tomato plants, flowers, free food, compost

I mentioned how to provide yourself with free potatoes in an earlier post. I've also got free tomatoes growing in the garden, which is looking quite lush, I'm pleased to say.

These free plants are courtesy of my "home grown" organic compost. Since I was a small girl, my mother has always had a compost heap - even when all we had was a back yard we kept a pile of tea leaves, egg shells, potato peelings etc in a corner, and the compost was used for plants in the small border.

Naturally, I too have always had a compost pile, or three! In my first small garden, it was about a square meter, and fed my tomatoes and potatoes - the only vegetables I grew in my first small garden.

In the large house where we lived for 19 years, we created compost bins out of pallets, so they were a very good size, and grew very hot - nighbourhood cats loved to settle themselves down on the top in the winter when it was cold.

Since my divorce, my garden has shrunk somewhat, but, as you've seen, David has built me three lovely raised beds to grow my vegetables in, and I have three largish compost bins to provide the nourishment that my organic vegetables need. .....................................................................................

Clearly, however, these bins are not reaching the same high temperature as the older ones did, as the seeds are obviously surviving - hence the tomato plants. The seeds have lain dormant in the compost until it has been spread onto the beds, and there they have sprouted along with the seeds I have sown.

So ............. more free food:-)

First the sunny, starry yellow flowers, then the tiny green fruits follow on. (You did know that tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables, didn't you?) See how tiny they are? They haven't ripened yet, as the beds weren't finished until summer was already upon us, but they will. Nature is abundantly kind this year:-)