Harvested Over 300 Back Yard Husky Cherry Red Tomatoes!

Today's harvest includes 7 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 5 Snow White(1), 3 Red Grape, 3 German Orange Strawberry, 3 Black Cherry, 3 Turkish Striped Monastery, 2 Garden Peach(2), 2 Plum Tigris, 2 Sweet 100, 2 Snow White(2), Mong, Vintage Wine, Babywine, a front yard Husky Cherry Red, Oaxacan Jewel(2), Red Currant, Italian Ice, Yellow Perfection and White Currant for a total of 41 total tomatoes.

We've now harvested over 300 back yard Husky Cherry Red tomatoes (304).

After the harvest, I pulled out the front yard Mexico and the Aunt Ruby's German Green plants.

No Saturday “bump” today.

Yesterday reached 104 degrees.

My wife watered the front yard yesterday.

Reached 8000 Harvested Tomatoes For The Year!

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).

Harvested Over 4000 Back Yard Tomatoes For The Year!

Today's harvest includes 6 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 5 Red Grape, 4 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 3 front yard Green Grape, 3 Snow White(1), 3 Sweet 100, 3 Black Cherry, 2 back yard Green Grape, 2 Japanese Black Trifele, Babywine, Jaune Flamme, Turkish Striped Monastery, Orange Blossom, Yellow Perfection, Paul Robeson, Green Zebra(2), White Currant, Oaxacan Jewel(2), White Zebra, Italian Ice and SunSugar for a total of 43 tomatoes.

We reached 4000 harvested back yard tomatoes for the year (4015)!

My wife watered the back yard on Tuesday.

The tomato harvest really fell off the table again. I'm surprised I was able to only find three tomatoes among the two Snow White plants. I looked and looked and just found those three tomatoes.

Reached 3000 Harvested Tomatoes For August!

Today's harvest includes 16 Snow White(1), 15 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 8 Black Cherry, 5 Sweet 100, 4 Red Grape, 3 Jaune Flamme, 3 Jaune Coeur de Pigeon, 3 Snow White(2), 3 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 2 Garden Peach(2), 2 White Zebra (one 6 ounces), 2 White Currant, 2 Italian Ice, a front yard Green Grape, Dr. Wyche's Yellow (8 ounces), Babywine, a back yard Speckled Roman (with end rot), Turkish Striped Monastery, Orange Blossom, Yellow Perfection, Tiger Paw, Japanese Black Trifele (8 ounces) and Paul Robeson for a total of 78 tomatoes.

We've reached over 3000 harvested tomatoes for the month (3051)! It looks like we'll be right on target (perhaps a tad short) for the updated estimate of 3500 harvested tomatoes for the month.

The front yard Mexico is ready to be pulled and Berkeley Tie Dye is getting close to being pulled out of the ground.

It is still tough to harvest the front yard Husky Cherry Red tomatoes. Babywine is completely draped over the plant. There are areas on the north side of the Husky Cherry Red plant that I simply cannot reach.

Also, the weather has warmed up considerably. Yesterday's high was 98 degrees, which is hot enough to sterilize the pollen in the recent blooms. This isn't unusual weather by any stretch of the imagination – after all we're still in summer – but we're due for a significant drop in the September harvest totals.

Wife's Birthday Today!

Today's harvest includes 13 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 12 Snow White(1), 8 Sweet 100, 7 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 6 Snow White(2), 5 Red Grape, 4 Black Cherry, 4 Jaune Flamme, 3 Red Currant, 3 White Zebra, 3 Yellow Perfection, 2 Turkish Striped Monastery, 2 back yard Green Grape, 2 Green Zebra(2), 2 Mexico (25.5 ounces, 12.5 ounces), 2 White Currant, 2 Babywine, Paul Robeson and Italian Ice for a total of 82 tomatoes.

The large Mexico tomato was quite a surprise. In fact it should have been harvested a couple of days ago. I tried a different angle, found the two tomatoes, but it took about three minutes to harvest them – I kept getting tangled with some nearby gangly rose branches.

I took a spare cage and used it to prop up some of the branches for Dr. Wyche's Yellow. After that, I had my pathway back to get to the front yard Husky Cherry Red. I was able to harvest 5 more Husky Cherry Red and another Babywine.

For those that have my wife's phone number or email, wish her a happy birthday! Or, leave a comment here for her, she'll see it. Thanks!

Harvested Over 1000 Snow White Tomatoes!

Today's harvest includes 26 Snow White(1), 22 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 10 Red Grape, 8 Sweet 100, 6 White Zebra (one 7 ounces), 5 Green Zebra(2), 4 Jaune Flamme, 3 Black Cherry, 3 Italian Ice, 3 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 3 Snow White(2), 2 Dr. Wyche's Yellow (10 ounces, 10 ounces), 2 Babywine, 2 Paul Robeson, Turkish Striped Monastery, Tiger Paw, German Orange Strawberry, Japanese Black Trifele, Green Zebra(1), SunSugar, Jaune Coeur de Pigeon, Red Currant and Silvery Fir Tree for a total of 108 tomatoes.

We went down to San Juan Capistrano for a family visit. Our cousins from Murrieta came and we had an early celebration of my wife's birthday. My wife made tomato salsa for the occasion. It was completely gone by the end of the day – people loved it!

It was also nice to see Caitlin – a 2.5 year old – pop cherry tomatoes (mostly Husky Cherry Red tomatoes) in her mouth like they were candy. She simply could not get enough tomatoes!

A fun time.

We've now harvested over 1000 Snow White(1) tomatoes (1024) and 300 Red Grape tomatoes.

I'm seeing several new blooms on Black Cherry. I hope this plant gets a second wind.

Due to the heavier harvest of Husky Cherry Red and the back yard container plants, the total back yard harvest total has now taken the lead again over the total front yard harvest total (3890 versus 3887).

The Volunteer Has A Tomato On It!

Today's harvest: 4 Snow White, Cherokee Purple.

The harvest didn't really happen this morning. By the time I was ready to harvest it was 10:30 in the morning. The sun was too high and I risked sunburn so I passed on a full harvest.

Yesterday I took out Beaverlodge Plum, the front yard Garden Peach, the front yard Paul Robeson and Cherokee Purple.

Cherokee Purple had a small mature tomato on it so I kept it. I took the cage for Cherokee Purple, flattened it and slipped it underneath some of the Snow White branches. This will help a tiny bit in keeping some of the branches off the ground. When I picked up the branches I found four mature tomatoes.

I completed watering the front yard tomato plants.

The big news is that the volunteer has a tomato on it! The plant has recently had a growth spurt and is now showing a tiny tomato! I'll have to adjust the spreadsheet to reflect this new tomato. I believe it to be Old Ivory Egg but I'll just add it as “Volunteer” for now.

Since I need to adjust the on line spreadsheet, I'll change Super Snow White to Snow White(2).