No matter how you say it, we’re going to have a lot of them this summer — I hope.  It started with an impulse buy at Home Depot.  I can’t help myself.  It was back in mid-March when it was cold and snowy — and they had tomatoes!  I only bought two Beefsteak Tomatoes and two Husky Cherry Tomatoes and nurtured them in the greenhouse, up-potting them numerous times as they out-grew their pots.  And then I started seeds — San Marzano tomatoes, tiny yellow pear tomatoes (Arianna’s favorite) and some green/purple striped tomatoes (another impulse buy when I was at the Philadelphia Farm and Food Festival).  And then there was the trip to my Amish food market, which unfortunately is positioned right next to an Amish garden center — and they had 4-packs of Amish paste tomatoes for only $1.29!  Another impulse buy — that got up-potted and grew like crazy over the last two months.  My greenhouse was over-run with tomatoes.

Sunday was Mother’s Day — that magical day of the year when you can finally plant tomatoes in southeastern Pennsylvania.  And… the forecast is for continued warm weather for the foreseeable future.  So I planted.  There are two huge Beefsteaks, two almost huge Husky cherry tomatoes, two really big Amish paste tomatoes, two yellow pear tomatoes, four nice-sized San Marzano tomatoes — and four purple/green tomato plants that are kind of wimpy because they got a late start.  That’s sixteen tomato plants!  I have more in the greenhouse — but no room in the garden.  I’ll just have to be content with 16 tomato plants.

The internet says a single tomato plant can produce 20 to 30 pounds of tomatoes.  Let’s just average that at 25 pounds per plant by 16 plants.  I’ve never been good at math — but I think that’s a BIG number.  Come mid-summer when I’m up to my elbows in dripping tomatoes and hot jars for canning all of these tomatoes — remind me I may want to check my math next year.