June Tomato Analysis

This evening I picked 60 Red Currants, 3 Husky Cherry Reds, a Prairie Fire, Green Grape and Red Robin tomatoes.

The “cooling” trend continues, only getting up to 105. Yikes.

The Lime Green Salad in the “koi pond” had about 200 blooms on it. There are a few tomatoes poking out but about 85 percent are burned out, due to this intense heat.

We are ahead of last years tomato totals compared to this time last year. This year's crop is clearly dominated by Red Currant. By tomorrow, we'll have picked twice as many Red Currants as last year. Last year we planted Red Currant in a container, while this year we planted it in the ground.

Tomato totals for June 1 – June 22, 2007 – 491 tomatoes. Tomato totals for June 1 – June 22, 2008 – 750 tomatoes.

Last year, we started picking over 100 tomatoes as of June 26. On June 26, 2007, I picked 115 tomatoes from 14 different tomato plants.

So far, we don't have the breadth of harvested tomatoes like we did last year. As of today, I've only picked from five different varieties on a given day. For the tomatoes other than Red Currant, the most I've picked for a given day has been five.

In other words, we're ahead of last year's tomato totals due to the strength of the Red Currant harvest. But I believe the tomato harvest totals will start to converge again due to the low harvest of the other tomatoes.