Free Tomatoes

We've had a couple of nice volunteer tomatoes sprout. With the nonexistent Winter they've gotten a good head start. I'm not sure what the first one is but I'm hoping it's one of the German, Cherokee or other purples, but I do know it's something good since the seeds were still viable and the aroma is amazing. It's the sweetest tomato plant I've ever schnozed and it doesn't even have any blooms yet. If you close your eyes you'd swear it was loaded with fruit. When you get up close it knocks you over and you can smell it from ten feet away. It could literally be a perfume, and possibly even give patchouli a run for its money with the latterday Deadhead perfume-buying community, or even something that certain individuals might be interested in smoking. It's that nice.
 Instead of digging it up we cut the bottom out of a pot and filled it with good dirt and compost. The soil here is packed clay, sand and rocks, and it's poor in humus or organic matter. Except for a few things, everything does better in containers or raised beds. For those who don't know, the best way to plant a tomato is to cut all but the top layer or two of leaves, and plant the stem as deeply as you can. Unlike most plants it won't kill the stem, and in fact roots will grow out wherever the stem is buried. That will make the plant grow stronger and have more fruit. If you've already planted your plants, you can still "retrofit" them by simply mounding dirt around the stem or enclosing it in a pot as we did here. Cut the lower leaves off first, with an Exacto rinsed with alcohol preferable to scissors, and bury as much of the stem as you can. The plants will be just fine and you'll get more tomatoes. Get that white bread and mayo ready. There's noting better in the free world.

This one came from some organic grape tomatoes from two years ago that we forgot to eat and had basically turned into raisins. I planted them in this pot. One came up last year but for some reason it never even blossomed. It's hard to tell in the photo but this plant has a couple-dozen blooms and we should be picking free grape tomatoes within the month. Both of these are beautiful plants and so far they've managed to weather the sharp increase in UV rays that Earth is experiencing at the moment, but they don't get full sun all day long. Rest assured no Miracle Gro or any other chemical bullshit will ever touch these plants (except for what's already in the environment), and for plants that get equal sunlight, I'll put these here bad boys up against anyone's. Can't wait to try them. Free is good. Free tomatoes is extry-good.