I have a bit of a range of successes in the garden over the last couple of weeks. One of the things that was kind of challenging was that it was extremely dry here and just way more hot than that Dutch weather usually is over a longer period of time.
Heatwaves is no strange thing for sure, but it was just like 6 weeks above 30 degrees the whole time. Actually I'm not entirely sure if this is true, but it just felt like that. And the garden also seemed like it felt like that. Watering the crops was a thing that usually I don't really have to do a lot for it, but this time it needed a bit of a daily habit to actually revive everything again as all leaves were hanging on the daily.
The big survivor on this?
The cherry tomato plants that were just growing like a rocket and all of them were made from seed from just 1 cherry tomato.
Just a day harvest and so many more to come
Yup, you heard it well. It all started in March or April when I took just one cherry tomato coming from the super market and squished it. With all of the fruity meat inside there I took out the seeds and wiped them over a paper towel to actually separate them.
I put them in the some starting cups with soil in there, and in these months I still have the grow lights on to get them kick started. That worked and there just an abundance of seedlings after just a couple of days.
I took 5 or 6 of the strongest seedling and decided that these would be my winners to head outside. I left the rest of the seedlings to grow just to be sure if these first ones would fail.
In the Netherlands the date that is usually safe to put seedlings outside is around half of May. At that time when they went outside and at that moment they were only like 2 inches tall when I put them in the ground.
That was around the time when the big chilling started, and I literally didn't do anything after that time anymore besides watering.
When I open Instagram there is always a sort of debate on if pruning should be done on tomatoes which should be essential to them giving a production. Most important of all 'You should always use a razor sharpe knife to do cut the suckers'
Surprise and disclaimer: I have never done this, and which the sucker branches that I took, I just broke and pulled them by hand. Oopsie....Guess what, it all still lived. Internet police-> Time to knock off again.
The amount of flowers and small fruits started to grow really quickly during this time and that is where the flavor bonanza started. Because usually tomatoes grown here in the Netherlands don't have a lot of flavor because of the short growing time and the lack of sun and heat.
But this year it was damn hot and more than damn sunny and all of a sudden these tomatoes have taken the specs of how Italian tomatoes normally taste. Soft but firm and just a tremendous amount of taste in there.
Stacking them on sandwiches, using them in salads and also making a super sweet pasta sauce from all of them together.
Damn what a success and this season hasn't finished at all as yet. There are a lot more green tomatoes just waiting to turn color very very soon.
Not everything worked the best this summer growing wise, but tomatoes were the big winners this time.
And all of that, from just 1 (!!!!) tomato to start with. The gift that keeps on giving.
