I love cherry tomatoes, and cherry tomato plants. They are so easy to grow. They cost about $2 for a seedling and when they grow and really get going, they will produce quarts and quarts of the most delicious cherry tomatoes you’ll ever eat. The ones you can buy at the grocery, even the really fancy, expensive stores, are probably picked green and either left to ripen in the box or gassed with CO2 to make them turn red, so they LOOK delicious, but they have a taste that is similar to eating a magazine photograph of a tomato. If you have never eaten a cherry tomato right off of the plant, you have never really tasted a cherry tomato. There is no comparison and afterward, you will never be satisfied with store-bought cherry tomatoes again. I harvest a pint to a quart of cherry tomatoes, both red and yellow, almost every day, and I’d say at least a cup of them never make it into the house. I would encourage you to plant your own cherry tomato plant next spring (it’s too late in the season now). Or become very good friends with someone who grows them, and you’ll probably be gifted with some. I give them away by the pint, because even though I love them, and eat them like candy, there are only so many I can eat in a day and I will eventually become tired of them, at which point, I pass them around to all my loved ones. Mmmm, I think it’s time to go harvest…

Yellow cherry tomato plant, ready for picking.

Red cherry tomato plant, loaded with fruit.

Todays harvest. Amazing!

Over the last 6 months or so, I have been enamored with fennel. I’ve sautéed it, I’ve candied it, I’ve made it into jam, I have pie plans for it over the holidays and this spring, for the first time, I planted it. I went to North Haven Gardens and bought two 4-inch pots of fennel, one a sweet fennel with the signature bright green fringe and a second variety with dark purply-brown fringe. Not knowing anything about this strange vegetable, I planted the whole pot together and waited to see what would happen. It grew fast and strong. Soon, I was able to see where the bulbs were developing, but I noticed that there was going to be a problem… they were very close together and would quickly become unbearably crowded. When all else fails, read the directions. I googled and got a great video for how to plant fennel. It turns out that you have to separate those lovely seedling that come in the one pot. It had been a month since I planted them all together, but I went ahead and dug them up, separated them and replanted. You might note that fennel bulbs are $3-$4 each at the grocer, and I paid $1.49 each for my two seedling pots at the nursery. Out of those two pots, I got 17 separate plants! If they all live, that’s up to $68 worth for fennel for a $3 investment! How’s that for an astonishing ROI? I’m thinking about becoming a fennel farmer…
 

Bright green fennel

Purply-brown fennel