For 10+ years I have been trying to grow tomatoes. My first attempt was my senior year in college. I had moved into a new apartment that had two patios and I wanted to make a beautiful patio garden. I had the bright idea to buy seeds, a large plastic planter, dirt, and a tomato cage…and then Voila! I just knew that large plump tomatoes would grow. Boy was I ever wrong. They did grow small seedlings, but at about 3 inches they shriveled up and fell over; so much for that. Next, we lived in a garden apartment in Chicago. Andy bought me a beautiful rectangle planter for outside our front door, but in the end there just wasn’t enough sun to really keep anything growing other than herbs. Lastly, here we are back in Florida and up to this point every year had the same ending…nothing more than a few small tomatoes that split and rot before they even seemed to fully ripen. So imagine my surprise when this year I make a last minute decision at Lowes to buy 2 tomato plants for my front door planters and within in a few weeks I have dozens of small tomatoes!!!
Historically, I have not been a huge fan of the small Cherry tomatoes and in that quick decision if I had looked a little closer I would have seen that that is what I was buying…but surprisingly they have been pretty good and Andy loves them. Maybe it was the planted location, or the amount of water given, or the type of tomato…I’m not sure, but it doesn’t even matter because I have officially grown tomatoes. So far we have added the tomatoes to salads, mozzarella, risotto and most recently the recipe of the week: Zipper pea and Cherry Tomato Bruschetta.
Mountains! Beach! or Both!... 