Wife's Chile Harvest

This is an image of my wife's chile harvest. Most of these are Fresno Chiles off of one plant!

Today's Tomato Harvest

This is an image of today's tomato harvest.

Watering The Back Yard

Here's an image of my wife watering the back yard tomatoes on July 1.

Two More Plants With Maturing Tomatoes

Today's harvest includes 19 Red Currant, 14 Yellow Perfection, 5 front yard Paul Robeson (one 6 ounces), 3 White Currant, 3 Italian Ice, 3 Sweet Olive, 2 Red Grape, 2 Sweet 100, Patio, Turkish Striped Monastery, Cherokee Purple and Snow White for a total of 55 tomatoes.

Now I have an idea as to how some of the unripe Red Currants fall down – me, harvesting the good ones. My hands are so big that in reaching the mature ones I knock down some of the immature ones on the way. I don't think that explains them all, though.

Husky Gold and Quedlinburger Freuhe Liebe have maturing tomatoes.

Husky Gold is funny in that there's no tomato lower than six inches from the bottom of the plant. That's just about the height that the Manchester Terrier can reach (it's in a container) and I'm sure it's not a coincidence.

I did some minor taping and staking last evening. One of the plants staked was Quedlinburger Freuhe Liebe. This plant wouldn't be where it's at today without my wife's rescue when the plant was vandalized.

We both tried Turkish Striped Monastery and liked it.

Harvested Two New Tomatoes!

Today's harvest includes 15 Red Currant, 12 front yard Paul Robeson, 7 Yellow Perfection, 6 Sweet Olive, 4 White Currant, 4 back yard Speckled Roman (all with blossom end rot), 3 Red Grape, 3 Patio, 3 Sweet 100, 2 Turkish Striped Monastery, Italian Ice, SunSugar and two new tomatoes: Jeff Davis and Snow White!

We harvested a total of 63 tomatoes today.

The real surprising numbers have been harvesting 19 Paul Robesons over two days. None of them are 6 ounces or above, though.

Again there were about 20 unripe Red Currants on the ground. Now my thought is that the cat is coming by and knocking them down.

I washed the Snow White and gave it to my wife. She liked it a lot.

Snow White Is Out Of Control

Today's numbers include 21 Red Currant, 7 front yard Paul Robeson, 5 Yellow Perfection, 4 Sweet Olive, 4 Red Grape, 3 Sweet 100, 3 SunSugar, 3 back yard Garden Peach, 2 Cherokee Purple (one 7 ounces), Black Cherry and Turkish Striped Monastery.

I picked as many front yard tomatoes today as I did for all of June (30).

My wife watered both the back yard and the front yard tomatoes.

Every morning I see about 3 unripe Red Currants on the ground next to the plant. This is understandable – they can fall off with the wind or just by brushing by the plant. But this morning there were about 25 on the ground. Did the watering cause this? Who knows.

I think there's a direct relation between the recent heat wave and the maturing Red Currants.

The Snow White tomato plant is out of control. And there's not much I can do about it – it's simply gotten too big.

Harvest Numbers Are Heading Up

And today's harvest includes 15 Red Currants, 6 Sweet Olive, 5 Italian Ice, 4 back yard Garden Peach, 2 Patio, 2 Red Grape, 2 Black Cherry, a front yard Paul Robeson, White Currant, a back yard Speckled Roman (again with blossom end rot), Yellow Perfection, SunSugar and Sweet 100 for a total of 42 tomatoes. Today was the highest harvest total in 2009 for both the front (16) and back (26) yards.

I spent about a half hour staking and taping last night, mostly in the front yard. I noticed that several Jeff Davis tomatoes are maturing...but I don't think that's good news. These tomatoes aren't full size. I believe it's further validation of trouble with this plant.

15 Red Currants sounds like a lot, and for Red Currants these were full sized but you can hold all 15 of them in the palm of your hand.

A lot of immature tomatoes are getting dark and shiny -- as if they're going to mature soon.

June 2009 Tomato Analysis

Now let's do an analysis for June:

This month we picked 299 tomatoes from 19 tomato plants. The percentage of plants with harvested tomatoes (out of 60, including one kicked over) is 31.7%.

In June 2008 we picked 1538 tomatoes from 23 tomato plants. The percentage of plants with harvested tomatoes was 44.2%.

In June 2007 we picked 1259 tomatoes from 22 tomato plants. The percentage of plants with harvested tomatoes was 64.7%.

Judging by these metrics we're way, way behind the other two years.

So why do I think I'll blow away the 2008 numbers and challenge, if not surpass, the 2007 numbers? Well, one of the metrics not done is count the unripe tomatoes on the vines. That would be very, very tedious and not provide any value over what I can see with my own two eyes. We're going to have a great year, simple as that.

In 2007 I didn't split between front yard and back yard tomatoes but I can tell I harvested only a few in June. In June 2008, 24 tomatoes were harvested in the back yard. In June 2009, 269 were harvested in the back yard.

In June 2007 we picked around 1200 tomatoes in the front yard. In June 2008, in what turned out to be a bad year, we picked 1514 tomatoes in the front yard (though 1337 were the tiny Red Currant). This year...30 tomatoes were picked in the front yard. In a word...vandalism.

But the front yard has nearly fully recovered. I doubt will get great numbers from the front yard (Though Snow White and Red Currant could prove me wrong), we will get a decent total there.

The numbers for July: In 2007, an amazing 6154 tomatoes were harvested. In 2008, 1629 tomatoes were harvested. It will be tough to guess the harvest for July 2009 because everything is late in the front yard...but I'll guess a 4000 tomato harvest overall for July 2009.

It's hard to make that prediction of of around 130 tomatoes a day when your harvest for the last week of June was 24-18-25-25-22-18-24. To make this work I'm expecting some huge harvest numbers toward the end of July.

Harvested Turkish Striped Monastery!

And today's harvest includes 5 Red Currant, 5 Sweet Olive, 3 Italian Ice, 2 White Currant, 2 Yellow Perfection, 2 back yard Garden Peach, Patio, SunSugar, a back yard Speckled Roman (again with blossom end rot, unfortunately), Jaune Coeur de Pigeon and Turkish Striped Monastery (new!).

My wife and I rebuilt the moats in the front yard “corner office”. I believe she watered the tomatoes in the “koi pond” as well.

Harvested Black Chery; Patio Princess Has A Tomato

And today's harvest includes 3 Sweet Olive, 3 Red Grape, 2 Sweet 100, 2 Patio, 2 SunSugar, a back yard Speckled Roman (unfortunately with blossom end rot), Red Currant, Yellow Perfection, White Currant, Italian Ice and Black Cherry (new!).

Turkish Striped Monastery is close and appears to be turning red. It could be ready tomorrow.

I didn't know a Black Cherry was maturing. I was looking at another tomato plant, looked over and hey! There's a maturing Black Cherry! I went over and it was ready for harvesting.

Also, it appears that our Manchester Terrier has picked off more Beaverlodge Plum tomatoes.

One more thing...Patio Princess already has a tomato on it!

Harvested 4 New Tomatoes!

Saturdays' harvest consisted of 5 White Currant (new!), 4 Sweet Olive, 3 Red Grape, 3 Beaverlodge Plum, 2 Yellow Perfection, 2 Red Currant, Jaune Flamme, Italian Ice, Sweet 100, Patio as well as a back yard Garden Peach (new!) and a back yard Speckled Roman (new!).

My wife watered the front yard tomatoes on Friday.

Early in the day my wife's parents came over to pick up their dogs. We had been watching them for a week in anticipation of them visiting relatives in New Mexico. But one of them was sick and the trip was canceled. They asked us to come down with the dogs but I insisted they come up in order to see the tomato plants. They were very impressed with both the height and the number of tomatoes in the vines.

In the afternoon they left with their dogs and I did more tomato taping. After that my wife asked me to water the back yard tomatoes. Although it was hot (It got up to 97.8 at Pierce College, about a mile away) I did water them as well as the back yard flower pots.

Earlier in the week my wife mentioned to me that she now sees why taping is so important where we are– it keeps the plants under some control. And now I see why it was important for my wife to dig deeper trenches in the “moats” around the tomato plants in the back yard – it enabled me to water at a faster rate than before. I saved at least a half hour in the watering.

We met a friend at a restaurant and brought tomatoes. We tried Cherokee Purple and liked it. We tried Jaune Coeur de Pigeon and I thought it was okay but the other two (my wife and our friend) didn't like it at all. Basically we waited too long to try it and it got too ripe.

If I told you we stayed at the restaurant for five and a half hours would you believe me? We did, getting home early in the morning.

First thing I did when I woke up was to harvest more tomatoes. This included 9 White Currant, 3 Sweet Olive, 2 Yellow Perfection, 2 Red Currant, 2 Patio, Red Grape, Sweet 100, a 13 ounce front yard Paul Robeson and Plum Tigris (new!).

I left out Turkish Striped Monastery in the list of maturing tomatoes. I can't find a picture of this tomato so we'll be surprised with what we get.

It was too hot for tomato work. I got up to 104 at Pierce College.

This hot weather will burn out a fair amount of tomato blooms. The pollen in the tomato buds becomes sterile at around 93 or 95 degrees so a fair amount won't make it. But some blooms in the interior of the plant won't burn out, as they're shaded by the leaves. Another effect of this heat will take the tomatoes on the vines and mature them quicker.

My wife and I tried Paul Robeson at dinner and we both agree it was delicious.