I spent yesterday morning re-potting 120 117 of my heirloom tomato plants. I had 3 casualties. Not bad. Re-potting tomato seedlings really gets me excited about gardening. There is no greater taste on earth than biting into a real, sun ripened, heirloom tomato grown right in your very own backyard.
Caution: Growing your own tomatoes can turn you into a tomato snob. Once you have had a real tomato, you’ll start to walk past the pathetic, gassed, unripe, mushy ones they sell in the stores. Getting back to the land, and growing your own food, does something to you.
It gives you back your taste buds.
You slowly start to remember what real food used to taste like when you were a kid. Memories of picking vegetables from your grandmother’s garden and sitting on the porch steps eating fresh onions and tomatoes, raw out of the garden, start to come back to you.
If you want to eat real food, you’re going to need to grow it yourself. Or at least live next door to someone who does.
A few more weeks under the grow lights and these re-potted heirloom tomatoes will be making their way out to the greenhouse to harden off. Wahoo!
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit
Mike says
Tomatoland sounds like an interesting book…I added it to my reading list, thanks. We are repotting our tomatoes this week as well. Grow little tomatoes, grow.:)
Robin in SoCal says
Couldn’t agree more. You are off to a great start!
Desi says
Wow, you’re going to be swimming in tomatoes! How delicious! 🙂