Ah, finally some tomatoes in sight!

Usually tomatoes are the 'staple vegetable(or fruit!)' of our garden. The usual process is that we crush a ripe tomato in a corner in the garden,the plants will grow just like that and then in a couple of months we used to harvest loads of tomatoes without any problems.

When we moved to the new house, we did not set up a garden immediately due to the soil quality. But even then, when a vegetable cart-vendor accidentally discarded a stale tomato near our compound it immediately sprung into life and gave us almost 15 kilos of tomatoes. Of course it was in front of our compound and so the plant and its harvests belonged to us :).

But back in August, I guess the tomato understood(??!!) that we took it too much for granted. So when we set the garden and planted a few shop bought tomato saplings along with some seed sprouted ones, they took life, gave loads of foliage (which is not edible) but sadly not one single fruit. The young saplings quickly got infested with mealy bugs.Never in our history a plant had been infested with this bug. We could not figure out the solution to control those pests.We still haven't with respect to this mealy bug and our internet-aided-remedies did not work against them. So we had to pull out all of the tomato saplings and also the brinjal plants that got infested from the tomato plants. That is a first to us, having not succeeded in growing home grown tomatoes.But hey, we did not give up.

We tried once again and then one more time. The last but one attempt started yielding fruits only now i.e after 4 months of struggle.

But in the latest attempt,the plants started forming fruits within a couple of months as per our usual history. I think the key for this feat is that it was secluded from all the other plants and then got quickly transferred to the terrace where there is plenty of sun and always a breeze.Apparently the wind helps in the pollination of the flowers. These are all extra efforts that normally we would not have taken.

Finally after 8 months of struggle we are happy to have some results in the tomato department.Especially myself- since Mom and Dad are seasoned gardeners they did not fret much about and always knew that it work out.I was the only one always ranting. I think it is still a long journey for me to become a pro gardener.

Okay let me end this post with a little trivia. Do you know that a tomato plant grows from the cutting of the parent plant?

Above picture is of a cutting that survived and started growing new roots. So no more fuss with the seed germination and transplantation. All it requires is to cut a side shoot from a healthy tomato plant and plant it in a container to extend the tomato harvests!