Johnny Loves Me!

I mean, Johnny’s loves me. I happened to be looking at tomatoes online tonight (which is early for me!), and lo, I discovered Valley Girl! Despite anything anyone says to the contrary, I am going to believe this tomato was developed just for me. (I am a girl, and I am living in a Valley.) Assuming it works as advertised, it sets fruit under both extreme heat and extreme cold, matures early, and is crack tolerant. It’s also supposed to be productive and flavorful. And it’s not a tiny tomato. It’s only everything I’ve ever wanted in a tomato! (Hopefully, it will prove itself worthy of that title next year.)

And, in case anyone is wondering, I have also conclusively decided that New Girl is currently the toughest tomato I know of. It’s a small tomato, but I have inadvertently discovered that I can’t kill it, and it produces no matter how it is tortured. The last time I had ordered it was years ago, when I first started gardening and wasn’t really keeping track of anything. I had started trying other varieties, just to see what they were like, and forgot about New Girl. But last year I found the (old) seeds, and decided to start a few. Even though it was a scorcher of a year, they produced. This year, I started the last few seeds. And this year, it rained so much, and was so cloudy and cool, that almost every tomato in the garden split or struggled to ripen, or both. New Girl was the only tomato that didn’t split on me–I don’t believe even a single one. (This was quite dramatic compared the Glacier tomato I had decided to try–every single one split, and I didn’t get to taste one.) The fact that New Girl can take either extreme and still not hate me makes it a very special tomato.