One thing about gardening that has really amazed me is the sheer growth ability of well-tended (and even not-so-well-tended) plants. Here are some pictures of the tomatoes as of this afternoon.
This is about half of “Tomato Town,” as we’ve dubbed it. The majority of these plants are ones that I started from seed (the Sun-golds and Purple Cherokees). We traded a few extra plants to our gardening friends and mentors and received a Mortgage Lifter, Red Brandywine, Legend and Early Girl in exchange. I’m hoping to be able to do more plant trading next year as it was a relatively easy (and fun) way to increase variety. If anyone would be interested in trading in the future, let me know!
These are the sun-gold tomatoes that I’ve bragged about before (a long, long time ago in the garden’s timeline). They were so tiny then! When I look back on the pictures of the tomato plants (and the other plants) it really boggles my mind to see the amount that they’ve grown.
These are heirloom Purple Cherokees that haven’t yet turned purple. They already look beautiful though. I can’t wait to eat ‘em!
And just for good measure, here is a picture of some tomatillos. I wasn’t planning on planting tomatillos but Cullen requested them specifically so I started a few plants from seed. I kind of ignored them as I didn’t expect them to do well in Oregon’s wet Spring and unpredictable Summer but they have really flourished. We planted them in front of some store-bought hot pepper plants, thinking that they would all grow at the same rate and everything would get plenty of sun. As my mom would say, the tomatillos took off like “a bat outta hell” and are blocking the peppers from getting any sun. While this is a little bit of an annoyance, I have to say that it’s pretty rewarding to have your organic homegrown plants give the conventional store-bought ones a serious run for their money!
In other news, we’re going to have a butt-load (technical term) of tomatillos so if you have a recipe you’d recommend, let me know!
Tags: cherokee, gardening, heirloom, sungold, tomatillo, tomato
