The Best Tomatoes I've Ever Grown (in Texas)

I used to try and grow tomatoes.  Every year I would set out my plants and things would be going along, plants would grow, flowers would bloom, fruit would form and eventually ripen, and then every year without fail, my tomatoes would get a case of spider mites and decline to the point where it seemed more humane to yank them out of the planters and add them to the compost pile.

I tried lots of things to keep them going and some years I would manage to nurse a few along through the hot summer and into fall. (INSERT LINK)  After last summer’s tomato carnage, we re-purposed the vegetable garden planters.  Then this happened…a volunteer in my washing machine planter.  It has a few strawberry plants in it, and apparently last year a Supper Sweet 100 tomato ended up there.

The plan was to let it grow until the inevitable happened.  It hasn’t happened yet.  This volunteer is out growing my other attempts.

 

Now since it was a volunteer, it got kind of a late start.  The flowers and fruits are a little behind the normal schedule.  Maybe that’s been it’s saving grace.  I wasn’t a gigantic plant that rivaled Jack’s beanstalk when the true heat of summer arrived.  Or maybe it’s been all of the rain we’ve had the last few weeks.

  

 

Hopefully we will get to enjoy tomatoes for weeks to come, maybe well into July.  Eventually the heat will cause the tomato to stop fruiting.  If it’s still looking this good, I may try to nurse it along until it cools off in the fall.  

Regardless, it’s the best tomato plant we’ve grown in a l-o-n-g time.