About

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In Brief

Tomato Lover. The online grow bag for all things tomato .

What’s growing here ? Fingers crossed; lots of healthy plants and delicious tomatoes AND my tomato know-how!

Like to know a bit more ?

2009 is my umpteenth year of being a tomato lover; my 1st as a tomato grower. So now, when not checking up on my plants I’m learning all I can on how to grow them .  At the moment I’m consuming more research than tomatoes, so to prevent indigestion I’ll be sharing what I find as well as all my trials and errors. 

I’ll also be poking my head round the greenhouse doors of experienced tomato growers and asking them to share some of their secrets.  (And tomatoes !)

And some more after that ?

I hope anyone who loves to grow or eat tomatoes will enjoy reading what’s going on here at Tomato Towers.

If you are an experienced grower and through your hard earned knowledge can help us beginners find our way, your advice would be truly welcomed. 

If you are new to growing tomatoes and still finding your green fingers then do join in, compare notes and ask all those daft questions us beginners need to know the answers to. Tomatoes aren’t the only ones that need supporting as they grow !

Hold that Comfrey Leaf  cuppa but a ‘ how’s it going’ over the virtual garden fence ‘ would be very welcome !

So if you love tomatoes but find yourself in the supermarket, choosing which ones to buy for flavour (were the words ‘grown for flavour’ anything but an admission of something gone very awry?) and always wonder about growing your own but not quite sure where to start, Tomato Lover can help. 

 In the April 09 edition of Kitchen Garden magazine Edwin Oxlade wrote :

‘Growing your own successfully is not easy because it requires a huge amount of knowledge, both specific and trivial, and years of practical experience.  Anyone starting from scratch is going to need a lot of learning and a lot of help’.

Perhaps these words borrowed from C.S. Lewis (referring to more personal issues ) encapsulates what sharing on Tomato Lover is about:

‘Friendship is borne at that moment when one person says to another, “What ! You too? I thought I was the only one”.’

For my part I’ll be posting what happens with my tomatoes, from seed to plate . ( Of course some won’t actually make it to the plate but will go straight from plant to mouth.  Forget food miles we’re talking food inches.)

I’ll also be doing regular reviews of products, methods and how-to articles. And if there are rotten tomatoes to be thrown I shall be throwing them. I suspect this will be mainly at myself.  Luckily I’m a bad shot!

And a bit about me?

I live in Surrey, England.  The urban, not the leafy part.  And when I didn’t know any better I added to the urban bit by hard landscaping my back garden with stone and gravel.  At one stage the greenest thing in my garden was the fence, a nice Cuprinol  shade used by Alan Titchmarsh on Groundforce.  So my tomatoes will be grown outdoors in bags and pots.  So don’t feel you have to have a walled garden and acres to join in !  I’m looking forward to turning my urban patch into a tomato jungle!  I know it’s mixing metaphors but from little acorns……

So welcome to Tomato Lover and feel free to jump right in.

If you aren’t sure where to start then here ’s a selection of my weekly updates to give you a taste of what ’s been growing here so far.  See  the journey from seed to tomato jungle to ripe tomato !

Growing Tomatoes:

Week 1.

Week 4.

Week 8.

Week 11.

Week 15.

Week 17.

Week 18.