Saturday, June 28, 2014

Harvested Two Volunteers!

Saturday's harvest includes 17 Orange Paruche, 13 Sunchocola, 4 SunGold, 3 Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red, 3 Earliana, 3 Bread and Salt (8 ounces, 12.5 ounces), 3 Matt's Wild Cherry, 2 Garden Peach(1) (new), 2 Garden Peach(2), Garden Peach(3) (new), Stupice, Odoriko, Husky Cherry Red(1), Husky Cherry Red(2) and Sugar Snack for a total of 56 tomatoes.

I noticed Volunteer(1) had tomatoes ready to harvest in the morning and obviously picked a couple of them. They looked and felt exactly like Volunteer(2) (which was renamed Garden Peach). I took note that Volunteer(3) had maturing tomatoes that were yellow and could be another Garden Peach tomato plant.

In the evening I told my wife the good news that we have a second and potentially a third Garden Peach plant. She verified that the two harvested tomatoes were Garden Peach tomatoes. I took her out Volunteer(3) and showed her the maturing tomato. She said it was ready so we harvested it. It felt and looked like another Garden Peach!

So I've adjusted the names of these plants on the online spreadsheet. Volunteer(1) becomes Garden Peach(1), Volunteer(2) became Garden Peach and is now Garden Peach(2) and Volunteer(3) becomes Garden Peach(3).

All of these Garden Peach tomatoes appear to be undersized, though healthy and "unstressed". For the most part their size is around nickel to quarter size. Garden Peach tomatoes are usually (at least for us) golf ball sized or larger. My guess is that these plants are doing great with the soil in the raised bed but once the roots hit the dirt below, the roots begin to struggle finding both nutrition and places to expand. In other words, the dirt below the raised bed isn't all that great.

I noted that Bloody Butcher had maturing tomatoes.
 

Friday, June 27, 2014

Harvested Husky Cherry Red(1)!

Today's harvest includes 23 Orange Paruche, 12 Sunchocola, 5 SunGold, 4 Husky Cherry Red(1) (new), 2 Matt's Wild Cherry, 2 Garden Peach, 2 Husky Cherry Red(2), 2 Sugar Snack, Yellow Perfection, Earliana, Bread and Salt (8.5 ounces), Jaune Flamme and Evan's Purple Pear for a total of 57 tomatoes.

Since I was kneeling near the Husky Cherry Red(2) tomato plant I poked around Husky Cherry Red(1). Not only was I surprised by mature Husky Cherry Red(1) tomatoes, all four could be a bit overripe. They're a beautiful deep crimson red but will be eaten sooner later than later.

My wife gave away most of Tuesday's harvest to a neighbor. She was appreciative.

We've now harvested over 200 Orange Paruche tomatoes (213)!

Today we had harvested more front yard tomatoes (38) than our highest harvest total for the year (36).

Here's a picture of me taken last night next to German Orange Strawberry. The plant is seven feet tall. In June.
 

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Harvested Odoriko!

Today's harvest includes 11 Sunchocola, 5 Orange Paruche, 4 Yellow Perfection, 4 SunGold, 4 Garden Peach, 3 Odoriko (new), Adriana's Grande (8 ounces), Bread and Salt (8.5 ounces), Jaune Flamme, Husky Cherry Red(2) and Sugar Snack for a total of 36 tomatoes.

The new tomatoes are getting slightly larger as time goes on. First the cherry tomatoes, then the 3 to 4 ounce tomatoes, etc. We're in the 3 to 4 ounce phase. Today was Odoriko but Earliana and the smallish Cherokee Purple fit this profile.

Speaking of Cherokee Purple, my wife tried it and absolutely loved it! She hasn't been much of a fan of it in the past. I haven't been a fan of growing Cherokee Purple as a tomato plant. I've had no luck with it except in 2007. The plants have been undersized (again, sans 2007) and the tomatoes were blah. But I had memories of 2007...I tried it and absolutely loved it as well.

I had a small problem with the Yellow Perfection count. One of the tomatoes was a "Siamese Twin". I counted it as one.
 

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Harvested Four New Tomatoes Today!

Today's harvest includes 16 Orange Paruche, 6 Sunchocola, 3 Earliana, 2 Yellow Perfection, 2 SunGold, 2 Sugar Snack, Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red, Vorlon (new), Evan's Purple Pear (new), Jaune Flamme (new), Husky Cherry Red(2) (new) and Stupice for a total of 36 tomatoes.

This should be about the tenth Jaune Flamme harvested but the first nine have been eaten by scrub jays. Speaking of which, we haven't seen the scrub jays in about a week or so. My wife has noted that there are large crows patroling our neighborhood now. Note that the scrub jays didn't get our exposed Cherokee Purple tomatoes yesterday.

We finally breached 30 tomatoes today, reaching 36. Don't be surprised if within three weeks it's over 130 tomatoes. We'll see.

The harvested Vorlon is a "stress" harvest (maturing quicker due to stress) and is tiny. The plant itself seems stressed. The other newly harvested tomatoes look just fine.

Here's a before and after image of our roasted tomatoes from a few days ago.
 

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Harvested Earliana and Cherokee Purple!

Monday's harvest includes 14 Orange Paruche, 3 Earliana (new), 3 Sunchocola, 3 Stupice, 2 Yellow Perfection, Adriana's Grande and SunGold for a total of 27 tomatoes.

Monday evening my wife and I tried Earliana. It's a nice looking firm tomato when cut. The taste was good but not great. The taste was definitely improved with salt. However, these are the first tomatoes of the bunch and taste tends to improve as the first harvest wave comes in.

Today's harvest includes 14 Orange Paruche, 6 Sunchocola, 4 Stupice, 3 Yellow Perfection, 2 Cherokee Purple (new) and SunGold for a total of 30 tomatoes.

The harvested Cherokee Purples are a little on the small side but that's okay.

I noticed that Odoriko, Evan's Purple Pear and Pierce's Pride have growing tomatoes. The tide is slowly coming in...
 

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Harvested Adriana's Grande!

Today's harvest includes 9 Orange Paruche, 7 Stupice, 5 Yellow Perfection, 3 Sunchocola, 2 Adriana's Grande (new, 8 ounces), 2 SunGold and Matt's Wild Cherry for a total of 29 tomatoes.

The Adriana's Grande are nice to have but they matured a little early because the branch they were on had bent downward.

We've now harvested over 300 tomatoes this year (304).

My wife roasted a lot of our tomatoes in the oven and they came out great! We also tasted Hungarian Heart and it was fabulous.

I double watered the front yard tomatoes. I gave fertilizer and worm castings to Janet's Jacinthe Jewel before watering. During the watering I did a lot of tomato taping and cutting off some of the dead branches.

Porkchop(1) has a growing tomato. Now everything in the front yard has growing tomatoes.

Vorlon has a maturing tomato, but the plant looks stressed. However, several Bread and Salt are maturing, Earliana is about ready for harvesting and the tomato garden is set to explode. Don't be fooled by the "stressed" tomatoes that have matured, there will be plenty of unstressed tomatoes naturally maturing coming over the next half month or so. And our tomatoes are already really tasty.
 

Harvested 3 New Tomatoes!

Today's harvest includes 6 Sunchocola, 6 Orange Paruche, 4 Stupice, Janet's Jacinthe Jewel (new), Hungarian Heart (new, 10 ounces), Matt's Wild Cherry (new), Yellow Perfection, SunGold and Garden Peach for a total of 22 tomatoes.

The container plants in the back yard -- that includes the ones in the raised beds -- got fertilizer and were double watered. My wife had already watered the containers by the south gate a few days ago, but I watered them again. The back yard plants in the ground were watered but only once.

I notieced that Neves Azorean Red has a growing tomato. I forgot to mention in my last blog post that Beauty King and Porkchop(2) also have growing tomatoes. And Cherokee Purple has a maturing tomato.

The new Janet's Jacinthe Jewel tomato looks pretty good, but the plant keeps looking worse and worse. I'll try to hit it with fertilizer and worm castings before watering it in on Sunday.

Speaking of which, Snow White and Golden Rave don't look that great either. But the German Orange Strawberry plant is nearly seven feet tall!

And as mentioned previously, the new Hungarian Heart came from a broken branch earlier this week. The maturation was due to stress.