A Nice, Quiet Post About Tomatoes

I picked up a tall, straggly tomato plant at the local nursery last week.  In its better days, the plant would have sold for $45 - the pot still had the sticker with that price.   That would have been at least a month or more ago.  As it was, the clerk let me have the plant for $7, plus a 20-percent discount.

The plant had about 8 tomatoes and half a dozen yellow flowers when we put it in the back seat of our car.  By the time I put it and gingerly staked it in our backyard, it had lost two of its tomatoes and half of its flowers.

The first few days are never kind to a transplant.   However good the new conditions, they represent a shock in comparison to where the plant has been situated.  About half the leaves turned yellow (not good) and brown.

But I went to water the plant today, I noticed three things:

1. there was some good new stem and leaf growth
2. there were at least four new flowers
3. one of the older flowers had turned in a little green tomato

I'm happy.

Next step will be eating the tomatoes.   I'll be back to you with a full report, then - figure, in a couple of weeks.*

*Hey, I'm back sooner than that - check out A Umami Tomato...

early European depiction of the tomato, about 1600
courtesy foodmuseum.com/tomato.html