It’s really pretty incredible how many tomatoes a few plants can produce. I highly suggest it to everyone (and if you compost, no need for fertilizer).

If you have a yard (or access to a garden plot) you can gather up yard waste, and then compost it right into the ground (called lasagna gardening). No need to pay for someone to haul away the leaves. No need for a composter. No need to purchase garden soil (or a pot).

We once planted some seeds from one cherry tomato that went bad before we could eat it in a lasagna garden. We had free tomatos for years afterwards.

Once or twice a year there would be a major die-off of leaves and limbs, we’d trim it back and slow down the watering and in a month or two it would come back.

I think what killed it in the end was a combination of irregular watering habits, not enough sunlight, and an aphid infestation in a neighbouring set of plants.

We never intended to keep a tomato plant that long. It just happened that one year frost killed everything and we were left with a couple of stragglers that really didn’t get going until august, so we just brought one inside to try and get at least a couple of fruits from it.

Wrt Kim, I think that these are all sunk costs (except for fertilizer), but what you get is a lifetime of tomatoes. (or at least I think so). Do tomato plants come back every year, or do you have to buy new ones each year?

Yum!