The Attack of the Killer Tomato Plants

These tomato plants are right outside our front door. Actually, this year, they are blocking our front door. Because they are doing so well, we have decided to just deal with it rather than cut them back. Crazy, I know! But if you knew my deep rooted love for tomatoes, you would understand! I eat tomatoes with everything. In fact, I will eat a bowl of tomatoes for breakfast, or during a movie, or for lunch, as a replacement for grapes, with sandwiches, as my 'veggie' for dinner. The other night I had roasted chicken, asparagus, mixed vegetables, a salad with tomatoes, and that's right, more tomatoes with a pinch of salt for good measure. So yeah, my love for GOOD tomatoes runs pretty deep. Most store bought tomatoes have very little flavor, but the home grown variety burst with flavor!

Shawn and I started off with 11 tomato plants this year, and have yet to give any away. And yeah, I haven't canned anything or made anything but salad with the tomatoes and eaten them raw. If they are on the counter from picking, I will pass by the kitchen and grab one and eat it (mostly the small ones, the larger ones deserve to be cut up and sprinkled with a tiny bit of salt, but of course eaten raw). I said we 'started off' with 11, we now have 13-15 I think. This is because a few tomatoes from our crop last season made it into the soil and decided to pop up halfway through this growing season. So now we have a few more than planned. In fact, one tomato plant decided it wanted to cross pollinate so now we have a different variety than what we have ever had before, but I must admit, they are AWESOME!!!

In the picture, the first one on the left is our standard round tomato. I think they are called early girl tomatoes. The second is a small variety of Roma tomatoes. The middle is our crosspollinated tomato, let's call that one "Yummy in my Tummy" tomato (well, let's work on that name). The third is your standard cherry or grape tomato, and the last one, Mr. Yellow, is from our last years crop (they popped up again too).

Our plan for next year includes all of these varieties, plus about 10 more plants of a hearty variety so we can grow more than I can eat and use the leftovers for canning during the season. Next year we should have tomatoes everywhere we look at our house, not that we already don't.