$20 Tomato and a Home Grown Salad

So here it is! My very first, and likely my only, Red Brandywine tomato of the season. Why $20 you ask? Because I bought the tomato plants (there were 5 plants in one container with 2 of them having 2 major stems - so 7 vines) from Home Depot for $14, then I bought a wire tomato basket for the plants to grow up inside of, then I bought some twine to secure the plant to the wire frame. All in with tax $20. So WTF happened? Why only one tomato? I was well on my way to having another 8 tomatos when that wind storm hit Calgary and my poor tomato plant got bashed to hell. I had to remove about 90% of it's leaves because they were either dead or dying. I lost 2 out of 7 vines as well. The next biggest tomato currently on my plant is the green one in my next picture.  Needless to say I am not hopeful that there will be much more than one tomato for me this season.

So those who know stuff about tomatoes are probably wondering why I only have 8 tomatoes on 5 vines?  That really blows, but the reason I suspect is that there aren't enough pollinators that venture up to the fourth story of a Condo to do the work.  The 8 I have are likely wind pollinated and/or they are the ones I tried hand pollinating.  It also could be that the Red Brandywine variety has thick tightly closed flowers that may need a certain sized bug to pollinate them.  I suspect this may be the case because I had some dwarf Red Robins and Yellow Canaries growing and they seem to be getting pollinated well.  So either their smaller, more delicate flower/pollen carries more easily in the wind, or the fruit fly infestation I had going in one of my planters allowed for those little buggers to do some positive work in exchange for how annoying they were.

In any case the one tomato has been consumed and throughly enjoyed.  I don't know if it was $20 worth of enjoyment, but it definitely had a richer flavor than store bought tomatoes and it was far meatier.  I think this is a trait of the Red Brandywine tomato.  What I mean by meatier is that it had almost no fluid/seed in it.  It was about 95% solid, juicy, tasty tomato.  I will definitely try my hand at tomatoes next year!

Next is my Home grown Salad.  It is a bit spartan being only 2 ingredients: Yellow Canary Cherry tomatoes and Butter King lettuce.  But hey, next year I will throw some romaine and spinach in there; maybe some peas and a radish and I will have as good a salad as any.  Best of all the farm to plate travel distance will be less than 5 meters!