…And The Search Still On
Plant and seed catalogs start to pile up at this time of year. It’s always fun to leaf through them as there’s not much I can do in the garden and they give me ideas for next season. Now is the time to look for new plants, plan new arrangements for the garden, and order new seeds to experiment with. The growing season starts in less than two months. March is when I start my chili pepper and tomato seedlings. It doesn’t matter how cold or how high the snow is outside. If I don’t start seedlings for these two vegetables early, there will not be enough time for them to produce mature fruit. The growing season in the Northeastern part of the US is very short I have to start early in the house.
We love tomatoes, especially home grown tomatoes. We did really well with our tomatoes last year. Not just what we grew in our garden, the seedlings we had given to friends and colleagues did well too. I think the weather really helped. I experiment with new types of tomatoes every year and continue to grow only the ones we like best. Our favorites are Brandywine, Mortgage lifter, Cherokee purple and Rose for large tomatoes.
We love cherry tomatoes too but never had much luck finding one whose taste we really loved until last year. We have been depending on the self-sown tomatoes for our cherry tomatoes. They grew fast, strong and very sweet. The seeds or plants I bought have been disappointments until last year. I found Indigo cherry and Nova, which are very beautiful and tasty. I will grow these two cherry tomatoes again this year but I am still looking for a new one to try.
At this point we still debating between the Black Krim-Heirloom from Crimea or Burpee’s Steakhouse Hybrid. But our favorites and the Chocolate will always have their place in our garden.
Petals and Wings 
What beautiful tomatoes! Much more gorgeous than the ones in the supermarkets.
They taste much better than supermarkets tomatoes too. They’re also organically grown, not a touch of pesticide. I don’t know about supermarkets in your area but most tomatoes in the US supermarkets are GMO-tomato and picked when they’re green. I’m so glad for you that the EU banned GMO products for human consumption.
Our supermarket ones may not be GMO but they don’t smell like tomatoes and are pretty bland. In the summer I can buy better ones from the local farmers markets, the ones that are different shapes and colours like yours.
One of us is devoted to Brandywine for roast tomato soup. The other favors Black Krim and the like although they seem prone to splitting. We both are quite fons of Green Zebra.
Roast tomato soup sounds great. We just sprinkle them with a little sea salt or grill them with cheese and herbs. From the catalog description, Black Krim is very tasty but didn’t say anything about splitting. Thank you for the warning. I’ll look for the Green Zebra.
My mouth is watering. Those are gorgeous tomatoes.
They taste great too, especially when we let them ripen on the plants.
I grew Black Krim last year, they have excellent flavor, tho mine were on the small side. We also had problems with fungus because it was a very rainy year, that may also have contributed to the small size as well.
Thank you very much. It’s nice to know what to look for since I’m growing it for the first time this year.