I spent the last few days filling coin envelopes with various types of tomato seeds destined for gardens spread throughout the world. Since this is going to be an atypical gardening season for me (more vicarious than first hand), it seems a good time to go down memory lane.
First...to set the contrast... this was the view from just a few days ago.
Sue out walking during our January 17 snowstorm (7 inches at our house, falling between 11 AM and 7 PM)
The snow vanished quickly - within a few days we were in the mid 60s. Winter in Raleigh - who can figure it out?
My first digital photos were taken in 2002, when we still did most of our gardening in a hand-dug 30 X 50 foot plot, protected from deer (reasonably well) with a double wire battery operated electric fence. This is one of my favorite pictures of Cherokee Purple - it shows the tendency to radially crack, the oblate smooth shape, the unique dusky rose purple color, typical size and good fruit set.
Cherokee Purple from 2002.
The picture below shows the beginning of my interest in colorful hot peppers - this is early work toward my variety Gemstone, in 2003.
"Arboretum dark leaf" was the working name of this early selection, grown in a small pot in the driveway.
My garden space was really migrating from the side dirt garden to the driveway by 2004. The basketball hoop no longer found use....this is a late June shot of the driveway; looking back on my garden log for that year, it shows a record of 86 tomato plants in the side garden, 7 on the rear deck, and over 80 plants in containers - tomatoes, peppers and eggplants - in the driveway.
2004 late June view of the ever-increasing driveway garden
One of my favorite Tomatopalooza pictures, from 2004 - Tennessee Britches (the monster on the left), with Red Brandywine on the right - and poor tiny Mexico Midget in front (tiny in size, not in flavor!)