LITTLE BABY STEPS...

Nothing quite like homegrown!  The taste and fulfillment you get from growing your own fruits and veggies are so worth it.   

Out of my long list of things that I love very much to grow are tomatoes.  Seeing how people who grow their own tomatoes raved at the sweetness and deliciousness of them all makes my desire to grow bigger.   

I yearn to grow tomatoes like these

I spent hours looking at people's tomato harvest on IG as well as gluing my eyes on the computer checking out seeds that promised gorgeous looking tomatoes.  I always thought tomatoes were either orange or green (ripe and unripe) until my internet stalking revealed that a rainbow of colours like blue, green, orange, pink, yellow and even white (varieties) tomatoes exist! Oh boy.. on top of that, they were all so good looking!

My world literally swam in tomatoes but as much as I was obsessed with them, in the garden it was a totally different story. There was zilch tomato.

In the beginning, seeds just refused to sprout and when they sprouted, they looked like teeny weaklings but I never gave up sowing more seeds! 

Finally I must have done something quite right because I found a few robust seedlings which continued to grow taller.  Each day I watched so eagerly with excitement for the first flower to appear.  They did appear in clusters and then frizzled out and dropped.  The cycle repeated again and again and months after the first flowers appeared, there was still no sign of any tomatoes in sight.

Aren't I clever?  Just because I read of people hand pollinating blooms, I reckoned since no tomatoes were still in sight and bees just weren't doing their jobs, I happily used the tip of my not too dainty fingers to tickle those tomato blooms.  

More disasters followed but surely I am getting nearer to harvesting those prized tomatoes.