Plant Tomatoes Now

Whether you are a seasoned farmer or a first-time vegetable gardener, planting cherry tomatoes in your garden will give you a lot of joy and bang for your buck. The flavor in a cherry tomato is intensely sweet, and their gorgeous color and shape will make any salad or salsa more beautiful. They will also start producing before your regular-sized tomatoes ripen and will continue to produce right up until the first frost in October. Their only limiting factor is their fruit grows on vines, and those vines tend to spread so they will need a structure upon which to climb. I like to grow them along the chicken wire fencing that surrounds my kitchen garden.

My dependable faves in the cherry tomato category are Juliettes, Sun Sugars, or Sun Golds, whichever you can find, Yellow Pear, and Matt’s Cherry Wild — in that order of preference. To give you an idea of sizes and colors, take a look at this photo taken last summer on July 6th. For more on Judy's cherry tomatoes go here