Little did I know when I bought two huge, juicy heirloom tomatoes last year at the Katonah/Lewisboro Farmers’ Market, I would be growing my own crop this spring.

It all happened as I started cutting one of the heirloom tomatoes and my husband said, “hey, my cousin saved some seeds from his heirlooms and grew plants the next year. Why don’t you save some seeds?” So I scooped out the seeds, rinsed them, put them on waxed paper and left them on the counter to dry. Weeks later I put them in an envelope, and took them out to the garage where they stayed for the winter.

While waiting for spring to arrive I decided to start my seeds. It was the second week of March when I bought a growing container with 72 peat pellets to see if the seeds I saved would sprout. Since the seeds were still stuck together, I ended up putting more than one seed in each pellet, but didn’t think it would matter since I didn’t expect them to all grow. Well they did, and I now have a huge crop of seedlings (over 100) that have been repotted once and will be moving to even larger containers soon. My living room and dining room look like a green house but that’s where they are happy. What to do with over 100 plants will be challenging. I plan to build a raised bed, protect it from the squirrels, chipmunks, deer, rabbits, and ground hogs and that will be a challenge. I’ll give some plants to co-workers and friends and perhaps by August we’ll all be having a tomato party and serving tomato soup!

There are many Farmers’ Market in Westchester. I love the Katonah Lewisboro market held at John Jay High School. I always carry my reusable Houlihan Lawrence cloth bags and visit all the merchants at the market as there are always new and wonderful items to see.

Posted By: Sonja Lovas