You say Tomato...

One of my very favorite vegetables to grow and eat is tomatoes. I love to put them in salad, make salsa, chop them up and use them in spaghetti sauce or simply slice them up and eat them fresh. My children, three out of the four of them, love tomatoes as well and keeping them from picking the newly red fruit is a challenge. They'd have the bushes picked clean in half a heartbeat and I'd never have any to use in our meals. I always try to keep a good supply of cherry tomatoes growing so they can have their fill and hopefull leave my larger ones alone for cooking with. I like to grow beef steaks for salads and sandwiches, romas for sauses and salsa, and cherry for picking and eating raw. None of us cares much for grape tomatoes because of the sweetness.

Here in Washington, our tomato crops have been notoriously poor because of the short growing season. We get a lot of fruit that sets but it rarely gets ripe until we move the plants indoors. So we grow the tomato plants in pots so they're portable. Once we move to Kentucky, I look forward to having a good crop of tomatoes that will ripen outside in the sunshine. I look forward to having too many to eat and being able to give some away. So many things to anticipate as we're preparing to move. In fact, I've started receiving plant catalogs from the seed supply companies and I've been drooling over them for days. Burpee and Park's Seed catalogs are my favorite so far. So many beautiful things to plant and harvest.