Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Dreams of NEXT summer's tomatoes

One of the things I absolutely love/hate about the internet is the randomness of how you may find something of interest to you. Now that I'm retired, the time factor isn't as pressing so the love part is stronger.

As a kid, my grandfather always had a huge garden, as did one of our neighbors. So summer meant delicious tomatoes right off the vine. Just bringing the tomato to your mouth was great with that fragrance of the vines on your hands and arms. I could just wander off in memoryland about summer picnics, lightening bugs, and so forth but either you have your own great memories triggered by tomatoes or you don't. Reruns of mine won't replace actual ones.

I also remember sitting with Grandpa Bill while there was snow piled high in the yard, while he perused the seed catalogs in January, planning for the garden the following summer. Although gardening can be hard work, it has it's own natural rewards.

The links below take you to an excellent gardening blog where there is a linkie to the heirloom tomato company. If you stumble across this post, I've semi organized them. The blog has a great section telling about the tomatoes she actually planted. Great descriptions of the way most of us evaluate them called the Beauty Pageant. If you live somewhere where the snow piles high in the winter, just reading the descriptions will make the time until you can start your garden seem shorter.

The heirloom seed company order list was 13 pages long with more or less 10 per page ~ on our printer. Imagine having that many choices over the 2 or 3 at the grocery store! We are gonna have to try at least a couple next year. Since we live in TX, I'll be looking for some that are drought resistant...

http://www.thisgardenisillegal.com/category/tomato-tastings
and http://www.tomatobabycompany.com/