Voila!

It was a cool spring this year so we experienced Nevada gardeners took longer than usual to plant a vegetable garden. We have learned to wait until the snow is off Peavine Peak (our local signal that it's safe to plant tomatoes, petunias, and other frost-sensitive plants). I can get really antsy though, so I crossed my fingers and put in the tomatoes anyway. The Garden Gods let me get away with it and the tomatoes have flourished.

I usually get nice little tomatoes in four inch pots, but the nursery industry decided that we all needed larger tomato plants that cost twice as much. Ouch! I'm sure it helps their bottom line but it takes a lot of tomatoes to make it cost effective when they're that expensive. I grabbed them off the labelled carts anyway, choosing the healthiest plants I could find and trusted that I had my usual Sweet 100's for Mr. Pogonip who loves cherry tomatoes, Romas for me because I hate tomato snot on my sandwiches, the yellow bug-light cherry tomatoes for variety, and an old reliable Early Girl. When I started to plant them I discovered that the red cherry tomato was actually a Beefsteak, and the yellow cherries were some weird variety I've never heard of. Our Lowe's is across town and gas was already getting expensive, so instead of returning them I put them in and crossed my fingers.


It was only two weeks ago that I realized I had actual large green tomatoes not just the flowers. So today I was astonished to discover we had several orange tomatoes. I guess they must have really liked the hundred degree temperatures over the past two days to begin turning red so quickly.

And I would have never guessed that Beefsteaks would size up so nicely with our cool nights. I can hardly wait to sample the new varieties in a nice cool salad drenched with raspberry vinagrette. I'm drooling just thinking about it. I guess there is a silver lining to the hundred degree temps if the tomatoes ripen more quickly than usual!