Let’s Talk Tomatoes
A Little Heritage Hive Story
Some of us LOVE tomatoes. We could eat them at every meal, or just make a meal out of them—think sliced, vine-ripened beauties fresh from the garden, drizzled with a delicate olive oil, sprinkled with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Perfection.
And then, of course, there are the Non-Lovers.
Which brings me to a bigger topic than tomatoes alone: adults who hear but don’t listen to children.
One of our Non-Lovers had a Grade 6 teacher who, for some reason, was on a mission to make sure every student ate everything on their plate. One day, this teacher decided that our tomato-hating child would not leave the lunch table until the dreaded tomato was eaten. The child calmly explained, “I don’t like tomatoes.” The teacher, not listening to what was actually being said, insisted.
The teacher won the battle but lost the war—because the child did eat the tomato…
…and promptly threw up all over the teacher’s blue suede shoes.
Moral of the story? Listen to kids. Also, maybe don’t wear blue suede shoes around them.
Growing Tomatoes (2019): The Year of the Tomato Takeover
We’ve been growing tomatoes off and on for years, experimenting with different varieties and locations. Through trial and error, we’ve learned:
✔️ Cherry and smaller Roma tomatoes have the best chance of fully ripening on the vine in our climate.
✔️ Larger tomatoes are a tease. We spend weeks watching them grow, plump up, and begin to change color… but without a greenhouse, they never quite make it to the fully vine-ripened finish line.
This year, we decided to throw convention out the window and plant tomatoes right by the front door.
For 30 years, we stuck to the standard “pretty but impractical” front door plantings—boxwood hedges, impatiens, and other polite, conventional choices. But this year? HA! Conventional is boring.
The Tomato Lovers had their way, and five identical tomato plants were planted on each side of the front door in the following order:
🍅 San Marzano – an 8oz orange/red heirloom tomato
🍅 La Roma III – a 5-8oz Roma tomato
🍅 Sungold F1 – a golden-orange cherry tomato
🍅 Sugar Gloss – a super high-yield cherry tomato
🍅 Sweet 100 F1 – a 1” fruit-size organic cherry tomato
And as you can see from the photos, this year’s tomato crop was a HUGE success!
(And it was only mid-August at the time—go Tomato Lovers! 🎉)
The Side Yard Tomato Experiment
While the front-door tomatoes thrived, we also planted seven more tomato plants in our sunniest side yard vegetable planter box.
In 2018, we skipped tomatoes in this location and tried growing winter squash (butternut squash, to be exact). The result? They took up a ton of space and barely produced anything. Lesson learned. So in 2019, we brought back the tomatoes!
Here’s what we planted:
Juliet Hybrid – 1oz cherry tomato
Sweet 100 – 1oz cherry tomato
Sweet 100 F1 – 1” cherry tomato (keeps producing until frost… hmmm, fingers crossed!
Sweet 100 F1 – Same as above
Sweet 100 F1 – Again, same as above
Sweet 100 – Still the same variety, still amazing
Juliet Hybrid – Another round of this solid producer
And once again, the tomato crop was wildly successful!
The 2019 Tomato Verdict: Too Much of a Good Thing?
At the height of tomato season, there was a family discussion (or maybe a mild intervention) about planting fewer tomato plants next year.
Some of “us” (not me 😉) weren’t thrilled about knocking on neighbors' doors to share our harvest…of tomatoes.
Me? I say bring on the tomatoes. More is always better. But hey, we’ll see what 2020 brings.
