I’m possibly growing more tomatoes than two people could reasonably be expected to consume in a year.
I have plans to freeze or can any excess ones that I get, so I think it’s entirely reasonable to have more than a dozen tomato plants in my garden this season.
Usually, I have at least one or two plants that die soon after planting, and one or two that never really take off and grow, which is why I plant so many tomatoes.
I rarely have the tomato jungle that every tomato-loving gardener wants, which sometimes makes me wonder how I can even call myself a gardener.
I have a friend, Jan-of-the-awesome-garden, who always succeeds in growing a tomato jungle. When she plants a cherry tomato, that plant will produce thousands of cherry tomatoes.
They grow up, around and through the garden fence, which is at least 6 feet tall. She picks buckets and barrels of cherry tomatoes and can never get them all, so one or several dozen fall to the ground, thus re-seeding themselves as rogue tomato plants the next year.
For me, cherry tomatoes produce tens of cherry tomatoes. I long for enough to roast a pan full of them and make a concentrated roasted cherry tomato pizza sauce, but all I get are a handful here and there to eat while I’m out in the garden.
I’m not holding my breath, but this year could be different. I’m fairly certain (and somewhat disappointed) that my plants won’t grow into the Godzilla-like creatures my friend grows, but I’m starting to think I might get dozens and dozens of cherry tomatoes and possibly hundreds of heirloom tomatoes.
A couple of weeks ago, I picked the cherry tomatoes that were ripe, leaving a bunch on the two plants that would ripen within a few more days. I could have made a salad with them, but the lettuce had gotten bitter and gone to seed, and my cucumbers were stubbornly slow.
We were grilling hamburgers, and I really wanted an enormous heirloom tomato to slice and put on the burgers, but I only had a bunch of cherry tomatoes and a couple, small, almost-ripe Early Girls.
We also had some tasty, hard, Italian-style cheese my hubby picked up at the cheese lover’s Mecca (aka City Market on 12th Street), and decided to use that to make cheeseburgers. I could hear the balsamic BellaVitano cheese begging to be paired with tomatoes, and I could also hear the cherry tomatoes make a desperate plea to be the star of the show before the heirlooms arrived and hogged the limelight.
Yes, food talks to me the way that a young child’s imaginary friend gives advice. Don’t worry, I’m not losing touch with reality. My garden plants talk to me, too. If I ever start having conversations with the laundry, then it’s time to get nervous.
The Early Girls weren’t even big enough to cover an entire burger, and they don’t have that memorable, slice-of-summer taste the cheese deserved, so I decided to chop up the cherry tomatoes, add some diced garlic and onion, and throw in some assorted chopped herbs from the garden.
Fortunately, I had some leftover chopped herbs from the day before, so I made my cherry tomato/onion relish in less time than it took the cheese to melt.
The burgers were pre-formed patties that come in a pack of 10 or 12, so we’re not talking Grade A prime beef, but in spite of that, they were the best burgers either one of us had eaten in a long time.
Was it the cheese? Was it the cherry tomatoes? I don’t know, but it was enough to convince me that all the hard work I put into the garden is worth it.
Since that day, the heirlooms in the garden have begun to ripen, and we’re eating tomatoes in all sorts of inventive ways. So far, caprese salad is still my favorite, although a tomato- bagel sandwich in the morning with a Kellogg’s Breakfast tomato is fairly fantastic, too.
If only my yard tasted this good in the winter.
Penny Stine is the staff writer for The Daily Sentinel’s Special Sections department and can be reached at Penny.Stine@gjsentinel.com.
August 01, 2020 at 01:15PM
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Eat Your Yard: A tomato bigger than my head? Yes, please - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
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