The tomato experiment

The experiment started in the fall of 2005 when I read somewhere that tomatoes were perennials if you go down south far enough. Well, that year had been my first garden all my own, and I had discovered the pleasures of fat slices of Brandywine tomatoes in homemade BLT sandwiches. Unfortunately, I rented a small place in the shade, and the plants took all summer and into late fall before they ripened. One day in October, we got hit with a bit of frost, and it wiped out all the tomato plants. Picking through the damage, I noticed a few suckers that were unblemished, so I stuck them in water and put them on the window sill. That old house had no central heat, and at times the indoors reached into the 40's, so I lost all of the suckers except one. In march of last year, we bought our place here in on the mountain and the first thing I did was dig a hole and plant my one brandywine. It liked the new place. Growing seven feet tall (because I stopped it) and seven or eight feet across, it became a monstrosity. In the picture above, you'll see the same brandywine, freshly planted yesterday--the last survivor due to white-fly plague.

In the picture above, you will see my next tomato experiment. Last fall, we saved several batches of tomato seed, which involves a process of soaking the seeds for a few days in water to ferment the slick coating off the seeds before drying. Well, procrastinators we are, and a week later we found several sprouting in the cup of water. Just for kicks, I planted them. When it finally called for frost, I hauled them inside and never watered them, so as to slow the growth. They're now four feet tall and ready for summer, although some of them are struggling to recover from aphid and white fly damage.