The $200 Indoor Tomato

We didn’t get frustrated enough by our summertime tomato extravaganza, AKA Tomato Murder, so a few weeks ago, we became inspired to try growing full-sized tomatoes in the house.

How does one accomplish this, you may ask? Well, we’re not completely sure yet. That is, we are growing the plants, but how to pollinate them remains a mystery.

BTW, does anyone know why it’s pollinate and not pollenate? What is the point of that arbitrary change in spelling from pollen to pollin?? If I ever had to learn English as a second language, I’d be very perplexed.

So, how are we going to pollinate them? We’ll figure that out when we read the remainder of the directions.

Here is a photo of our Super Duper Deluxe AeroGarden. We planted seven Early Girl seeds and selected the two best plants, which was difficult--nearly painful--as they were all thriving to the point that we felt really guilty about tossing five of them.

As you can see, these two are racing toward the ceiling—I figure they grow about three inches a day. Every time the Boy Dentist (that’s what The Fred called him once) moves the light up, the plants seem to hit it within 24 hours. I’m getting worried that our ceiling isn’t high enough.

We will keep you posted on the progress of the $200 Indoor Tomato. I’m hoping that by the time the fam arrives for Christmas, we’ll have some nice, juicy veggies on the vine. But as DH says, “We don’t have a tomato yet, so they may just end up being $200 tomato plants.”