Despite the similarities in habit and appearance to the popular tomato vine, you won’t find tomatillos growing in too many backyard vegetable gardens. This unusual plant is rare in the home garden, but the fruits are popular in salsas and many other ethnic recipes.

I recently shared some of my favorite tips for growing tomatoes, but I like receiving a good tip just as much as anyone and today it’s your turn. Following are some terrific homegrown ideas for growing tomatoes picked from your very own gardens!

The theme of the latest issue of the Gardening Secrets Newsletter centered on Homegrown Tomatoes so I thought I’d post a brief summary here of some of the tips for growing tomatoes that were covered in the newsletter:

My recent trek to the Landis Valley Herb & Garden Faire rewarded me with a half dozen heirloom tomato seedlings to add to the collection of tomato transplants that I grew from seed. The biggest surprise was that many of the heirlooms purchased were varieties that I had never even heard of.

After planting about fifty tomato seeds that were given the opportunity to germinate, grow, and compete in my annual tomato seedling competition, I’m now down to twelve strong and healthy tomato plants that have earned their spots out in the garden. I selected a dozen interesting tomato varieties, most of them heirlooms, to grow from seed this season. It wasn’t easy to choose among the candidates as there are hundreds of unique heirlooms to select from.

Yesterday I mentioned some of the benefits of growing cherry tomato plants; today I thought I’d share some of the interesting, colorful, and tasty varieties of cherry tomatoes that are available to the home gardener. For the backyard gardener there’s a wealth of variety, diversity, and unique flavors available when it comes to growing different varieties of cherry tomatoes.

If you’re still deciding on your heirloom tomato plant varieties for the upcoming growing season, consider adding a cherry tomato to the mix.
I wouldn’t grow cherry sized tomato varieties exclusively, but I also wouldn’t grow a garden without at least one cherry tomato plant to enjoy.
Cherry tomatoes are sometimes shunned for not offering the rich [...]

Vegetable gardeners have been noticing the mysterious loss of flowers and immature fruits which have been shriveling and falling off of plants such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, beans, and squash. Losing a few vegetable blossoms or young fruits isn’t uncommon, especially early in the summer and shouldn’t be a cause for alarm.