Photographs of the Stages of a Tomato Plant

I haven't planted a single seed yet this year and I need to get cracking. This time last year, my tomato seedlings were thirteen days old. The only suitable place I have indoors is one little south facing bedroom window sill (my kitchen window is covered in herbs, cacti and succulents) so I can't afford to lose my seedlings.

Thinking about tomato seeds has made me nostalgic for last years journey from leggy seedlings to scraggly plants, building up to lavish foliage, blossoming into sweet yellow flowers, exploding into firm greenness and finally bursting into rosy red sweetness. I've compiled a photo diary of the progression of my old reliable Moneymaker tomatoes, which were grown outside. I put them out a little early and they took a battering from the wind (I am missing a photo of the plants just before they were put outside - they were healthy and starting to fill out). Some of the stems even cracked, as you can see in the third photo, but they all recovered. The fourth photo shows the cracked stem has grown back some leaves.

The stem cracked on this plant so I bound it together with insulating tape - worked perfectly.

I love when the plant is at this stage with its mix of red, yellow, orange and green. You'll notice that I have removed most of the leaves - this is so more of the plant's energy can go into fruit production.

Most of the tomatoes were eaten straight off the plant, while we enjoyed the gorgeous weather that lasted for months. This batch went towards making delicious, rich, sticky relish that the party goers ate the day of my son's first birthday. You can see the recipe here. I had made the relish countless times before with cheap supermarket tomatoes but the result when I used my own organic home grown tomatoes was not like anything I had made before. The relish was darker, more intense and far superior. If I ever found it hard to justify spending extra on local, organic produce when the supermarket offers the same products for much cheaper, this relish made the difference in quality so obvious.