Tomatoes are my favorite vegetable or fruit whatever you want to call these beautiful red, yellow, green orbs of sweetness that crack under pressure at just the right moment your teeth slice into the succulent flesh. No doubt about it I should be writing romance novels about their yummy goodness. To share my complete infatuation with tomatoes I will confess that I have even named my avatar in some forums “Tomato Queen”; feel free to laugh my husband “The Viking” in my life sure did!
In honor of Earth Day I wanted to do a special post to share why it is so important to us on our homestead to grown our own fresh produce and one of our favorites of course is the beautiful tomato! It is interesting to me that I don’t diet during the summer because I have so much to do in the garden and I am off from work for a couple of weeks and the main staple in my diet is tomatoes. For breakfast I often have eggs, mushrooms, and tomatoes. For lunch I often have tomato sandwiches or Ratatouille, for snacks I often have chips and salsa, and for dinner I have tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and I never tire of them all summer long because fresh tomatoes right out of your garden are superior to bland grocery store tomatoes.
I hope this blog post inspires you to grow some tomatoes! I love yellow pear tomatoes which go prolifically on our lil’ homestead and I also love roma tomatoes as well but every year I always add new varieties to the mix. This year we also added the following varieties:
Black Krim
Cherokee Purple Heirloom
Cream Sausage Tomato
Rainbow Blend
Roma
Cherry
and more!
- Some of my basic secrets for success with our tomatoes is even and regular watering.
- Seedlings need space to grow so thin them out and give them room!
- When we transplant our seedlings we bury them deep in the soil so they have a strong root system.
- Pinch the suckers off to help the tomato plant grow stronger and it will give you more tomatoes (not everyone agrees on this but we do pinch off the suckers) at our Lil’ Homestead.
And guess what? I’m dreaming about tomatoes.
Happy planting!
Fondly,
Looking good! Love tomatoes and your varieties! Thanks for making me dream even more…Great post!
Dolly thanks so much! I love tomatoes!
Thanks so much Dolly for the visit and stopping in to say hey! Can’t wait to harvest the tomatoes!
What a lovely tribute to tomatoes! I’m growing pink oxhart tomatoes this year… can’t wait to try them! I’ve never tasted one before.
Caitlin that sounds like an exciting tomato adventure I will have to keep an eye on your blog to hear how you like them? Thanks for stopping in!
I also dream of tomatoes. Have been planting heirloom varieties since 2000. Definitely love Cherokee Purple, it is one of my favorites.
Thanks so much Connie! I fear I started my seeds too late this year so I will have to buy some tomatoes too but that’s okay I am giving someone else business and that is a good thing too and then I will probably have quite a lot of late tomatoes! 🙂 Have a great Sunday!