Things are Growing

I'm taking my first stab at growing my own tomatoes this year. I honestly can't even remember what type of tomato plant I bought—though I'm pretty sure it wasn't plum or Roma or beefsteak or anything I'd heard of before.

I think I got it back in May. I bought it at Wal-Mart (! Bad, I know.), but it was in a biodegradable container and only cost like 3 or 5 bucks. I put it in a big terracotta pot with some marigolds (because I've heard they keep pests away). Since we had some nights that got near freezing when I first had the plant, I brought it inside some nights until it stayed warm enough out.

It's been out back ever since. We had one early tomato pop out and took a long time to ripen, but finally did. And I hear that this is early for tomatoes, but I don't know what I'm doing anyway. So if the thing gives me tomatoes, I'm just gonna eat 'em! Here is our first 'mater:


Click to enlarge

We enjoyed it first on some grilled burgers on July 4th, and then in some quesadillas. Mmmm...

The plant has already produced one more ripe red tomato, just a wee one though—about the size of a golf ball. And it has about 10 more babies, ranging in size from golf ball up to tennis ball, still green and still growing.

This experience got me excited about growing my own food. So now I have more herbs planted (which I've done before) and some pea plants and jalapeno pepper plants as well. But again, I have no idea what I'm doing, so we'll see how it goes!