Get ready now for a healthy summer!
March 17, 2010
One of my favourite days of the year is the first warm day of spring when I
dust off the propagator, buy some potting compost and look through the
many packets of tomato seeds that I have bought or exchanged with friends
and decide what which tomato varieties to grow this year. This is the sign
that the long winter is finally over.
Home grown tomatoes hold the promise of long summer evenings in the
garden, enjoying meals of colourful mixed salads, luscious pasta sauces,
sweet roast tomatoes on toast with friends and family. That said, life just
doesn’t get any better than biting into a warm cherry tomato straight off
the vine.
I always get carried away, filling up too many trays of my favourites like
Sungold, Gardeners’ Delight, Roma, Marmande, … and new varieties with
promising names recommended by friends: Tigerella, Black Beauty,
Costoluto or Green Zebra. I carefully drop tomato seeds into trays, cover
with a vermiculite mix, water and place them on a bright windowsill. Over
the next few weeks, the house and conservatory become filled with plants,
taking more and more space as they grow and need repotting, before the
day they can take their place in the garden or the greenhouse.
There is no way our garden could accommodate the dozens of plants I end
up with so I sell some at school fairs or give them to friends, even those
who have no garden. To gardening beginners and children, I give cherry
tomato seedlings. They just need a grow bag or large pot on the balcony or
the patio. Over the years, I have made many converts who ask me for
plants or advice. Some have even started a small vegetable patch in the
flowerbeds.
While I watch my seedlings grow, I will continue to use canned tomatoes,
passata and tomato frito to prepare delicious pasta sauces, warming tomato
soups or nourishing stews. I will however wait to pick my first homegrown
tomato to have a fresh tomato salad. On that day, summer will truly have
arrived.
Some of you surely have a similar relationship with your tomato plants?
Olive
Posted: March 17 2010 by Olive | Comments [1]
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