Tomato Crazy

Normally at this point in the growing season I would be looking at my skinny, weak looking tomato plants that I planted from seed and wondering why they don't look as nice or a s healthy as the ones that professional greenhouses grow to sell in stores.  I would be feeling sorry for myself, wondering why I'm not perfect after only a few years of gardening, not even realizing that they will grow to huge, mega producing tomato plants in their own time.  This year I was singing a different song.  Why didn't I just plant some tomato seeds, was I so busy that I couldn't throw a few seeds in some dirt & water them, now I have to go buy tomato plants and spend 40x more than I would if I just planted my own seeds.  Next year I'm definitely back on the seed train.

I'd been holding off on buying tomatos this year, I wasn't quite ready for them in my garden yet.  Saturday I was at Home Hardware and there were only 5 tomato plants left, so I bought them all and planted them that night.  Monday the last thing I did before going inside for the night was to spread some wood chip mulch around my tomatos.  Tuesday when I checked them, they were all dead!!  Agh, the mulch killed my tomatos, maybe I let the soil dry out, what on Earth happened.  I was doing internet searches and thinking about it all day, totally forgetting about the ice that I dumped out of Simons bowl first thing in the morning.  Finally it hit me in the evening, they froze you dingbat, it wasn't the mulch that killed them.  It was so nice Monday evening I didn't even think about frost and I'm not much of a weather checker.  I guess I learned my lesson, for this year anyway. 

Wednesday I set off to buy another round of Tomato plants, Farmers Market day anyway I'm sure I could get some there.  I had a worry in my head that maybe I was too late and there would be no tomato plants left in all of Drayton Valley.  What would I do if I couldn't buy tomatos, I knew I should have planted seeds, tomatos, I need tomatos.  I made sure I was at the Farmers Market as soon as it started, I couldn't risk not getting any.  OK, so I overreacted, of course there were tomato plants.  Those Hutterites sure know what they are doing, their plants look great and only $2 each.  I think I need to go visit the Hutterites so they can teach me their tricks.  I got one of each type, 4 plants.  I planned to plant more than that but I was going to check out a couple of other places in town too.  I grabbed a hanging basket of Tomatos too, expensive, but ready to produce and a pepper plant, excited try that out.  Next to Canadian Tire, I picked out some herbs (I am totally addicted to herbs this year, even if I don't use them to cook it is worth it just to smell them).  I picked out 3 more tomato plants, ok that's 8 tomato plants total.  Next Curt needed me to grab something from Walmart for him, since I was there I better check out the garden section, I was still looking for a couple herbs.  Well they had 4 packs of tomatos for $0.97, the plants were small, about what mine would look like if I planted some and 4 for $0.97, cheap, so I grabbed 2 of the 4 packs and then I threw in another bigger plant just for good measure.  So that's 9 more plants making 17 total.  Oh don't let me forget to tell you I have another 3 plants at home that were given to me so the grand total is 20 tomato plants.  Do you have any idea how many tomatos we will have off of 20 tomato plants?!?  We will be able to take a bath in them.  I am going to be so busy in the the fall.  I'm quite sure we will be able to make enough tomato sauce to last us the winter.  Curt wanted lots of tomato sauce and boy will he get it.  I just hope he's willing to help make & can it all.  So if you are out of tomatos in a couple months please do not go to the store, just come visit me.