Tomatoes, Ahoy

This year was the first time I had a real garden of my own. At our last house we had established landscaping, so I kept my veggie growing to a few pots on the back deck. But this year, when we had our yard landscaped, we had an area put in for me to have a vegetable garden. It's been a learning experience.

I know that next year I'm not going to bother with green peppers. My plant hasn't yielded any full peppers yet, but does have three brewing. It just doesn't seem like enough payoff for purchasing, planting, watering, and waiting when I can get great peppers from my local farmer's stand at two for a buck. Our banana pepper plant, on the other hand, has yielded two peppers already with another ready to be picked and they really were very good banana peppers. This is coming from someone who doesn't really like peppers.

Our tomatoes, on the other hand, are another story. They went mad. I have two tomato plants, bushes really, and another cherry tomato plant. They've gotten so big they've collapsed, they're giving us tons of fruit, and they smell lovely. I know that I don't need three plants next year - maybe just two extremely well-staked plants. It makes me feel, I don't know, earthy, motherly, something...to have successfully grown my own fruit. As someone with a very black thumb, this is a big accomplishment for me.