Tomatoes!!

Look what i grew!

It was a rough year for tomatoes this year. not much sun, lots of cold weather, and setting out my seedlings late all amounted in a sad crop. I had a lot of fruits, but i waited and waited, and they just stayed green. I spent a little time online looking for green tomato recipes and methods to ripen tomatoes indoors when it started getting chilly, but we had an early frost (complete with snow!), and i had to get them inside, green or not.

I harvested about 2 dozen small to medium tomatoes. The variety i planted was Burpee Sweet Tangerine Hybrid, which is supposed to be a yellow-orange slicing tomato. well, by the time it got cold, not too many were big enough for slicing, and NONE of them had even STARTED to turn yellow. But i put them in a paper bag with a ripe banana, and it worked! The gasses given off by the ripe banana helped the tomatoes to ripen to a lovely yellow, and then, as you can see in the pictures, a nice light red color. there's still a dozen green ones in the bag waiting to ripen, but we sliced one up tonight and had it with a little miracle whip mixed with Dr. Gonzo's Garlicmash. It was delicious! this variety of tomato is sweet and low in acid, but it didn't seem to have a ton of flavor... maybe it got too ripe?

at any rate, i think i've proven that i can grow tomatoes. I need to start them earlier, and i need to stake them so the fruits don't hang down to the ground (or overshadow the pepper plants, which were hidden under the tomato leaves all summer and didn't really grow), but i found them to be mostly vermin-resistant (no bugs, and whatever came and ate the leaves off the first one never came back - tomato leaves smell great, but they contain toxins), and fairly easy to grow without a lot of maintenance. AND i was able to grow them totally organically - no pesticides or chemical fertilizers - just yard dirt and Miracle Gro organic gardening soil!

So... success! :)