Tootfinder

With a heavy heart I ripped out one of my tomatoes yesterday. Plenty of flowers but not a single fruit, plus new growth in last week looked stunted and twisted. Assuming some sort of virus. #tomatoes #garden #allotment

One of my earliest memories is collecting cherry tomatoes in my shirt, then walking around the garden eating them. Never gets old. #tomatoes #gardening

Jiggler doing its thing on the pressure canner. Processed about 6 pints of really thick marinara sauce this morning. Can't wait to use on pizza. #tomatoes #cooking #canning

Visited Burpee's Fordhook Farm yesterday in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. I couldn't stop gazing with envy at the tomatoes. Almost all in the 8-foot range, packed with clusters of huge fruit, and showing zero signs of senescing. I'm assuming the automatic watering system is the secret. #tomatoes #gardening #burpee #doylestown #pennsylvania #seeds

First harvest of San Marzanos. But not by me. The usual suspects are squirrels, chipmunks, catbirds, and sparrows. #tomatoes #allotment #garden

Watering the tomatoes. The white PVC tube is 24" long, capped at the end, and has 1/8" holes every 4". If I had to remake I'd probably make the holes 1/16" so that the water was released a bit slower. #tomatoes #water #garden #allotment

Made marinara sauce yesterday with tomatoes picked over the weekend. Dolloped onto fresh chicken parmesan sandwiches made with pounded thighs. Heaven. I'd never made the sauce and never made chicken parm before. #food #cooking #tomatoes #marinara #garlic #basil #sauce

Baking egg shells, as one does. For most of my life I added these to holes dug for tomatoes (because Mom), but I've since learned that that has no effect at all because the calcium carbonate doesn't really dissociate in real time unless you dose it with acids. Same reason I've stopped adding them to the compost. I'm going to grind them up and offer to local birds (I don't have chickens anymore). #CalciumCarbonate #eggs #eggshells #birds #calcium #calcite #chemistry #compost #tomatoes