This year I only had one hanging cherry tomato plant — yep, just one. I almost killed it twice this summer, with um, inadvertent dry farming experiments (aka vacations). I did find out that poking holes in the bottom of a water bottle and jamming it into the pot does work, I probably just needed one bottle for every day we were gone since that little Tumbler tomato was sucking down the water. Even still, it gave one big push in mid-July and then ramped up for a second push in September, and then the weather cooled off just after Labor Day.
I’ve kept it going over the last 6 weeks hoping to see those green globes ripen. There’s still a bunch on there that have managed a yellow-orangey hue, but I think it’s over. This isn’t California. We’ve had rain off and on for the last week and on Sunday, it only got up to 50F — not tomato-growing weather.
So on Sunday, I roasted this last batch of cherry tomatoes with a couple of cloves of garlic, a couple of glugs of olive oil and salt and pepper. Originally I thought I’d freeze them, but this small amount is hardly worth putting up. We’ll eat them in some kind of pasta or with scrambled eggs or something this week. We’ll have a final taste of summer, co-mingled with the flavors of fall. I won’t be jealous of you, California, (yes, I will), with your tomatoes until almost Thanksgiving. Scorpacciata, scorpacciata, scorpacciata.