There is nothing like a fresh tomato. Sometimes I wish I had never had one as it spoils you forever. I buy them at the store but unless they are smothered in dressing or in a sauce they are horrible rubbery things. Even the so called "field tomatoes" that you can buy in the summer still taste like rubber. Nothing compares to a warm tomato fresh from the garden sliced and put in a sandwich with a little dressing, salt and pepper. Heaven! It would be sacrilege to put these tomatoes in a sauce. Fresh salads or just eaten with a little salt are all they need.
Last year I grew a few patio tomatoes on a long hanging basket in full sun the back yard.
It worked pretty good but I found that when the fruit was setting it needed more water than I could give it. I watered it at night but by the time I got home from work it had wilted and I would have to give it a drink twice a day. It really needed water in the afternoon. As a result the tomatoes weren't bad, actually they were quite nice but the skin was a bit tough. In my opinion the flavour just wasn't as good as when they are grown in the ground but the next best thing.
The best place I have ever grown tomatoes was under our bedroom window at our house in Calgary. They got the afternoon sun and were protected right under the bay window overhang when the hail came and ruined my entire vegetable garden. The tomatoes were beautiful. My poor vegetable garden which was doing so well looked like a blender had gone through it. The tomatoes helped.
Apparently there is always blight at the community garden and it tends to spread. A lot of people have small greenhouses at the garden specifically for the tomatoes. I did buy a small little plastic pop up greenhouse but it won't be big enough once they get big so I will have to rig up some kind of contraption to protect them later. There doesn't seem to be much you can do once blight hits the garden so I will just hope that it doesn't happen. The rules seem to be to warm the soil a couple of weeks before, plant deep, keep leaves off the soil, mulch, water from underneath and try to protect them from the heavy rains.
A lot of trouble I know, but oh I'm dreaming of tomatoes.
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