New Direction in Gardening

I’m more than willing to admit that I’m not a gardener (I just play one on TV), even though I like the idea of it. We decided this year to not do the garden, but then it dawned on me that maybe one way to approach it is a bit like selling dumplings at the market - keep it simple. Just grow one or two things, preferably one, and that one thing is tomatoes.

Part of the inspiration for this lies the fact that we eat a lot of tomatoes, especially the canned variety. Getting organic canned tomatoes is a bit of a chore, both economically and logistically. I thought, what if we grew tons of tomatoes and stored them in jars? Sure, it’s a monster of a job, the brunt of which will fall into my hands, but you make bed and sleep in it, right? I love the idea of having a bunch of canned tomatoes in the root cellar, and it means we can get our hands dirty over the spring/summer. AND, we can feast on tomatoes sandwiches, one of my favorites.

When I mentioned it to the kids, they were excited about growing all sorts of things, and I had to stop myself from saying, “No way! Tomatoes, only.” If they want to have fun with it, I’m open to the idea, but somehow these things have a way of coming back and haunting me, i.e., I’m going to end up having to deal with all of their projects. Then again, that’s what parenting is all about, right?

We’ll see where this one goes, but for now, the idea excites me. Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to Chiot's Run for the pic.