[oppositelock]

Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself, you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes, which are F1 hybrids, so the next generation is really terrible.

I've been growing them for years, even when I was living in apartments with no garden space at all. For really tight space, something like an EarthBox works great - you get very high plant density. I had one of those on a balcony barely bigger than the box itself, and I still had a few fresh tomatoes every week!

Here in the SF bay area, you can sprout the seeds in late Feb, early March, and you've got edible tomatoes by mid may, all the way through October. I'm pretty sure I can build a cheap glass house and have them year round, now that I have back yard.

[Broken_Hippo]

This- very much this. I used to put a tomato cage in a large pot and grow them on my front porch - though I had a shorter growing season. I could put them out in Mid-to-late May. If it was the right variety, they'd keep producing until the plant was killed by frost and cold.

Soil, however, will affect your taste. I really miss good summer tomatoes from Indiana - I knew folks that moved down south and complained about the difference in taste, even when they grew them.

[koliber]

You mention that there are plenty of heirloom tomatoes that area easy to grow. Two sentences later you say that you can't replant the seeds because they are F1 hybrids.

I think a clarification is in order. The general consensus is that if a tomato is an heirloom it is not a hybrid, and vice versa.

I have had excellent luck with growing plants from collected seeds for any of the heirloom tomatoes I've grown. With hybrids, your mileage may vary.

That being said, I find heirloom tomatoes to be a lot more finicky to grow. Various species are sensitive to diseases. Excessive rain increases chances of diseases, and therefore, a green house or at least rain cover helps out.

That being said, I encourage anyone to try growing their own tomatoes. You will get fruit! It's hugely satisfying. Once you eat a good tomato, it feels like you are in on a secret most people don't know about.

[oppositelock]

Sorry, I plant both. I can plant harvested heirloom seeds (but find it more convenient to buy them). The Early Girl tomatoes, whose flavor I really like that I mentioned are hybrids which don't re-plant well.

I agree, that heirlooms are more difficult to keep happy - they're just more sensitive to "stuff".

[jdmichal]

And even then, you can typically grow a plant from a hybrid seed. Now, whether that plant will produce fruit that resembles the one you got the seed from is an entirely different question. For instance, attempting to grow apple seeds will typically get you a crabapple tree. Cultivars are clones grafted onto crabapple rootstock.

[ridgeguy]

I'll underline the "need plenty of sunshine".

We've planted tomatoes for 16 years (hope springs eternal) in the SF Peninsula hills and gotten nearly nothing in return. Our next-door neighbor has far better sun exposure, and she gives us most of the tomatoes we eat in summer.

[appleiigs]

I recently bought hydroponic equipment, including lamps, to grow herbs. So far I only turn on the lamps after dinner when I read or am on the computer. Probably won't use lamps during summer. Will try tomatoes if the herbs turn out well.