10,000 Harvested Tomatoes A Possibility For 2009

Today's harvest includes 48 Snow White, 18 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 18 Black Cherry, 10 Red Currant, 9 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 6 Jaune Flamme, 6 Super Snow White, 6 White Currant, 5 Jaune Coeur de Pigeon, 5 SunSugar, 5 Yellow Perfection, 4 Sweet 100, 3 Italian Ice, 3 Red Grape, 3 Babywine, 2 Green Zebra(1), 2 Green Zebra(2), 2 Turkish Striped Monastery, Husky Gold, White Zebra, Plum Tigris, Oaxacan Jewel(2) and Vintage Wine for a total of 160 tomatoes.

These harvest numbers are elevated because I didn't harvest yesterday. They'll stay elevated for a couple of days before settling back down to the appropriate level.

I received a good question from a Facebook friend (I'm at http://www.facebook.com/billand88 – if you would like to “friend” me, just add a note) – will I reach 10,000 tomatoes this year?

Two years ago I changed out the dirt in the front yard and replaced it with compost, dirt and mulch from the city and ended up with 11,000 harvested tomatoes. I have many more plants this year, could I challenge those numbers?

10,000 seems doable (not likely, mind you, but doable) while 11,000 seems too far away.

The high point of the harvest in 2007 was around July 8 while this year it was around July 24^th or so. In July 2007 we harvested 6154 tomatoes while in 2009 we harvested 4576 tomatoes. In August 2007 we harvested 2806 tomatoes while in 2009 we've already harvested 2375 tomatoes. August 2009 will clearly beat the August 2007 totals. That's another reflection of this year's later harvest apogee.

In September 2007 we harvested 647 tomatoes, October 2007 only 26 tomatoes and I stopped counting because of the three week honeymoon starting in early October.

The prior two years experienced a dramatic slide in harvested tomatoes in September.

So....let's round up this month's estimate to 3500 tomatoes, estimate September to be, oh, say, 800 tomatoes. That would put us at 9200 harvested tomatoes at the end of September. October through December shouldn't generate another 800 tomatoes to reach the magic five figure mark. But if we harvested, say, 1200 tomatoes in September, 10,000 tomatoes is definitely a possibility.

Last night we met some good friends found through correspondence with this blog. They had twins a couple of months ago and they invited us over to see their twins. I was still showing the effects of sleeping for only 20 minutes the night before and was pretty subdued the whole evening. Going in, my wife and I probably expected to visit for, oh, say, 45 minutes or so but we were still going strong three hours later. Okay, I was getting wobbly. Though I did get in a strong late afternoon nap I needed to sleep some more. We talked tomatoes (naturally), compost, babies, babies, neighbors and more babies. It was a blast!

At lunch my wife and I met with our neighbor across the street and their child who is nearing three years of age. She's a smart cookie, that one.

Oh yeah, back to the tomatoes. The total front yard harvest has now passed the total back yard harvest for 2009 (3633 versus 3628). The second Oaxacan Jewel has reached 100 harvested tomatoes and Jaune Coeur de Pigeon has reached over 300 harvested tomatoes (301).