It all began with that first bite of a homegrown tomato. Having been raised, for the most part, on store vegetables and fruit, the flavor simply burst out of those thin-skinned red beauties as the ample juice ran down my face. It was wonderful and I was hooked!

In those first years of my adulthood, I, like a lot of you, toyed with the idea of having a garden like my grandparents had. Collectively they were from Kansas and Missouri and grew up gardening. Of course, in the early decades of the 20th century, you usually grew or raised your own food. There were no full color, glossy magazines with eye-catching photos on the cover to read, or any books on how to sow a seed or build a solar lean-to. You figured it out on your own or it didn’t happen.

Our tomatoes this year grew fast, and the plants were literally smothered in fruit. We had one bout of blossom-end-rot and grabbed the oyster shells to spread around them each and to elevate the calcium levels. Within one or two weeks the blossom-end-rot had disappeared. And the tomatoes kept on giving.

Fall didn’t exactly arrive like we are used to, but we harvested the fruit near the end of September, including the green tomatoes, layered them in boxes just one tomato deep, then covered them with newspaper as they were carefully placed in the basement.

Harvesting has continued even now, the first full week of December. Any of you can do this! There are so many houses in Northeast Oregon that have basements, just take the time to save your tomatoes. Place them in cardboard boxes, cover them loosely with newspaper and continue having fresh tomatoes from your garden for months.

Don’t have a basement? A dark closet will do nicely. Check on your tomatoes about once a week and harvest as you go. It’s such an easy way to keep your garden alive, even into early winter!

The accompanying photo was taken Nov. 20, this is just what we harvested from our basement that day. They are delicious, tender and juicy. We have many more to harvest! You can too!