Tomatoes Grown from Seed....Oh Sweet Baby!

I got my first official red tomato today. I say official because I've had many red tomatoes off my sorry store bought plants. These plants started producing right away, but have never produced quality in size or flavor. The tomato I got today came from my beautiful plants that I grew from seed. I did start a little late, but the plants are strong and, oh sweet baby, the fruit is tasty. So tasty in fact, that I was a little too anxious to eat it and took a lousy picture. So here's picture of my plants as babies (above) and today (don't pay any attention to the adorable superhero with his new big boy hair cut....check out the plants!)

This is the first time I have started my tomatoes from seed. We put some windows that I picked up for free at a yard sale, into the side of our back shed and I used it as a green house; hopefully we can add more windows next spring, allowing for a little more light. I planted a beefsteak variety (first week of May, next year I want to start March/April), they're not the prettiest tomatoes on the block, but the flavor is off the charts....oh sweet baby! I hope to harvest the seeds from these plants and use them again next year. My least favorite thing about gardening is the price you have to pay for a decent plant, so I'm doing a lot of reading and experimenting with saving seeds. Tomato seeds are supposed to be relatively easy to save and don't cross pollinate like gourds, but just in case, I dug up a completely separate bed far from my store bought plants.

I'm also looking into saving seeds from my pepper plants since they can be costly as plants too, especially if your two year old pulls them all up and so you hurry and replant them before they wilt in the sun only to come out a few days later and find them all pulled up again with their stems broken in half so you go back to the nursery and buy more.