Tomato Surprise!

This spring, I couldn't decide if I should put a garden in or not.  Knowing we were going to be away for so long, I didn't want to leave it for Neal to take care of,  but I love having garden tomatoes.  Ultimately, I decided that I'd forgo a garden, and asked Neal if he could just get me a couple of boxes of tomatoes to put up, since we had eaten nearly all of the jars I canned last year. 

Apparently, nature had other plans.  Neal told me I had tomatoes growing in my garden spot!  When I got home, they were nearly overrun with weeds (he had warned me he didn't have time to pull them), but yes, indeed, there were tomatoes!  All three varieties from last year (grape, plum, and globe) came back!  I started yanking out the weeds, and then carefully tucked last year's cages around the plants.

Today, I picked the first ripe tomatoes!

What a lovely surprise, and science lesson for all of us -- we didn't know tomato seeds could winter over!  We even looked up "Can tomato seeds winter over?" and couldn't find any sources that said they did; every site we found either just said that tomatoes were annual plants, or noted they were annuals and discussed how to save the seeds for re-planting after frost.  We had a brutally cold ad snowy winter last year, too, making it even more surprising!

I also found some basil that had migrated but come back, too...guess I know what is for lunch!

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