Finished The Tomato Chores!

Yesterday's harvest consisted of Jaune Flamme, SunSugar and a Sweet 100 tomato.

I spent a good amount of time trimming and staking the last of the tomato plants in the “koi pond”. It took a lot longer than expected. After about an hour I stopped as I was getting too hot. I went in the back yard and added primer to the exposed areas of the patio cover. Then dinner, which included tomatoes from our garden (I recognized the Patio and the just picked Jaune Flamme tomato) as well as squash, green beans and zucchini and lettuce from the farmer's market. Then back out to the “koi pond” to finish the job on the tomato plants. Then in the setting sun I used the last of the tomato tape to corral a few plants in the back yard. I did more of that this morning.

I picked a Yellow Perfection this morning. I thought it was ripe yesterday but my wife disagreed, so we left it on the vine. I picked it this morning before the Manchester Terrier found it. If it's ready we'll count it in today's harvest.

Some random notes: We have the makings of a very good year, tomato wise. The numbers are well behind the prior years pace by far but that is due to vandalism. The later plants have caught up with the others (such as Babywine) or are catching up.

In 2007, Snow White got to nearly seven feet tall and cranked out over 1700 tomatoes. Currently, Snow White 2009 is about 5 ½ feet tall, thick, bushy with lots of tomatoes. Garden Peach 2007 was really two plants that took over “Alongi Row”, getting at least 6 ½ feet tall but more importantly, about 7 feet wide. There were ripening tomatoes in the middle of the plant that I couldn't reach. Those two plants cranked out nearly 1200 tomatoes. Garden Peach 2009 is “only” one plant but I spent about a half hour yesterday on that plant alone, trimming, corralling, staking and whatnot. Yellow Perfection has hundreds of ping pong sized tomatoes on it. Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe has recovered while Jaune Coeur de Pigeon continues to recover.

With the weather heating up again (should be around 90 for the high today – hot, but not hot enough to be an issue for the plants) these plants will go into overdrive, ripen the growing tomatoes and crank out new ones.

In my opinion, something would have to go wrong if we're not harvesting at least 200 tomatoes a day this time next month.

My wife watered a portion of the front yard yesterday.

Now that the “tomato chores” are completely caught up, it doesn't mean I stop. I never stop staking and corralling but so long as I work at it every day it should be just a maintenance issue.