Tomato harvest roundup

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Ah, my little yellow cherry tomatoes, how much do I love thee? Let me count the ways: in salads, on pizza, with burgers and just plain popped into my mouth fresh off the vine.

Over the past few weeks, S and I have found many different ways to eat the cherry tomatoes off our balcony plant. We cut them in half and tossed them in a salad with arugula and toasted almonds. We put them in baguette sandwiches that we took on a road trip to Montreal, and another time to a picnic by the canal. S put them on his pita pizzas, and I tossed them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, as a side salad for my pork-and-beef hamburger patties on pita with raita (plain yogurt with ground cumin and grated cucumbers).


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The best way to eat them, though, is plain off the vine, maybe cut in half, with a little salt and pepper, if you want to maximize their flavour. Sometimes one side of the tomato splits in half and it bursts open a bit. They do that when they are too full of water, but I like to think it's part of their personality that they are literally bursting with sweetness, tempting me to eat them :)

So the tomato experiment was very successful — our one plant produced at least 90 tomatoes in my estimation. I can't wait until next summer, when I can up production with some more plants. Maybe hold some tomato parties ... ah, the possibilities!

What is your favourite way with cherry tomatoes?


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Tomato farming balcony-style

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I have a hard-working cherry tomato plant on my balcony that is currently sporting no less than 87 tomatoes! Most are still green but a few are ripe and a healthy bright yellow. S and I are going to cook these up tonight in the first of what I hope will be many yellow-tomato meals. We just need lots of sun for the rest to ripen, so here's hoping for some more good weather.


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The other plants that are doing well are my thyme and sage. I planted them in a 12-inch pot with mint and rosemary. The rosemary is growing but it's small and a bit overshadowed by the herbs that are doing well. The mint never really got going. So all in all, four out of five plants are thriving, which is nice.

I had a big lavender plant, which I kept in its peat pot with clay soil. It flowered and was fantastic for a while, but now it's dying. Not sure what to do about that. Maybe I should have potted it in real soil. Has anyone ever successfully kept lavender alive on a south-facing balcony?