Tomatomania

One of my favorite yearly events is Tomatomania, it started years ago in Pasadena and was held at one of my favorite nurseries, but that lovely business folded and is long gone. It was a 3 day affair of the most unusual & heirloom tomatoes in existence. This was before they started selling them at Whole Foods and Farmer's Markets were so common, and it was my introduction to heirloom varieties. I actually believe that the sad pink, anemic looking tomatoes that were the only thing available in grocery stores until at least the mid 1990's were solely responsible for the boom in home gardening and farmers markets...ok maybe iceberg lettuce had something to do with it too. Ok maybe I'm exaggerating!

Although my parents were avid gardeners all my life and I grew up with gardening, I was never introduced to vegetable gardening until I was in college and I discovered I could take Organic Gardening as a Chemistry class! That was the best thing that ever happened to this science challenged Art major! I hate to admit I got an A in the lab portion of the class and it was a real challenge to get a B in the other portion. But this made a vegetable gardener out of me, once you've had your own homegrown veggies there is just NO turning back! And growing tomatoes every year is my favorite part of vegetable gardening. I'm pretty lazy about gardening and tomatoes are so easy to grow in California.

Fortunately after the demise of my favorite nursery Tomatomania was revived at the Tapia Brothers Farm in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, right next to the 101 freeway! The event has become so popular that they now stage Tomatomania in several locations throughout Southern California and I believe in some other states as well. I was really happy that Robert came along with me this year we had a great time together and he helped me carry too many tomato plants home!

Now for some planting!!!