Project Foodie - Starting those summer tomatoes

Starting those summer tomatoes

Written by foodie pam

Tuesday, 27 February 2007

Living in California means we can start gardening much earlier than most other parts of the country. My seed order arrived a few of weeks ago and early last week I planted my tomato seeds.

Can you spot the mini-tomatoes? They are the somewhat short ones on the left. All of them are ready to be up potted (put in a bigger pot up to their first leaves) once I have time....

I love growing tomatoes - they are one of the easiest vegetables to grow and the result is great in so many dishes. This year I'm growing three varieties of tomatoes. The first tomato variety is a general slicing tomato called "Fantastic". I'm only planting one "Fantastic" plant but it will give us more than enough slicing tomatoes. The second tomato variety is a long Roma-type tomato that has a relatively high sugar content and rich flavor called Super Marzano. These tomatoes are great for sauces and I'm planting two or three Super Marzono's that I'll use to make pasta sauce, ketchup, and other dishes. The third and final type of tomato I'm growing is a small mini-tomato that I will grow in two hanging containers on my back porch (yeah I was running out of room for places to plant them). I'll use these tomatoes for salads, "instant" pizza toppings, and a simply awesome panzanella that we discovered last year with garlic-oil homemade bread cubes, roasted tomatoes, roasted green beans and fresh mozzarella.

In a couple of weeks I'll plant my herb and eggplant seeds indoors and then in April I'll plant my remaining seeds (beans, cucumbers, and squash) outdoors. Too bad I'll have to wait till mid-summer to get any harvest - I'm already dreaming about all the dishes I can make from my garden.

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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 27 February 2007 )

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