Tomato Surprise!

Ugly plants don't sell, and that's a fact of life at a garden nursery. Some of the plants with the shortest beauty & shelf-life are vegetables, especially tomatoes. Tomatoes grow fast and gangly real quick, and when they're just too far gone to re-pot them, management directs us to toss 'em or take 'em home. Although I already had about a dozen tomatoes planted, I went ahead and volunteered to take a  half-flat of tomatoes a few weeks back. Hey, they were free!

The tomato plants sat on a back porch rail, and were buffetted by rain and wind, knocked off the railing, and taste-tested by the geese a few times before I had time to get them planted. At that point, all the markers denoting what kinds of tomatoes I had were long gone. I think the new plants are Green Zebras, Celebrity, Better Boy, and Yellow Brandywine, but I'm not positive. So come July, we'll just have a nice big pile of "Tomato Surprise!"

[pic: our first harvest - Early Girl, Roma, VF San Marzano, and Yellow Pear tomatoes]

P.S. Did you know? Take a gangly tomato plant, snip off its lower leaves, and plant it deeply into the soil to where not only are the roots in the soil, but the stem and covering the snipped off lower leaves as well. Doing so, the plant will then develop new roots where the bottom leaves were snipped off, and be even stronger for the growth of a deeper root system.  Learned that from one of the horticulture staff. Pretty cool tip!