Tomato Plants
Did you know that you can grow tomato plants straight from a tomato you pick up from the grocery store? Maybe it’s pretty obvious considering that we all know tomatoes have a gazillion seeds in them. Anyways, I did not realize how easy it was to sprout those seeds.
When my sister was home from college in the beginning of the summer, she bought a lot of vine tomatoes. One of both her and my favorite snacks ins tomatoes, lime, salt, and pepper. We slice the tomatoes into disks, squeeze a lot of lime juice on top, and put salt and pepper. It is absolutely delicious and you should definitely try it. It is super salty and sour and salty and sour things are my favorite!
One day I was slicing the tomatoes looking at all the seeds and thinking about my attempted mango growing adventure. I thought that I could try the same thing I tried with the mangos, with the tomatoes. After all, I had gone out and bought potting soil and a few pots for the mangoes so why not put them to good use.
I sliced a tomato into disks, ate all but one and placed it in a pot on top of soil and patted some more soil on top. I put it in a decently sunny place and waited.
WITHIN A WEEK, they sprouted! I was shocked. I let them grow in that pot for a while. and there were so many of the tiny tomato spouts. Virtually all of the seeds had sprouted. When they grew to the same length as my finger, I separated their roots and saved 6 of the sprouts to continue growing. I planted them in bigger pots. When they grew much bigger and had pointier leaves and thicker stalks, I planted them in a MASSIVE pot in my backyard.
4 months later, they are thriving. They have grown to over 6 feet tall and there are so many tomatoes growing. They taste so fresh. Interestingly, they are more sour than sweet than the tomato who’s seeds I took. They also have a tougher skin. Nonetheless, they are DELICIOUS and I am enjoying eating them with lime.
From this experience I have found, that cutting off dying leaves and branches from the plants allows them to grow taller and be healthier. Additionally, spraying them with a soapy water solution helps preventing bugs from eating the leaves.
