Since the vegetable garden got decimated by frost, I was forced to do something I’ve never done before: buy tomato plants. I’ve purchased seed of course, and the first year we were in our last townhouse my mother-in-law gave us two tomato plants, but never before have I purchased them at a store. And once I grow a plant, I save seed–partly out of a sense of self-sufficiency and the desire to maintain my own seed stores, partly to discover new hybrids, and partly because the germination rate on saved seed is significantly better than store-bought (not to mention free).
But with over half my tomato plants dead, and since I didn’t get the chance to put in a vegetable garden at the new house last year, this year I was going to have tomatoes dammit! So when the local Lowe’s started putting them on sale, I relented.
Normally I don’t get tomatoes until July, but here I am with a single tomato, growing from the heirloom yellow lemon variety:
I suppose since I’ve recently depleted my canned tomato stores, that I can forgive myself just this once.
–Simon