What a glorious tomato season it has been over the last couple of weeks! As I am a fanatic tomato eater these are usually on the grocery list for the weekly as they are literally used for everything.
Over the last 6 weeks or so I didn't have to buy a single one of them there, as there was always something to harvest in the garden tomato wise. I call that a winner!
I don't need a gigantic stash all at the same time. I need them just like it was now, a couple of ripe ones that are good to go every couple of days.
The coolest thing about all of this? I had no idea on what kind of tomato variations these as were. Some were indefinite growing ones which I literally had to top off to stop them from growing meters high. Some were cherry tomatoes which stayed nice, small and cute. And some were growing by the bush and turned out medium sized.
The secret to all of that? I had used the seeds from a store bought overripe tomato and just chucked it in the ground. But I also had a lot of random upcoming little plants, which had everything to do with the seeds developing in the compost.
Happy little accidents I call these ones, as I didn't ask for them. But all of a sudden they were there and they were strong from the start!
Orange ones vs red ones?
Especially the ones that come up randomly in the compost are the strong ones. The compost was from last year from my worm factory, so the seeds had overwintered in a nice place and started to come up again.
What I also liked was the variations in all of these and just waiting to see what comes up from them. When they were seedlings, they were all in the same container so there was no way of knowing which one would become which one.
As the nights are starting to get a lot colder now and the sun is losing its strength, I don't have the feeling that these smaller cherry tomatoes will get a lot more ripe on the vine.
Cutting them and putting them next to the window seems a lot more of a reasonable option than having them outside for the birds to go for it. But yeah they are still orange.
I do wonder though if these ones will actually get red, because they have been orange for quite a while now actually.
One some of the vines there are some entirely green ones still, which eventually we will see if they turn out into something useful, or if their momentum has passed already
The funniest thing about all of this? It is always said that tomato plants are fragile and don't like rain. But I had put these in the middle of the sun, wind and rain and they looked stronger than ever.
A couple of the pots even had tipped over because of the wind and still they survived. This was surely the strongest year on this what I had up until now.
One thing I know is that I will start growing the seedlings again already in winter time under the lamps. That was the best kick start all of them could ever have had.
Every year we learn a bit more!