So we found the culprits for the recent let’s-bite-holes-into-some-yummy-tomato-plants business. Caterpillars. Quite a few of them actually. They make my skin crawl – even worse than spiders. Ewww.

Living in a rental property means we don’t have much say on what is planted in the gardens. While we do have some garden beds in the backyard they are pretty much full of ginger plants and an odd assortment of palm-type things. The soil is just sand really and while I have a burning desire to plant a big old vegetable garden, the initial set-up would take more $$ than what we have to spare. So we’ve settled for a smaller scale production and are trying our hands at growing some tomatoes.

Mum picked up some heirloom variety seedlings from Bunnings about 6 weeks ago. We planted them in a few pots that we had handy and have been eagerly awaiting the first fruits. We planted Tigerella, Beef Steak (my favourite), Black Russian, Mortgage Lifter and Broad Ripple Yellow Currant. This is what I found when I went out to water on Monday morning…

Fruits!! The Broad Ripple Yellow Currant is the first one to give us some fruit – perfect little green baby tomatoes! How exciting. This weekend we’re going to stake the plants up as they’re getting larger now and are all over the place. I think they’ll probably like being staked and not having to spend energy on holding up their branches.