Let’s talk tomatoes.

I love them. They are my favorite. I can eat them like apples, and just love the acidy goodness of a homegrown, Mississippi tomato. We grow the best tomatoes anywhere. Period.

For years, most of my adult life in fact, I have waited for the appropriate time, gone to the nursery and bought fledgling plants and planted tomatoes.

I kid you not, not once have I had a good crop.

But this year was going to be different.

I read Miriam Jabour’s column earlier in the late spring/summer, when she described the types of tomatoes that grow best in Mississippi.

I was certain that was my missing link! Maybe I had simply been planting the wrong variety. According to Jabour’s research, it’s the Cherokee Purple that thrives best in Mississippi.

Off to the nursery I went, where I purchased three Cherokee Purples, one variety called “Mortgage Lender” just because I liked the name, and a yellow cherry tomato. I also bought five sugar baby watermelon plants, an eggplant, and a friend brought me a cayenne pepper.

That was enough of a garden for me. I bought organic potting mix and set about planting my plants.

I asked for tips on Facebook on its Vicksburg, MS page and got lots of good ideas. I particularly liked one from a woman who shared a photo of this huge table filled with tomatoes she had grown. She recommended a fertilizer called Espoma Garden Tone. Sure enough, Amazon had it and I ordered it and used it.

I bought a couple of new containers, the wire cages, gardening gloves and some other things.

Those worthless tomatoes to date have cost me about $80. Just think of the Farmers Market tomatoes I could have purchased from people who actually know what they are doing.

I have watered diligently, but the only things that have enjoyed anything from my plants are insects. Since I’ve complained about that to friends, I hear that I’m supposed to be using Sevin dust. I really had wanted to not use insecticides on my crop, and truly I think it’s too late now. I have not gotten one tomato on any of those dang plants that have been edible. Something is causing one plant’s tomatoes to look deformed. Another plant’s tomatoes look promising, but something then begins to eat them from the bottom up. Some other bug is eating the leaves off of the tomatoes and the eggplant, leaving just sad twigs.

And, those sugar baby watermelons? Those are nothing but dangerous predators. I planted one next to my eggplant in a flowerbed and that watermelon vine took it completely over! It wrapped its little tentacles all around my eggplant until it choked it to death! Murderer! And guess what, that darn vine doesn’t even have one watermelon on it. I’m holding out hope those will come later perhaps, but so far, just a few blooms.

Nope. I’m done. I’ve had it with gardening. These plants are my last. Next year, it’s the Farmers Market and maybe a flower or two — and maybe plastic at that!

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Jan Griffey is editor of The Vicksburg Post. You may reach her at jan.griffey@vicksburgpost.com