And today's harvest includes 7 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 7 Red Grape, 6 Snow White(2), 4 Sweet 100, 3 Black Cherry, 3 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 3 Dr. Wyche's Yellow (12 ounces, 7 ounces), 2 Snow White(1), 2 Babywine, 2 Plum Tigris, 2 Turkish Striped Monastery, a back yard Green Grape, a front yard Green Grape, Mong, Oaxacan Jewel(2), Jaune Coeur de Pigeon, Italian Ice and Yellow Perfection for a total of 48 tomatoes.
We've now reached over 8000 harvested tomatoes for the year! It's been a good year, lots of very good tomatoes.
However, the high yesterday at Pierce College was at 3:00 PM – 107.5 degrees. Today may be hotter. What that means is that any new blooms will definitely be sterile. That also means I doubt very seriously we'll make it to 10,000 tomatoes this year. Even 9000 harvested tomatoes could be an issue.
Am I disappointed? Hardly! It's been a real fun year with some great tasting tomatoes. I wished I had added more compost to the soil, but at the time we were in a cash crunch and my rototiller was being held hostage – so it just faded away. Last year I probably prepared the soil better than this year, but a similar heat wave hit in June and we had a small crop and only so-so quality.
I see a lot of plants are starting to look pale. Aunt Ruby's German Green has several tomatoes on it but they weren't growing. I took a closer look this morning and these tomatoes are shriveling. The plant may be dead. Plum Tigris is all of a sudden turning pale. Jaune Flamme looks very bad all of as sudden. It's the cycle of life for a tomato plant.
This heat will kill a lot of the plants in a couple weeks.
Sweet 100 has reached over 200 harvested tomatoes for the year (202).
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