Around mid winter I get a yearning for some fresh, flavorful tomatoes. I’ve learned through painful disappointment that no matter how well those tomatoes in the supermarket are packaged they just don’t taste anything like my home grown greatness. In fact they are just plain awful. So to satiate my ever growing need I start planning for next years garden. Inevitably that morphs into how to get the earliest tomato possible. My go to variety for this annual rite is Burpee’s Early Girl. Now I know there are varieties like Sub Artic and others that promise an early crop - their taste rating just isn’t there. I dare not grow a beautiful red fruit expecting deliciousness only to bite into another supermarket like disappointment. “Looks like a tomato, smell like a tomato but tastes like cardboard. I fear it might ruin my palate for what is to come later the summer.
On Sunday, with high hopes I ‘threw caution to the wind’ and a bought two new varieties from Burpee: Independence Day, and 4th of July. They claim 50 something days to first fruit. Firstly the 4th of July would in my mind be a complete failure. I have a table with grow light in my spare bedroom and a small unheated greenhouse on the side of my house. Ah hah you say a green house! Unfortunately my mature neighborhood is blessed with many mature trees. A full sun spot to grow on my woodsy property really doesn’t exist. (And no Im not going veggie inspired ‘bat crazy’ with my chainsaw.). I want a tomato in June and I don’t want to move to NC to do it.
The role of the dice will be how early to start those seeds. Spring these past few years has been a big disappointment. Start to early and Ill have leggy seedlings that will not flourish. Wait too long and my first bite will be on the fourth!
Big cherry’s, one or two Beefmaster’s , grape tomatoes and oh my the golden goodness that is Sungolds!
Anybody else have a Tomato thing?
On Sunday, with high hopes I ‘threw caution to the wind’ and a bought two new varieties from Burpee: Independence Day, and 4th of July. They claim 50 something days to first fruit. Firstly the 4th of July would in my mind be a complete failure. I have a table with grow light in my spare bedroom and a small unheated greenhouse on the side of my house. Ah hah you say a green house! Unfortunately my mature neighborhood is blessed with many mature trees. A full sun spot to grow on my woodsy property really doesn’t exist. (And no Im not going veggie inspired ‘bat crazy’ with my chainsaw.). I want a tomato in June and I don’t want to move to NC to do it.
The role of the dice will be how early to start those seeds. Spring these past few years has been a big disappointment. Start to early and Ill have leggy seedlings that will not flourish. Wait too long and my first bite will be on the fourth!
Big cherry’s, one or two Beefmaster’s , grape tomatoes and oh my the golden goodness that is Sungolds!
Anybody else have a Tomato thing?