What's The Easiest Tomato Variety For Beginners To Grow?

With summer right around the corner and garden centers opening up across the country for planting season, you might have it on your mind to try your hand at some gardening of your own this year. And while, on the outside looking in, maintaining a garden can seem tricky, you don't need to be a certified green thumb to successfully grow certain things. Tomatoes are a fairly popular choice among prospective gardeners, but with so many varieties of tomato out there, which one should you choose?

On the whole, it seems that the consensus is that smaller tomatoes, such as cherry tomatoes, are the easiest variety of tomatoes for entry level gardeners to grow. Not only are these tomatoes comparatively low-maintenance, but they also mature within only a couple of months and continue to yield delicious and fresh clusters of tomatoes until well into the year. So if you're looking for a plant that's easy to grow, requires relatively little space, and continually bears crops throughout the season, cherry tomatoes might just be for you.

Since cherry tomatoes are in the group of indeterminate tomatoes, and therefore grow in clusters on vines, you're going to have quite a number of these little guys on hand. But that's not a problem at all, since cherry tomatoes are incredibly versatile in the kitchen. Their sweetness is a key characteristic, and is one of the attributes that sets cherry tomatoes apart from grape tomatoes, on top of its crisp skin. And it's these aspects that help to make cherry tomatoes a useful culinary tool.

Cherry tomatoes are excellent in a variety of dishes, sauces, and more. Their sweetness compared to some other tomatoes makes them a great choice for certain kinds of homemade salsa, giving you a subtle caramelized note courtesy of that sugar. You could also focus on the freshness of your garden cherry tomatoes and make a light Greek-inspired salad with them, some cucumbers, a bit of feta, and some fresh herbs. And of course, you could always store tomatoes for future use if you've got more than enough on hand. Just don't be surprised if your list of recipes grows just as fast as your cherry tomato plants.