![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/early-girl-tomatoes-first-of-2025-b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"early-girl-tomatoes-first-of-2025-b-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\nIt was my intention to publish a post today about pronghorn fawn triplets in Montana’s Centennial Valley but yesterday’s pleasant garden surprise changed those plans. The pronghorn post will have to wait.<\/p>\n
Readers already know that I’m addicted to BLTs and I’m of the opinion that supermarket tomatoes are garbage. So for the last several years I’ve been referring to the first day I have enough garden tomatoes for a BLT as Freedom from Garbage Tomatoes day, or FGT day. FGT could also stand for First Garden Tomatoes day – both work for me but I prefer the former. It has a little more… bite.<\/p>\n
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I harvested the smallest of these three tomatoes two days ago but it wasn’t large enough for a BLT so I had to wait. Then, yesterday afternoon, I found the two larger tomatoes hiding near the base of one of my Early Girl tomato plants.<\/p>\n
As a result, my plans for today’s post and my plans for dinner last night, changed. Pronghorn became tomatoes and Navajo tacos became a BLT.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/BLT.jpg\" "\\"B:T\\"")
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I’m no foodie so I don’t take good food photos but this was my dinner last night – a BLT with garden tomatoes and good sourdough bread, toasted. You can’t see the tomatoes very well but they’re under the bacon – sliced thick, juicy and delicious. Homemade coleslaw is the side.<\/p>\n
For me, FGT Day is a big deal. Barring a devastating hailstorm, I shouldn’t have to buy those garbage tomatoes at the supermarket again for over four months. One year I even served garden tomatoes for Thanksgiving dinner. By then, even though I’d had them covered in the garden, they’d gone through some cold nights so they weren’t quite as good as usual. But they were still better than those mealy, reddish, tasteless tomato-impersonators you get at the grocery store.<\/p>\n
Some readers may think I’m a little strange to make such a big deal out of my first garden tomatoes of the season. But if you’re a fan of BLTs and you grow your own tomatoes, I’m thinking you get it.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
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PS – If you think my disdain for supermarket tomatoes is going overboard, you might want to read the NY Times article my good friend Susan Southam linked to in her comment below. It’s a good one, and to the point.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was my intention to publish a post today about pronghorn fawn triplets in Montana’s Centennial Valley but yesterday’s pleasant garden surprise changed those plans. (2 photos)<\/p>\n