My mom grew about 10 tomato plants behind our garage since I was very young. She just turned 70 and is still growing in that same space. (She recently chopped down a huge pine tree with an ax and dug it out by the roots all by herslf) She loves her Early Girl's and Super Fantastics. I fondly remember helping her pick the red ones as a small boy. Whenever she makes it to our house in the summer she checks out my way elaborate gardens compared to hers and I let her taste Brandywine, NAR, KB, etc and she explains that all tomatoes taste alike to her....:)

I coach Little League baseball. Two years ago I asked all 13 kids on the team if any of them liked tomatoes. Not a single yes. Mostly I got a lot of "I Hate Them" replies. I repeated that question to this years team with the same response. In two years I've had 25 tomato haters and zero tomato lovers. Tomatoes must grow on us as we age...:)

It was a long time ago, I was maybe about twelve or thirteen. My parents worked at home, they were music typographers. My mother insisted on us getting out of the house and into the garden for almost every meal--we ate on the patio during non-freezing weather.

Mom was a very old-fashioned type of gardener. She didn't have many tools but dug around in the garden with cooking spoons or gouged out a planting hole with a stick. Each spring she would buy a six pack of Beefsteaks at the hardware store and planted them at the base of a big arborvitae. As the toms grew she would prop up the stems by pushing them into the arborvitae and draping the stems over the tree limbs. One the toms started cropping the effect was much like seeing a Christmas tree. Arborvitaes are conical and those big red beefsteaks looked just like ornaments.

Our school was a block away so I came home for lunch each day and we would all go outside to the picnic table. I carried the cutting board, paper plates and napkins, Mom had the Borden's American Cheese--they never bought any other brand, she had a jar of Hellman's and a loaf of Branola, and Pop had a long serrated knife.

Papa would go over to the arborvitae and with his hand judge the heftiness of a red tomato. He would pick the best one of the day and bring it to the table. He would hold it to his mouth, and like cleaning your eyeglasses, would puff his breath onto it and then polish it against his shirt.

Papa put the tomato down on the board, took the serrated knife and carefully carved it into perfect slices--each was exactly the same width. We made our sandwiches and ate our lunch with tomato juice dripping down the sides of our mouth.
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Nowadays, I think about Hubs who eternally hated tomatoes but was made a convert because I started to grow different toms from seed. Of course he loathed tomatoes, all he had ever had were the hard-as-rocks supermarket four pack toms. It was difficult to get him to eat a tomato from the garden but he eventually gave in, and as long as I made a nice salad for him of toms gobbed with mayo he was happy. I think the first one that he noticed as being extraordinary was German Head. He refused to eat Garden Peach because of the fuzz, but he loved the sauce I made from them and he raved about the pizza I made with that yellow sauce.

Hubs and I have gone to MAGTAG in Baltimore twice. On the morning we drive down Hubs goes out into the garden and helps me pick the tomatoes, while I label the bags he selects the best of the best. He oversees packing them into the cooler. He loves going to MAGTAG. Tomato events are a lot of fun, you meet nice people and talk tomatoes and everything else under the sun. At a tomato event you realize that you're not alone in being a tomato wacko.

T--who has tomato SASEs to fill this afternoon and must print more Bonny Best labels because Bonny Best is very, VERY popular and is requested by almost everyone who is doing the Y C SASE.

My earliest tomato mememory is from age 4 or 5. My grandpa always had a small garden. One year he was especially pleased with the early growth of his tomato plants. He proudly showed them to visitors and kept careful watch over the growing fruits. One evening my parents knew grandpa would be gone. We went to his garden and my parents tied small round red balloons in the lush tomato foliage. I clearly remember their excitement and hilarity on the ride back to our house as they anticipated grandpa discovering his ripe "tomatoes". We were long gone before grandpa returned. I never heard much about grandpa's reaction....which probably means it wasn't quite what my parents had anticipated. But my father still laughs when he tells of the caper almost 50 years later.

Trudi, I recently received some of your Bonny Best tomatoes. They were a favorite of my husband's grandma. She loved food, loved to can and freeze garden produce, and loved to share her harvest. For years my sister-in-law raved about grandma's tomatoes. Then one year she visited soon after grandma had added manure to her garden plot. From then on my sister-in-law would not eat grandma's produce and told everyone how disgusting it was that grandma used such stuff in her garden. I haven't decided if I should uphold grandma's methods and search out fresh manure for my crop this coming year....but I think I'll probably stick with the composted kind.

If you can find fresh manure NOW and turn it into the ground then by next spring it will be well rotted. I too have some issues with top-dressing the ground with fresh manure, it's too raw and may splash back some pathogens that nobody needs.

Your grandma likely had access to a manure heap from a local stable or barn which had aging manure. It does get hot very quick. You've survived to two generations past grandma so maybe she was using aged manure ;-)

Good luck with your seeds and I do hope that Bonny Best will be a bonny good tom for you!

Thanks, Trudi, I'm looking forward to growing the Bonnie Bests.

I think grandma was doing aged manure additions in very early spring....but even that was "disgusting" to my SIL once she knew about it. She also would not eat store bought sweet corn if it had a corn borer in it. No cutting off a tip for her. Nope, the whole ear went into the trash.

Another tomato memory goes back to my teen years. I heard of a national gardening contest for teens. For $1 I could sign up AND receive tons of free seeds. How could I pass up such a great deal on seeds. I started lots of seedlings and they were growing great. After awhile I put them in my old wagon to harden them off and wheeled them inside every night. I wanted to do well in the contest so I decided to fertilize my tomato seedlings in their tiny pots. I had never done that before and should not have tried it without getting more information. I don't remember just how much granular(!) fertilizer I used, but it was way too much. I came home from school to find badly deformed and dying plants. I tried to remove all the fertilizer and upper soil from the pots and then watered them lots to flush out whatever fertilizer I could. The plants were in very sandy oven-baked garden soil (yup, that is what my family used back then, and yes it smells digusting when it bakes but we didn't have trouble with damping off!) That probably saved my plants since the fertilizer had little to bind to in the sand and washed out well. Most of my tomato seedlings recovered, although they looked kinda weird for awhile. I ended up with lots of veggies and flowers by late summer. I snapped a few photos of my harvest and included my youngest brother and sister in them (up the cuteness rating). I filled out the forms, answered tons of questions and sent everything in to the sponsors.I distinctly remember one question asked why there were capital letters listed after the names of some tomato varieties. That was the first I realized disease resistance varied among tomato varieties. Amazingly, I won eighth place.....probably because I was a good at filling out forms and following directions...not cause my garden was all that great :) As I recall, the prize was $5 (!)which I dutifully recorded on my first tax return.

Each year I start seeds I think back on my childhood starting seeds with my father. He had a Âset up in the downstairs bathroom (of all places). He had electric heat and he would jack the temperature up in the small room to keep them going and growing. He attached a grow light to the back of the door and the wall (under the window), so when you opened the door just right, the light would teeter back and forth until you rushed in and steadied it with your hand. I mostly recall the smell of moist soil and fresh seedlings. It smelled so good fresh and clean  better than any bathroom deodorizer!

The light was about 4 long, hung over the Lucy & Dezzy dresser he had in the bathroom. Between the light and dresser were various varieties of peppers and tomatoes. One year when my uncle moved in (12 years my fatherÂs junior). My uncle thought heÂd be sly and tell my father he was growing squash  but all of us knew what my crazy uncle was attempting to grow Looked NOTHING like SQUASH Except of course my father  "thatÂs no squash IÂve ever seen!" He eventually realized what my uncle was growing and asked my uncle to get rid of it.

My father, now long gone, always relished telling a story about how we gave his parents a bunch of tomato plants they carefully placed them in the ground  and took great pains in watering and taking care of them well, they ended up being all cherry tomatoes. He swore up and down that I had mixed up the plants. If you know anything about cherry tomatoes, they ARE prolific. My grandmother was skinning them making sauce out of them... I always suspected it was him switching the plants and that he secretly enjoyed the vision of his mother skinning and seeding the tiny tomatoes. But he never did admit that to anyone.

Every year, I carefully filled the inserts with soil just like Dad taught me when I was a kid. I love the feel of the dirt in my hands  my way of starting spring long before spring actually is here and then thereÂs that connection to my father After my father died, we went to his house to clean it out, get it ready for sale. I felt a twinge of pain when I found on his deck - a large pot and in it was a tomato plant. I realized what a connection it was... It was one of MY tomato plants... I had given him...

Thanks for asking, I'm happy to share this memory. I was about 4 yrs old, and my mom and I were living with her mother in Oxford N.C., while dad was fighting in Europe in WWII. My baby-sitter and friend, Flutie, age 8?, was our maid's daughter.
One summer afternoon Flutie brought brought two ripe red tomatoes and a salt shaker out to the swing on our porch, where we sat together and shared the delicious treats, the juices running down our arms.
I went back to Oxford to see the old house a couple of years ago--60 years later! All those folks and family are gone, but the house still stands, though cut up into apartments for college kids.
Thanks, Flutie, for that memory, and all the other ones.

Every spring, Dad would make a pilgrimmage from Michigan to WV to his Dad's farm to get ML seedlings; he wouldn't have DARED to grow anything else. I always knew when summer was just around the corner when the seedlings showed up. Mom would have to watch the ripe tomatoes like a hawk, though; Dad was really good at offering them to everyone he met and more than once he gave away the ones Mom was planning on serving at dinnertime!

It is so heart warming to read all of your wonderful gardening memories. Thank You All for sharing!

In the house I grew up in, my parents always kept a wonderful garden. In our garden tomatoes always took center stage.And how I loved being able to run out back and have a snack warm from the vine.All these years later my Mom still grows a few tomatoes even now, and I still like to go out back and sneak a few warm ripe fruits.It always seems to make me feel like a kid again.
Now as wonderful as those summer memories are for me, my fondest tomato memories are of vacations up the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts that I had with my parents as a very small child.
We would pack the car up with our luggage and a cooler full of potato salad and fried chicken for our dinner, and hop onto the Merritt Parkway and be off. See my parents were not rich, but they still wanted us to enjoy life, and a trip up the trail cost very little, and the view was our excitement, no amusement parks for us...but we didnt mind.
Any ways, once on the trail, my parents would find a grocer, and buy the freshest white bread, and a jar of Mayo. With these things stashed in the car, our next destination would be to find a farm that had a road side stand, and then to buy the freshest , ripest juicyest tomatoes we could. Now it was lunchtime....all that was needed was a scenic stop, a knife and a napkin. My father would slice that bread, load it up with tomatoes and mayonaisse, and we would be in heaven.
Nothing fancy, just tomato sandwiches, and that was enough to make a vacation worth while.

I grew heirloom tomatoes for the first time this year, and they reminded me of those days. My father is gone now, but I think he would have loved those heirlooms.

Thanks for your memories.
My mother is now 94 and not able to do the preserves any more, but I always remember the smell of Chili Sauce with onions and spices being stired ever so slowly on the stove for hours before the fall canning. We never had a garden so I guess she bought from a market somewhere. I was in elementary school at the time. My Nan came on weekends to make sure the job was being done right.
As dumb kids, we wouldn't try anything new. The only veggie we would eat was peas and in those days it came from a can. A nice grey colour.
Boy did I miss the boat.
Being of British old world background it was bangers and mash or beef steak and kidney pie with dumpling and lots of 'taters.
It wasn't 'til much later that pasta and sauce was introduced by my best friends Italian Nona, and a trip to Italy did I finally discover tomatoes.
Toms are now and have been for all my adult life a staple on the table at evey meal in some form or another.
Again, thanks for your memories.

Rory

Sunnyk - there's something wonderful about a warm right from the garden tomato. :)

"Sunnyk - there's something wonderful about a warm right from the garden tomato. :)"

Just the thought of a warm garden tomato makes me contemplate pulling up my roots and moving South where I could enjoy them for more of the year....but then again the anticipation of that first ripe warm tomato is a thing of beauty in itself and possibly what keeps me right where I was born and raised ;)

Just 7 more months to go.

Same here - in Z5, MA... Looking outside and seeing a foot of snow just makes me want to move south. I lived in FL for several years - and it's just not the same. I missed a real season change - that chartreuse green when the leaves 'pop'... oops, there I go not talking about tomatoes! Anyway, you aren't alone, Sunnyk.