How Tomaties Started Growing

After many years fighting off the winter blues by cultivating strong tomato plants from seed in her basement, Annie Potts realized that she was growing SO many plants that she could barely make her way to her laundry room. Which was quite a problem because her clothes were often covered in soil.

While she made nearly 500 trips up and down the stairs to transport her seedlings outside in the spring, a message played over and over again in her head, “never again, never again, never again”.

As the 2018 crop flourished in her backyard and in the yards of countless friends and family members, Annie started making plans to take her basement back. It was a good time to be planning a new beginning because the year before she had sold the two restaurants she had inherited from her parents. Mae and Glenn Potts had turned the restaurants over to Annie ten years earlier and turned to a life of travel and leisure. Her Dad sent her a postcard from every town or city they spent a night in, and her Mom never met a tea towel she didn’t buy, so Annie had quite a collection.

Everything fell into place in the summer of 2018 when Annie’s realtor called her about a dream property that wasn’t even on the market yet. It was love at first sight. The laundry room was huge and would never need to be turned into a makeshift greenhouse because the acreage already had two big greenhouses on it.

So that’s how Tomaties came to be! We are proud to support our community and hope you’ll come visit us soon.