What’s to love about Tomato Gardening?

It all comes down to the five senses.

1. Sight
2. Sound
3. Smell
4. Touch
5. Taste

I remember when I was growing up watching my grandfather eating tomatoes from his garden.

I remember my grandfather and grandmother planting, tending and harvesting tomatoes from the garden.

I remember him watering, fertilizing, digging up and removing the soil and having a truck load of new soil brought in.

I remember my grandmother sending us down to pick tomatoes and various other vegetables from the garden and having them brought to the kitchen before lunch and dinner.

My grandfather always loved to come in from the outside after working and eating a plate of sliced tomatoes  from the garden and sprinkled with sugar.

Tomato gardening has been something that I remember since I was a little kids.  It brings back wonderful childhood memories of working in the garden with my grandparents.

Sight

What does the tomato look like?  Color, Size and Shape of the tomato,  The vine, the leaves the soil.  Think about everything that you take in as you look at a tomato

Sound

The sound of the tomato as you pluck it from the vine,  Slice it with a knife.  The sound as you take a bite of the tomato

Smell

What smells do you associate with a tomato?  Starting in the Garden, tilling the soil, putting down the fertilizer, harvesting the tomato.

Cutting and cooking  the tomato and finally eating the tomato.

Touch

What do you feel when you pick up the tomato.  Is it firm, soft, mushy, bruised?  What do you feel when you are inspecting the tomato and/or the vine?

Taste

Finally, the tasted.  What does the tomato taste like.  Is sweet or sour?  Is it juicy or is it dry?   What do you taste?  What do you personally like when you taste a tomato?

This is what tomato gardening is to me.

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Heart Shaped Tomatoes…

Cute

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Some Extra reading for Tomato Gardening

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Some extra reading on Container vegetable gardening.

• More on Vertical Hydroponics | Indoor Vegetable Garden – vertical hydroponics ™ is focused on the development of a hydroponic system that eliminates all the hurdles experienced by vertical systems…
• which plants are best for a container garden? – by sarah duke. container gardening is a very easy way to get fresh produce with very little effort. a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and fruit can be grown in pots. herbs are the most popular, followed by vegetables. …
• vegetables in container gardening – by sydney j. calderon. we’re all used to seeing rising prices, but the cost of food seems to have skyrocketed in the last few years. one way to protect yourself against high food prices is to grow your own vegetables. …
• Container vegetable gardening and food preservation program – Container Vegetable Gardening and Food Preservation, presented by Carolyn Hathaway – Home Horticulture Technician and Brittany Wilkins – Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent will meet on Saturday, March 20th from 2 to 3:30 pm at …
• You Can Do Container Vegetable Gardening – Organic vegetable gardening is becoming very popular particularly here in UK where home gardens are getting smaller and smaller. You can grow quite a crop this way although you will never feed yourself solely on your own produce You Can …

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• 650 gr lean beef mince
• 1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
• 2 onion spring (shallot) , chopped
• 2 tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 x 700g tomato passata
• 1/2 cup grated taste cheese

Method:

1. Place mince beef, breadcrumbs,onion spring, oregano and garlic in a large bowl and season to taste. Mix well to combine. Roll mixture into 16 balls.
2. Spray a non stick frying pan with cooking oil spray and heat on medium-high. Cook meatballs for 10 minutes, until browned and cooked through. Meanwhile, heat passata in a saucepan for 5 minutes, until warm. Transfer meatballs to a greased baking dish. Pour over passata and scatter with cheese.
3. Place under a hot grill for 5 minutes, until cheese melts. Serve with mashed potatoes.

Source: Australian Table Magazine, April 2008

You’ll love Baked tomato meatballs.

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I have always loved the tomato slicer.

I always specifically look for the guy selling them at the state fair.  It isn’t just the tomato slicer.  It’s all the gadgets.

I love how the guy always uses the tomato as his victim.   They crush them, mash them, squeeze them, slice them paper thin.  And they claim that this gadget will slice so thin that you can feed a whole family for a week on one tomato.

They slice, dice and makes Julienne fries.

At the state fair I see these guys demonstrating their wares.  I’ve never worked at the state fair, but I can imagine these guys traveling around the country.  I don’t know what kind of a life it is.

If you have time at the fair, go and watch the guy at sell the tomato slicer gadgets.

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Looking for Heirloom Tomato Seeds?

The question you have to ask is what is an Heirloom Tomato?

1. What is the talk all about?
2. Is it a particular variety?
3. Are they all that different than a regular tomato?
4. What are the advantages to the heirloom tomato?
5. Isn’t a tomato just a tomato?

“An heirloom is generally considered to be a variety that has been passed down, through several generations of a family because of it’s valued characteristics. Since ‘heirloom’ varieties have become popular in the past few years there have been liberties taken with the use of this term for commercial purposes. ”

Is it a particular variety?

1. Commercial Heirlooms: Open-pollinated varieties introduced before 1940, or tomato varieties more than 50 years in circulation.
2. Family Heirlooms: Seeds that have been passed down for several generations through a family.
3. Created Heirlooms: Crossing two known parents (either two heirlooms or an heirloom and a hybrid) and dehybridizing the resulting seeds for how ever many years/generations it takes to eliminate the undesirable characteristics and stabilize the desired characteristics, perhaps as many as 8 years or more.
4. Mystery Heirlooms: Varieties that are a product of natural cross-pollination of other heirloom varieties.

” ‘Heirloom’ applied to plants was apparently first used by Kent Whealy of Seed Savers Exchange, who first used “heirloom” in relation to plants in a speech he gave in Tucson in 1981. He had asked permission to use the term “heirloom” from John Withee, who had used the term on the cover of his bean catalog. John said sure, that he had taken it from Prof. William Hepler at the University of New Hampshire, who first used the term “heirloom” to describe some beans that friends had given him back in the 1940s. “

Are they all that different than a regular tomato seeds?

Yes,

There are many different varieties of heirloom tomatoes seeds,

“and probably one of the most popular reasons people to plant these tomatoes is their local resistance to pests, local weather, as well as their unique look and flavor. Also, heirloom tomato seeds are frequently grown organically without pesticides, fertilizers, or growth hormones.”

“Most people are accustomed to the look of a tomato in a grocery store; many of the heirloom varieties give a different taste, texture and look to the tomato. This gives them another reason for being a popular hobby farm tomato. People enjoy the distinctive flavors and look of some of the varieties such as Brandywine, Black Krim, Big Rainbow, which is a yellow tomato with interesting red swirls, and other primitive tomato seed varieties.”

What are the advantages to the heirloom tomato seeds?

“Many of the heirloom varieties of tomatoes are easy to grow organically. Since they are resistant to pests, you don’t need to use pesticides, and because they grow easily in local climates, you don’t need fertilizers either. This means that they can be organically grown in local soil; also, being organic is another popular reason for consumers to purchase the heirloom tomatoes.”

Source: what-is-heirloom-tomato

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The upside down tomato garden.

OK, I screwed up and wrote another piece on this subject.  I’m going to post it anyway.

This is another version of the topsy turvy planter.  It seems a little sturdier or free standing, but it looks like cheap plastic.  It look like something that was made in the same factory as those cheap plastic outdoor childrens playground or those self standing basket ball nets.

I am not opposed to the upside down tomato garden method.  I just want it to be aesthetically pleasing.    Especially if you have limited space.  I don’t want to look out on my balcony and see some hideous plastic monster.

Below there are a bunch of benefit to upside down tomato garden planters

1. Space: The upside down tomato planter suits  any plant that is a vine.  Vines on the ground take up a lot of space.  If your space is limited, you have a dilema.  Should you or should you not plant a Vine plant.  That is tomatoes,  beans, zuchini, etc.
2. Better and easier care, cultivation and harvesting.
3. Soil managment:  upside down planter containers use less fertilizer and compost.
4. Weather.  since there is less soil to manage there is less problems when you have very wet and very dray seasons.
5. Pests and Diseases Control.  Better risk management

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Upside Down Tomato Garden.

I’ve been very skeptical in my past posts.  I think you may be able to grow them, but if you have a brown thumb I don’t think this is the magical answer.

Firstly,  What do they mean by upside down tomato garden.  It’s not a generic term for this kind of gardening.  It’s another product that you can buy.  It looks like cheap plastic that might last a couple of years in the outside environment.

What are the benefits of the upside down tomato garden.

1. A better harvests
2. better quality tomatoes
3. apartment, flat or small house with no garden, you can still grow the upside down tomato garden .
4. Reasonable prices.
5. No weeding, tilling.
6. Need only potting soil and fertilizer
7. No insect in the soil
8. Just go out on your patio and pick your fruit.

Why does it supposedly work?

1. Improved air circulation
2. Less fungal problems
3. pest attack .
4. fruit less prone to rotting.

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