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My favourite thing about home-grown tomatoes is that acrid smell the plants have. A greenhouse full of them is quite pungent. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

And until you’ve grown your own, you do not know from tomatoes.

Yar tomato plants are evil smelling things. No wonder people thought they were poisonous. Unfortunately Las Vegas isn’t a very good place to grow them. 🙁
Still, you can buy some pretty good ones though from time to time.

Best thing is daring to handle the plants – then washing your paws.

Instant green foam and an Irish sink.

So much chlorophyll – who knew?

This year, I’ve let the tomatoes have the run of the place.

Some have even emerged, self-seeded in the gravel, from last year’s plants.

I decided to treat these interlopers as an experiment in hydroponics and have dutifully splashed High K fertiliser on the stones with every watering.

So far, so good… even the gravel has produced a crop this year.

Next season? Why, triffids, of course!

After last season’s debacle I held off on the toms this year, and am working on pumpkins.

They’re not only thriving, I’m increasingly sure they’re sentient. In a malevolent, calculating, “I’m going to strangle the life out of everything I can get my springy little tendrils on” kinda way.

I can’t quite figure out, from an evolutionary standpoint, why pumpkins thought it was a good idea to be a climbing vine. I mean, the vines climb trees, flowers grow on the vine in the trees and are fertilized, and pumpkins grow from the base of the flowers. Upwards of ten pounds of gourd, supported by whatever the vine affixed itself to?

Stupid pumpkins.

Mmmmm, pumpkin seeds.

We planted a couple of varieties of tomatos but with the cooler weather and my working more hours….pffft.

First Mushrooms, then onions, now tomatoes! You’re making a salad, aren’t you? Don’t forget the bacon bits.

There’s some tomato blight in central Pennsylvania, so very few local tomatoes this year. (Really kills the summer BLT kick. Nothing better than a BLT made with fresh tomatoes.)

As usual we usually have a few self-seeding (“volunteer”) cherry tomato plants. They had a late start and don’t get a lot of sun where they are, so none are ripe yet.