Right now, it’s easy to say what is in my family lunchbox… home grown tomatoes!! This was our biggest tomato garden yet with 20 tomato plants scattered around our yard. We planted a large variety of tomatoes, and were given some heirloom seeds that made some of our favorites.
Tomatoes fresh off the vine with mozzarella, a splash of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Our daughter calls bites of the tomato mozzerella salad “slices of heaven”. Our 4 year old picky son, however, won’t go near the things….
As the tomato season winds down while school starts up (started early here in Tennessee–Aug 11th!), we are trying to make the most of the end of the season by eating tomatoes every day. The cherry tomatoes alone have been an easy addition to the lunchboxes during the week, and we’ve also used tomato/mozzarella salad, gazpacho and tomato soup to add variety to our kids lunches.
Our favorite tomato varieties from our crop this year were:
One of the best things we did with the kids this year was plant our tomato garden from seed. As we picked bagfulls of tomatoes from our 20 plants we talked about how amazing it is that the tiny seeds they planted a couple of months ago produced huge plants and a large and yummy tomato crop. They both feel proud of their contributions. I was not raised in a gardening family, but as a Mom I am realizing how great of a fun & learning tool that kids planting a garden can be.
If you feel intimidated about growing tomatoes from seed, you might want to check out Jane Perrone’s gardening article Sowing Tomato Seeds and a couple of the links she has from that article. As someone who didn’t grow up gardening, it is great to have some resources like hers when the rest of us don’t know what we are doing! I have only been gardening for a few years now (mostly spring/summer veggies and flowers), but for me it has become more fun and successful each year. I stick with some easier basics like tomatoes, squash, hot peppers, and flowers. This year I also tried broccoli & green beans from seed — both unsuccessfully! But I’m not going to give up trying a new thing or two next year… Our sunflowers were 10 feet tall, which gives me inspiration 
