This is what’s been happening this year: we have grown tomatoes for the first time, we started the pre-growing too late, but we’ve got some delicious red tomatoes to eat. The pre-growing should have started already in March or at the beginning of April. I don’t remember when exactly our tomato seeds were planted, but it was like May already… 🙂
The pre-growing happened in small containers inside our house and the pre-grown tiny plants, seedlings, were then planted outside, in buckets with drainage holes in the bottom. The buckets were placed to our vegetable garden – the all day sunny spot between our house and the woods. The wall of our home was sheltering the plants a bit. When it was sometimes raining too much, we carried the plant buckets inside our house. Everything went fine – the plants or their soil didn’t get any mold. – One just has to carefully keep an eye on the plants – when to water them, and how much. And tomatoes like fertilizing, we always use organic fertilizers.
And oh yes, I just love the scent of tomato plants! 🙂
I took this pic on October 3rd. This was the last day our tomatoes were outside – the upper parts of the plants had finally been frozen at night (and the plants were like all gone, the next day, October 4th). We noticed that our tomatoes actually did like a bit cooler air – they were ripening so well in autumn – they started ripening with the combination of cool air and warm sunlight. And it really was so wonderful that we had so summery September for our tomatoes… because we were so late with the planting. 😀 But oh yes, these home-grown ripe tomatoes that we now have had – they’ve tasted so delicious, sweet… they are miraculous! 🙂
Tomatoes do turn red and fully ripen without the main body of the plant, inside the house (and tomatoes do ripen without apples, and so on… 😉 ). The already red tomatoes, that are ripening to be eaten, we have kept on a table in kitchen.
But the first ripening of our tomatoes – the green tomatoes turning red, happens in the cool and dark sauna in our home. And when the sauna is heated, we take the tomatoes to kitchen.
Our biggest tomato for this year, I took it outside for pics… 🙂
So, now we know what to do in March next year!
-Leena
