How Tomato-Fest 2009 Got Started

Last year, I had it in mind to create a vegetable garden. I thought it would be nice to be able to step outside and collect lettuce for dinner, and I grew up eating farm-fresh tomatoes from Sep's Farm in Long Island. To me, the taste of a sun-warmed fresh tomato is the taste of summer.


My husband, being a fella from Philadelphia, believes that the pinnacle summer tomato experience hails from New Jersey. My husband is a great cook cook and one of his greatest summer pleasures is to get a bunch of ugly heirloom tomatoes and make a delicious salad with them. At some point last spring, I got it into mind that we'd save money (pshaw) by growing our own tomatoes. I also became obsessed with recreating his pinnacle tomato. See... I know exactly how to recreate my "core" tomato experience - next time I'm in Long Island, I'll just stop at Sep's. For my husband, however, it's a little trickier - he's unsure where they got their tomatoes, just that they were probably from New Jersey.

Long story short, I was wildly naive about

A) the cost of creating a garden during the first year. Damn, all that dirt is expensive!!!

and

B) finding my husband's pinnacle tomato - I had no idea there were so many varieties!!!

If I were to rate last year's gardening experience 1-10, with 10 being perfect, I'd give it a 4. But, we're back in for another year and hopefully we'll turn out a bit better this time!