My love of veggies and fruit has always been pretty evident to everyone who knows me. Yet I have never had that much of a green thumb, so it never occurred to me that I could actually grow food in a home garden, much less, harvest and eat anything!
However, any doubts and hesitations about starting my own tomato garden vanished instantly when my coworker brought in some of his "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomatoes harvest. There on the office counter was a good-sized pile of deliciously ripe and ridiculously tiny cherry tomatoes. True to their name, the Sweet 100 cherry tomato is sweet and full of flavor. They were the perfect snack size without being messy. You know what I'm talking about right? Some tomatoes are so juicy that they just drip all over your shirt. Or you'll bite into a cherry tomato and a stream of juice and seeds shoot out across the room. It's happened to me so many times, I don't think I can recall a time where I haven't had a tomato related accident.
And thus the "seed" was planted. I had to have those Sweet 100 plants. Bound and determined to get some more of those delicious home grown tomatoes, I went to Home Depot on Saturday and bought two "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomato plants, one "Early Girl" tomato plant, and one "Husky Red" cherry tomato plant. I also bought a "Sweet Basil" and an "Orange Bell Pepper" plant, but the tomatoes are the ones that I'm really focused on.
After doing some research online and lurking in tomato growers forums, I've discovered several interesting facts. The Sweet 100s have grape-like bundles of "toms" (I'm assuming this is the growers' abbreviation for tomatoes, forgive this newbie if I'm using the term incorrectly). These bundles of "toms" have 100 or more clusters of delicious cherry tomatoes! In addition, these "Super Sweet 100" cherry tomatoes can grow from 8 inches to approximately 6 feet tall in 30 days! Some other tomato growers have mentioned that their Sweet 100s got to be about 20' tall by the end of the year! I have to admit that I was probably close to salivating at that point. After doing some mental math, it became clear that this particular tomato plant grows 1-2 inches a day! Obviously, the need to photo-document this ridiculous growth started to well up within me!
Let's start with some baby shots!
Here they are at the local Home Depot. I forgot how much they cost, maybe around $3-4? I know they sell the seeds online for $1.59. I'm not confident in my skills yet to grow plants from seed, so I spent some more bucks for the plants themselves.
This is Super Sweet 100 plant #1. It's under the Aerogarden light. The other Super Sweet 100 plant #2 is outside right now in a pot. I haven't taken a picture of it yet. But I will start pictures of all the little tomato plants tomorrow including the Early Girl and the Husky Red.
Thanks for visiting my Inland Empire Tomato A Day blog. I'm hoping to share a little part of my garden with everyone. If you have any experience or advice with any of the above-mentioned tomato plants, feel free to comment! I'm too much of a tomato newbie to answer any questions at this point, unfortunately!
Have a delicious home-grown day!
