Harvested Zhezha today!

Tonight's harvest: 32 Red Currants, 4 Husky Cherry Reds, 3 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Prairie Fires, a Green Grape, White Bush, Piccolo, Big Rainbow and a new tomato, Zhezha!

The Red Currants are dwindling. But now that there are less tomatoes growing, the plant can now devote more energy to making more branches and blooms. I'm confident that Red Currant will get a second wind.

I've written it before but the Salisaw Cafe tomato plant is a happy one. We will get a good harvest from this plant.

Harvest Totals Dwindling...

And tonights harvest include 39 Red Currants, 2 Salisaw Cafes, a Husky Cherry Red, an Aunt Ruby's German Green, Black Plum Paste, Micro Tom, and a sunscalded Taxi tomato.

Yesterday's Aunt Ruby's German Green was too damaged to eat. Today's tomato looks better.

I did a fair amount of taping up wayward tomato branches while I was harvesting.

Now we're in that downtrend I've been predicting for a couple of weeks. The last five days totals are thus: 159, 145, 106, 98, 46. Quite a drop!

Tomato Web Site

Here's a tomato web site worth checking out: http://www.heirloomtomatoplants.com

There's a lot of good information on this web site.

I haven't bought any of their tomato plants or products, so I won't vouch for anything they sell (though there is a link to http://www.tomatofest.com where our seed lady bought from – we can vouch for the seeds on that web site) nor have I met the lady. However, there's a trove of material about tomatoes on this web site that you won't find elsewhere on the web.

And that's the point – you can tell that the words and descriptions are hers. If someone is willing to go through the trouble of putting up this much information about heirloom tomatoes, well, she must care about them a lot!

Enjoy.

Harvested Aunt Ruby's German Green Tomato!

Tonight's haul: 78 Red Currants, 8 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 White Bush, 2 Red Robin, 2 Black Plum Pastes, an Italian Market Wonder, Green Grape, Garden Peach, Thessaloniki, Salisaw Cafe and a new tomato: Aunt Ruby's German Green!

Yesterday, Pierce College got up to 100 degrees. Today was hotter but I don't know by how much.

We're going to harvest a Zhezha in the front yard in the very near future.

I may not pick on the 4^th of July. I'll be at the Hollywood Bowl in the afternoon and evening. It will be a convenient time to adjust the harvest time from the evening to the morning. We'll see.

Tomato Analysis For June

Let's compare June's totals with the June 2007 totals...

In June 2007 we harvested 1259 tomatoes. In June 2008, we harvested 1538 tomatoes – 22% more.

However, last year I harvested from 22 different tomato plants among 34 planted tomatoes (65%). This year, I harvested from 23 different tomato plants among 52 in the ground (44%).

This year's June totals have been dominated by the Red Currant harvest. Out of the 1538 harvested, 1337 were Red Currants. That left only 201 tomatoes over the other 51 existing tomato plants (one died).

A week or so ago I predicted that we wouldn't hit last year's numbers. Then Red Currant really kicked in, harvesting 97 followed by 139, 136 and 98 tomatoes.

Therein lies the rub: Until the other plants start “cresting”, the numbers will rise and fall based on the Red Currant harvest. And Red Currant's best harvest may very well be last week's numbers. The second largest harvest, Husky Cherry Red shows signs of “cresting” having harvested 7 followed by 10, 19, 17, 15, 7 and 6 tomatoes over the past week.

We'll get a good harvest total from a lot of the smaller backyard tomatoes. These include Salisaw Cafe, Stupice, Black Plum Paste and perhaps Sioux and Kimberly as well. In the front yard, Piccolo looks pretty good. And Red Currant looks healthy enough to get a second wave.

Beefsteaks: Paul Robeson and the back yard Black Krim look particularly happy.

Disappointments (so far): Garden Peach, Snow White Cherry, Big Rainbow, Micro Tom.

In short, this year's tomato plants appears to be about two weeks behind last year's tomato plants. The July numbers should expose this.

Harvested Black From Tula tomato!

Tonight's harvest included 98 Red Currants, 6 Husky Cherry Reds, a Green Grape, Golden Jubilee and one new tomato, a 13 ounce Black From Tula!

We tried the Black From Tula tomato and we both really like it.

I brought a bunch of tomatoes into work and again received compliments on the Red Currants. People like 'em!

Harvested Two More New Tomatoes!

And tonight's harvest... 136 Red Currants, 7 Husky Cherry Reds, a Piccolo, an Italian Market Wonder, Cherokee Chocolate and two new tomatoes: Black Plum Paste and Big Rainbow!

We tried three new tomatoes at dinner: Thessaloniki, Golden Jubilee and Carbon. All three were good ones, but we both decided Carbon was the best.

Afterwards, my wife watered the front yard while I watered the back yard.

I did a little bit of tomato work over the past two days. A little tomato taping, added paper mulch, did some landscaping for the Kimberly tomato plant, etc.