Tomatoes

The tomatoes I planted from seed back in March, flowered in June, and started producing tiny green tomatoes in early July. Over the rest of the summer more appeared and they grew larger. Unfortunately, they never turned red until September. They never did ripen on the vine. So we picked them and put them in a brown paper bag with a banana. That did the trick.

Tomatoes and small bell pepper from the patio garden.

Our garden was in planter pots on the deck -- well out of reach of the deer. Unfortunately, the garden only receives about four hours of sunlight a day before it turns to shade. Not ideal growing conditions for the pepper plants, or tomatoes. We ended up with two small green peppers though and a huge crop of green tomatoes.

Fresh salsa using our tomatoes.

So what do you do with tomatoes? Make salsa, of course. Aside from the chopping it is easy to make. The basic ingredients are lots of tomatoes, peppers (hot or mild), onion, cilantro, lime juice, oregano, salt and pepper. Very simple and very good. We've already made one batch and I'll be making another tonight.