Tomato surprises

Sweet pea tomatoes

Well, I have found out why one of the tomato varieties I ordered had the moniker Sweet Pea. Those little tomatoes are the size of a pea!

My experience with the four tomato plants that are now producing in our veggie garden lets me know my track record for ordering online stands. I suck at online shopping. The word “tiny” was right there in the description of the Sweet Pea. I just went back and checked.

Juliet tomatoes

My Juliet plant was supposed to produce tomatoes bigger than a cherry tomato but not huge, or so I thought. Not only is it not bigger, it’s plum shaped. I must have looked at the wrong photo AND the wrong description.

Mountain Magic tomatoes

No surprises with the Mountain Magic variety. So far it is my favorite in the taste department, too. And don’t let the photo fool you. These tomatoes are only about 1.5 inch diameter. Husband Walter was not nearby, so I couldn’t borrow his thumb for a photo that would put the tomatoes’ size in perspective.

The Mexico Midgets variety is my second favorite but the ripening fruit was in a dense tomato jungle that defied me to keep my balance while getting a clear close-up. The abundant tomatoes are about one-half inch diameter with quite a taste packed in those small globes.

One reason I chose these varieties was they were all described as prolific producers. So far they have all lived up to that claim. A garden columnist I read regularly said that the solution to birds' dining on your tomatoes was to plant varieties that produced enough for you and the birds.

So far we have had only two Juliet tomatoes that suffered that fate. Without having to share with birds, we had enough to send about a quart of our mini-maters home with son Walt and his family today. That included all the varieties except Sweet Pea. It has lots of tiny tomatoes, but they are slow ripening.

We enjoy tomatoes and cucumbers in the salads that we have at least every other day. And we both like the bite-sized tomatoes as a quick snack, too.

A harvest of tomatoes, cucumbers and three zucchini hardly gives us gardening bragging rights, though. And some folks who haven’t experienced the joys of grubbing in the dirt and fighting weeds point out that we could buy a lot of veggies for the money we spend on seed and plants.

But they haven’t seen gardening as part of a reasonable entertainment budget as well as mental, physical and occupational therapy for my stroke recovery. Seeing things grow, picking and eating fresh veggies from our own backyard and even thinking about and planning for what's next in our gardening efforts is definitely entertainment and therapy for me.

I tried out that logic on Dear Hubby, and he said it would be accurate if I didn’t include our frequent trips to Coffee Fusion in the budget. Oh, yes, Coffee Fusion. That will just have to be mental exercise for another day and another post.