My "Summer" Tomatoes

When we moved into our new house in April I was thrilled to have a yard and big covered patio. I was most excited about getting to use the patio for container gardening.

We love our patio

In our old apartment we had some flowers in pots but this was our first year to try growing edible plants.
In the spring we planted 4 tomatoes, 2 basils, an one red pepper.

4 tomato plants and 1 basil

Proud gardener

The red pepper been more proliferative than all the others but I don't like how the peppers taste so the pepper plant has become patio decoration. The basils have also done really well; I was surprised by how big they've grown. One is a sweet basil and the other is a cinnamon basil, so they both have very different tastes but are nonetheless great for cooking.

The cinnamon basil has a slightly spicy flavor

But more than the basil or pepper, I was most looking forward to eating homegrown tomatoes. My parents always had a summer garden while I was growing up so I was raised on garden-fresh tomatoes. Unfortunately, this summer was not kind to tomatoes. The weather got much too hot too fast and stunted the growth of all four plants. Over the summer we maybe harvested 15 cherry tomatoes and 3 big tomatoes. Then in late August, weather sent us a welcome surprise. The welcome turned (relatively) cooler and we got some good rain. The favorable weather revived one of the tomatoe plants we had given up on. Our summer tomato plant became a fall tomato plant and has given us at least 20 fruits.
I never expected I'd be harvesting tomatoes in December! I used some of our plants to make a delicious bruchetta.

I may not have a naturally green thumb but the gardening bug has bit me and I'm looking forward to more gardening adventures next spring.