Mighty Red Tomatoes

This is only my second year of attempting to grow tomatoes. Last year I grew Roma tomatoes and cherry tomatoes which both went okay but not brilliantly. The Roma's aren't very big and weren't as nice as I was expecting (when buying tomatoes I usually buy Roma's because they have the closest taste to home grown in my opinion). The cherry tomatoes grew well but with only Farmboy and I eating them, we didn't eat enough to really warrant growing them (and it's difficult to make use of the extras).

This year I decided to try a couple of different varieties. Mighty Red is one and the other I've already forgotten (the label is in the garden somewhere - buried in my jungle).

I have to say that I REALLY like the Mighty Red variety. Nice large tomatoes with a beautiful flavour. Not hard inside like some tomatoes can be. And the plants have produced a fabulous amount of fruit despite heavy winds knocking all my plants over (yes, they were staked but the stakes blew over too - obviously not heavy enough although the winds were particularly bad).

Things I have learnt:

* Pick the tomatoes when they've changed colour but not fully ripe. The ripen quickly and fully inside from this point and still have a wonderful taste. This way I seem to beat the bugs (or those that I haven't picked at this point have gotten eaten).

* Tomato plants go from being small and looking like they're never going to grow to being oversized bushes almost overnight. Good spacing is ESSENTIAL. I've done better with this this year than I did last year but it's still a bit of a jungle.

Things I'd like to do differently next year:

* A new type of staking.

Farmboy (my husband) has seen a neighbours set up where they use a type of wire mesh frame for their tomatoes. He has some in the she so he's going to set it up better for me next year.

* Plant my seedlings a little better spaced in time.

I planted out 2 punnets of tomatoes this year (each had 4 plants in them). I think in quantity that was about right (plenty enough to eat plus some for cooking and freezing) but I'd like to try planting them out about a month or so apart so that we get a longer harvest period. I think I"ll get about a 6 week harvest period from my plants so if I planted some around 6 weeks apart, I'll hopefully get a longer harvest period. Of course, it's always hard to tell what the weather will do. When the heat waves will hit and how long the season will go but I figure we just need to keep learning and trying different things and see how we go.

One thing I know for sure. Even if I decide to give up on this gardening caper, I'd always like to grow my own tomatoes. There really is NOTHING that compares with the taste of a homegrown tomato! :)