
13 oz snap peas
10 oz shelling peas (still in the shell)
6.5 oz beets
8 oz carrots
8 oz strawberries

This season I’ve collected:
almost 5 pounds strawberries
1.5 pounds snap peas (add 20-30% for what we eat on the spot)
14.5 oz beets
10 oz carrots
2 oz broccoli
lots of lettuce, cress and spinach (I don’t weigh that because we eat it too fast)
I also don’t weigh the herbs, but many an herb has been collected too.

I think we are off to a good start.

Unfortunately, the seed company didn’t ship my order until quite late in the season so there are a few things that didn’t get planted on time. Lettuce was one of them. I ordered 5 different varieties and received one free sample variety. I planted them all as soon as they arrived, April 9th to be exact. This is way too late for early salads. My expected bountiful harvest of salad greens just did not materialize like I had envisioned. Of the 6 lettuce varieties planted I only got sprouts on 2 kinds. I have an abundance of cress, but a pitiful selection of lettuce. I replanted last week and hopefully the second go will produce something. Growing lettuce isn’t rocket science.

What little bit I am getting is making fantastic salads. I combine butter crunch lettuce, cress, dill, blue cheese crumbles and dried cranberries. I top it with my husband’s home made vinaigrette and have a lovely lunch.

Strawberries are also showing up. The daily picking has begun and I portion them out between the three of us. My son gets his snack portion and the rest I cut up and serve with vanilla yogurt for our “child is sleeping time for dessert.” It’s almost better than ice cream.

I’m seeing signs of life on other plants too. There are a few snap peas growing on the vine and one Bulgarian Carrot Pepper. The beets are almost ready to harvest to add to our salads.

Within no time I’ll have so much that I won’t be able to give it away fast enough.

We arrived at the nursery fairly early (10:00 ish) and it’s a good thing we did.  When we arrived the nursery was fairly quiet.  We beelined for the tomato section and were greeted with a plethora of plants to select from.  Sizes ranged from 4″ to gallons and prices from $1.99-$3.99.  The $3.99 was for the gallon size.  I was stunned.  That is the best price we’ve seen on heirloom tomato plants in a very long time.  I came armed with an idea of what I wanted to purchase.  Ok, it was more of a number of plants.  If I didn’t have that in mind I would have gone overboard causing me to have to build more raised beds (oh darn).  I was a good girl and stuck to the plan.  My husband, on the other hand, had free reign.

Like my son, I try to get my husband involved in vegetable gardening.  He loves seeing the fruits of my labor, but I often have to cajole him into assisting me with prepping, planting and care.  However, he recently read a few books by Michael Pollan that had changed him into a bit of a local food nut.  I could think of worse things.  He also understands that the food we grow ourselves tastes so much better.  This year I tasked him with peppers.  He loves a good pepper and Windmill Garden had a selection to rival all other nurseries.  I didn’t give him a limit on how many he could purchase.  I said, ” have at it, I’ll make room.”   Have at it he did.

We walked away from the nursery with 7 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, 2 Thai Basil and 2 Mexican Orange.  Here’s what we got for tomatoes and peppers:

Tomatoes
Paul Robeson
Purple Calabash
Azoychka
Juane Flame
Mortgage Lifter
Pink Girl
Snow White
(we also had Black Russian, Brandywine & Cherokee Purple on hand)

Peppers
Bulgarian Carrot
Corno di Toro
Golden Bell
Long Red Slim Cayenne
Mohawk
Purple Bell
(the hot peppers are Heirloom, the sweet ones are not)

I was leery of planting them outside.  Our nights have been quite cool and on the nights I’ve left my  greenhouse door open my fuchsia has shown signs of some cold damage.  I didn’t want to risk it.  Finally, this week the weather has warmed up enough that I felt it was time to put the plants in.  Yesterday afternoon I tilled the old tomato bed and started planting.  The few extra days in the greenhouse really helped.  Most of the plants I put in already have flowers.  I’m just hoping that the temperatures stay warm at night so the flowers don’t drop.  We had a terrible early spring last year and tomatoes didn’t come until mid-late summer.  With any luck things will be better this year.

All of these grand plans requires more space. I did not take into consideration these high real estate plants when I made my garden plan.

This weekend we are embarking on the great “build new vegetable beds” adventure. I had hoped to put them in open areas in my east* flower gardens, but I am now thinking we might have to do some sod removal and put them on the east lawn. We are going with 2 4′x4′ beds that will house the remainder of my tomato collection. I am still contemplating where to put the masses of pumpkins. My attempts to put them in the corner bed last year resulted in utter failure, but I think that is because of lack of water and poor soil condition. I may try it again this year.

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*Our front yard is on the south side of our lot and the house sits more or less parallel to our street and way back on the lot. This particular configuration makes it very confusing for many gardeners. The south side is the shadiest because of large Thundercloud Plum trees. The back yard is obviously shady because of it being the north side of the house. However our east side is shaded by nothing and is the hottest part of our garden.

In between rain showers we dash out to the garden to throw a few seeds in the ground and hope for the best.  So far my spring planting has looked like this:

2/16 – planted out pea seeds, greenhouse planted broccoli, onion and pumpkins

3/3 – planted out black seeded simpson lettuce out, greenhouse planted tomatos

3/8 – seeds finally arrive

4/9 – planted out cress, lettuce, beets and carrots

4/18 – planted out early frost & sugar sprint peas, dill, tarragon, spinach

4/28 – planted out broccoli sprouts from greenhouse

Sprouts have emerged here and there.  Pumpkins are almost ready to be put outside, but I’m waiting for the weather to warm up just a bit.  Nights are fairly cold around here.  I also don’t have a place prepared for them yet.

This afternoon my son and I plan to finish planting some of the seeds that we have left.  This includes beans, more squash and a few remaining herbs, although I’m still holding off on basil.  We also have to work on getting the support system finished for the second set of peas and the beans.  This will require a trip to the local mega home improvement store and likely result in my having to look at dryers to appease my child.  Maybe I can avoid that with the promise of planting some flower seeds.

The goal is to take advantage of the sunny days.  Come this weekend, the weather is supposed to be colder and rainy and you should all be at my lecture at the South Tacoma Library at 1:00 anyway.  It will be fun and there may even be a little project to work on.  You’ll just have to show up to find out.