Glad I remembered to get a picture of these before they all went into a salad. This is the Roger Boye tomato, named after a lovely man and favorite college professor named Roger Boye, who sent me the seeds in a Christmas card. Apparently this (actually unnamed) variety has been grown by his family for decades, and they were the nicest, best-tasting little tomatoes ever.
Overall I had a fairly disastrous year of tomato growing. Long story short, I LOVED growing tomatoes from seed and started one million of them. Said tomatoes then suffered from 1) freezes, 2) being forgotten about, 3) being planted in a swamp, 4) not being planted in time, 5) being overcrowded, 6) being unmanaged, and 7) being forgotten about again.
I did get a decently large harvest in the end because I had so many plants, but even then it was like, UGH, NOW I HAVE TO COOK SOMETHING WITH THESE.
The Roger Boye tomatoes, on the other hand, were a delight. You just grow them and then you eat them. No weird crevices to cut off, no urgency to make sauce or something, just little mouthfuls of joy.
So with my 2025 lessons learned, here is my no-fail, everything-will-be-perfect tomato plan for 2026:
- Start them in mid-February at the earliest.
- Start just enough to get TWO Roger Boye plants and TWO Clear Pink plants (plus maybe some backups three weeks later).
- Sell or give away any extra plants—DO NOT GET ATTACHED.
- Don’t move them to the greenhouse until at least mid-April.
- Don’t plant them until at least mid-May.
- Use the good tomato cages.
- Give them enough space, watch them, train them, and PRUNE THEM.
- Mentally accept that when you grow vegetables you may also have to cook vegetables.
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