Runt

Do you see these two tomatoes? Aren't they nice, all red and fresh? One of them is a roma I plucked directly from the veggie aisle at the grocery store. And the other, also a roma, I harvested directly from my backyard. Can you guess which is which?

If you guessed that the large beauty on the right was my homegrown prize, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong.

Because the tomato on the left, dwarfed in its shadow, is the one that I grew in my backyard. It is about the size of a large grape. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've eaten grapes that are bigger than that this week...

Is this tiny tomato an anomaly, you ask? Well...I can't say, because it is the only tomato that has decided to grace us with its presence this season.

Of course it was very, very tasty. That one bite that we had.

Very tasty.

But one bite may be all I get this summer.

Because apparently I've been carrying on from day to day completely unaware that I suffer from a severe tomato-growing deficiency. If it hadn't been for this small tomato, I would have never known.

We might not have caught it in time.

I'll keep you updated on my condition.

Previous Related Posts:
Veggie Revival
A Tale of Backyard Tomatoes
Feeding the Naysayers

A Tale of Backyard Tomatoes

Naturally when I was planning my veggie garden this year, I added tomatoes to the list. I mean, who doesn't want to grow and eat fresh tomatoes? They're arguably one of the best foods on the planet. And this year I had even upgraded my efforts by buying heirloom varieties, which are supposed to be superior in flavor to the standard hybridized types.

So here they are, in containers on the side of my house:


Don't they look happy? All verdant and full. Growing up tall and healthy.



Except for one thing....

Why don't they have any tomatoes? Why are they content to grow up towards the sky, and yet seem to disdain the thought of doing the actual work of growing fruit?

One--count it--one tomato is growing, and looks about as delectable as a lime-green marble.


I fertilize them often, and water them faithfully. Why are they so lazy?


And then there's this guy. Sad, sad tomato plant. I give it Exactly the same care as the other two. Does it look happy? No. Not at all. It is weeping over more and more daily. Like it has lost its will to live.


It is curling up to die.

As you can see, perhaps my dreams of making batches of homemade tomato sauce and piling my late summer sandwiches high to the sky with juicy goodness are just that--a dream.

Hopefully your tomato tales are better than mine--

Previous Related Posts:
Feeding the Naysayers
Slow & Steady
Ode to Peas