Just this week I filled my first big bowl of the season with freshly harvested, vine ripened wild tomatoes. Well, I like to call them ‘wild’ anyway. It makes me feel like some kind of nomadic hunter gatherer foraging on a random bush in the wild, but in actual fact, it was just one of those little cherry tomato bushes that sprung up next to the compost heap – you know the ones.
Wild tomatoes
They’re coming up everywhere at the moment… under the back steps, round the side of the house, out on the footpath. When you think about it, they’re a bit weedy, but even the most hardened weed hater could not deny their value. They’re just so incredibly productive and take little to no effort. No soil preparation, no fertilising, no staking, and no planting! Just let them come up and do their thing! Crikey… not even the classic pest and diseases of the subtropics seem to bother them, not even fruit fly. Try growing any large fruiting tomato this time of year, and you’ll be absolutely plagued with problems. So if you see a few wild tomatoes coming up amongst your roses, let them go and enjoy the harvest. As hard working gardeners we all deserve a free ride from time to time.
