Today's haul includes Piccolo, Thessaloniki, Old Ivory Egg and Cherokee Chocolate.
Yesterday Arkansas Traveler, Golden Jubilee and Stupice were pulled. There was one more to be pulled – it was a last minute decision to pull it – but our green trash can was too full. So it's still in the ground.
Today's harvest includes 2 Piccolos, Salisaw Cafe, a very small Prairie Fire, Cherokee Chocolate and Evan's Italian Plum.
My wife watered the back yard plants yesterday.
It looks like Golden Jubilee and Arkansas Traveler will get pulled this weekend.
Today's harvest includes 8 Piccolos, 4 Italian Market Wonders, 3 Stupice, Old Ivory Egg, Big Rainbow, Pierce's Pride (10 ounces), Evan's Italian Plum, Black Plum Paste, Arkansas Traveler, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken, Kellogg's Breakfast, Salisaw Cafe, Polish Pastel and Zhezha (back yard).
The slightly larger harvest was due to the fact I didn't pick on Saturday. I was out the door by 7AM and not back until 4PM or so, so I decided not to harvest.
However there was still news: 8 tomato plants were pulled by the gardener. 6 in the front and 2 in the back. The pulled ones were Aunt Ruby's German Green, Chocolate Stripes, Husky Cherry Red, Snow White Cherry, Garden Peach, Gregori's Altai, Jeff Davis and White Bush.
I saw damage to Green Grape and after about two minutes found a caterpillar on it. I got rid of it. Also, I spotted another tomato growing on the vines.
We reached the estimated harvest of 900 tomatoes today.
On another somewhat odd note, I found the shell of two grasshopper skins in a couple of the front yard tomato plants, one Old Ivory Egg. The grasshoppers molted while sitting in the plant.
Today's haul includes 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Italian Market Wonders, 3 Piccolos, 2 Black Plum Pastes, Micro Tom, Red Robin, and overripe Old Ivory Egg, Salisaw Cafe, Stupice, Arkansas Traveler, Kellogg's Breakfast and Blue Fruit.
I watered the back yard last night, which included the tomatoes to be planted.
This morning, I found a tomato underneath a chair in the bedroom. That sneaky Manchester Terrier...
The “Corner Office” in the front yard is basically done. There's a couple of blooms on Green Grape and the front yard Black Krim still looks rather healthy, but at a cursory glance there's no tomatoes in this area of the front yard.
The Old Ivory Egg plant is getting huge...
And today's haul includes 6 Piccolos, 6 Kellogg's Breakfast tomatoes (7 ounces, 6 ounces, 9.5 ounces), 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Arkansas Travelers, 2 Polish Pastels, Salisaw Cafe, Stupice, Sioux, Aker's Plum, Evan's Italian Plum, Gregori's Altai, Snow White and Painted Ukrainian (8 ounces).
I finished watering the front yard and completely watered the back yard last night.
We found a new spot where the Manchester Terrier dropped his picked tomato. On his bed in the bedroom. It looked like an Aker's Plum.
I did a little tomato taping this morning.
My wife tried Painted Ukrainian. She found it good, but saltier than other tomatoes.
Also, I did find a few unripe tomatoes on the Kimberly tomato plant.
My wife is currently making tomato sauce, some from today's tomatoes. Yum!!!
And today's harvest has 5 Stupices, 4 Piccolos, 3 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Kellogg's Breakfast, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Evan's Italian Plums, 3 Arkansas Travelers, 2 Jaune Flammes, 2 Olga's Round Yellow Chickens, 2 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 more beautiful Painted Ukrainians (7 ounces, 8 ounces), 2 Black Plum Pastes, Blue Fruit, Gregori's Altai, Black Krim (front yard, 6 ounces), Pierce's Pride (6 ounces) and Polish Pastel.
I didn't get to any more watering. We're behind, simple as that.
I forgot to mention that we finally tried Big Rainbow. We didn't like it.
The Kimberly plant is a bit odd...the plant is as green as ever, very little or no browning of leaves but there are simply no tomatoes on it that I see, let alone ripe ones.
The Manchester Terrier picked off another tiny Evan's Italian Plum.
Today's harvest includes 7 Salisaw Cafes, 6 Stupices, 3 Jaune Flammes, 2 beautiful Painted Ukrainians (6.5 ounces and 14 ounces), Aker's Plum, Green Grape, Italian Market Wonder, Cherokee Chocolate, Polish Pastel, Piccolo, Blue Fruit, Black Plum Paste, Carbon, Sioux, Zhezha (back yard), Arkansas Traveler, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken and a new one: Kellogg's Breakfast! (8 ounces)
I don't know if I mentioned this previously, but there was a Painted Ukrainian at the recent tomato tasting. It looked like our Painted Ukrainians and similar to Mr. Stripey.
I watered part of the front yard yesterday but missed almost all the tomato plants.
At lunch, I bought four tomato plants for winter harvesting. From memory they were Oregon Spring, Jetsetter, Siberia and I forget the fourth. They and the other two tomato plants received a slight watering but they all need to be planted somewhere.
We picked only six tomatoes in the front yard today.
Our Manchester Terrier picked off an Evan's Italian Plum but didn't do any visible damage to it.
And today's harvest includes 8 Stupice, 4 Blue Fruit, 4 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Painted Ukrainians (8 ounces, 11 ounces), 3 Polish Pastels, 2 Evan's Italian Plums, 2 Black Krims (front yard, 11 ounces), 2 Piccolos, Cherokee Chocolate, Arkansas Traveler, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Green Grape, Black From Tula, Jaune Flamme, Carbon and Sioux.
I completed the watering in the back yard, staked several plants and taped a lot of them. I'm pretty much caught up with the tomato maintenance but it's time to water again.
Forgot to mention, we passed the 1000 mark in harvested back yard tomatoes yesterday.
Our harvest totals are dwindling and that's to be expected. I expect that to continue as I've picked the last tomato for several plants. The harvest numbers for the last five days are 58-58-46-39-36.
Earlier, I had predicted to harvest 900 tomatoes in August. We're now at 653 for the month. It looks like will do better than 900 for the month, but the original number looks like a very good estimate. We'll see.
And today's harvest includes 14 Stupices, 4 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Blue Fruit, 2 Arkansas Travelers, 2 Black Krims (back yard, 9 ounces), 2 Cherokee Chocolates, 2 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Snow Whites, Piccolo, Sioux, Jaune Flamme, Italian Market Wonder, Chocolate Stripes, Black Krim (front yard, 10 ounces), Black Plum Paste and Black From Tula.
Last night I did a lot of tomato taping and watered most of the back yard. I'll be doing both again tonight, and I hope to stake a few plants as well.
My wife bought a couple of tomato plants for fall and winter tomatoes. That triggered a memory – Green Thumb had new tomato plants. We may buy a few there as well.
My wife used most of the tomatoes picked over the last three days, took the seeds out and make tomato sauce. She really worked hard.
A lot of our harvested Blue Fruit tomatoes have terrible cracking. Not just cracking all around the tomato, but deep cracking to the point where the insides of the tomato are exposed.
Husky Cherry Red showed telltale signs of a caterpillar. After about 15 seconds – hey, there it is! I took it off the plant.
Several Kellogg's Breakfast, Painted Ukrainian and Polish Pastel tomatoes are maturing.
Sunday's harvest included 15 Stupices, 12 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Lime Green Salads (back yard), 2 Cherokee Chocolates, 2 Polish Pastels (one 6 ounces), 2 Black Krims (front yard, 6 ounces and 6 ounces), 2 Thessalonikis, 2 Gregori's Altai, 2 Black Krims (back yard, one 7.5 ounces), 2 Evan's Italian Plums (one 7 ounces), 2 Aker's Plums, 2 Black Plum Pastes, Carbon, Big Rainbow, Green Grape, Blue Fruit, Husky Cherry Red, Lime Green Salad (from the “koi pond”), Pierce's Pride (12.5 ounces), Italian Market Wonder, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken and Arkansas Traveler.
On Saturday night we met with the officiant from our wedding and his wife, who was one of the bridesmaids, for dinner last night. We got caught up with what's going on in their lives at a Korean BBQ restaurant. It's always great to meet up with them!
The combination of all the tomatoes in the morning and the Korean food in the evening made for a sleepless night for me.
The Manchester Terrier is getting into the backyard Zhezhas now.
Our front yard plants have been getting more and more brown, but today it all of a sudden looked as if most of the plants should be pulled. I mentioned this to my wife, who had the same thought -- “How'd it get so brown so fast?”
And this morning we harvested 15 Salisaw Cafes, 11 Stupice, 5 Old Ivory Eggs, 4 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Blue Fruit (one 6 ounces), 3 Black Krims (11 ounces, 6.5 ounces, 10 ounces, back yard), 2 Aker's Plums, 2 Jaune Flammes, 2 Lime Green Salads (back yard), Arkansas Traveler, Red Yellow Cap (8 ounces), Piccolo, Italian Market Wonder, White Bush, Husky Cherry Red, Black Krim (13.5 ounces, front yard), Pierce's Pride, Chocolate Stripes (6 ounces), Aunt Ruby's German Green and Green Grape.
We went to a tomato tasting at a restaurant in Hollywood later in the morning. We brought Evan's Italian Plum, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken and Pierce's Pride to the tomato tasting.
I was expecting to have an enjoyable time but wow, this was really fun! There were all sorts of tomatoes to be sampled. Someone had already brought Pierce's Pride but no one else brought Evan's Italian Plum (we brought the three we've harvested) and Olga's Round Yellow Chicken (we brought one). We tried a lot of tomatoes and we really liked several of them. Some of the memorable ones for us included Nyagous, Siberian, Jetsetter, Napa Grape but the most striking tomato was called Vintage Wine. Not so much the taste (only okay by me) but the striping was very memorable. We'll be on the lookout for these and other tomatoes next year.
The Polish Pastel on display looked different than what we're harvesting. Another mislabel?
We met several nice people at this event and exchanged business cards with a couple of them. An interesting point made by a participant: “That's the first party were I never asked anyone what was their occupation. We just talked tomatoes!”
People were very happy with the taste of Olga's Round Yellow Chicken – the tomato was nearly gone by the end of the party. Scott Daigre (of Tomatomania!) said that the 9 ounce Evan's Italian Plum is about twice the normal size for this tomato.
Now we wish we brought Black Krim, Salisaw Cafe and Old Ivory Egg, for example. Maybe next year.
We had the Red Currant pulled by the gardeners. What a great plant!!
Today's harvest includes 8 Salisaw Cafes, 8 Stupice, 6 Black Plum Pastes, 4 Kimberlys, 3 Green Grapes, 2 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Old Ivory Eggs, 2 Paul Robesons, Piccolo, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Garden Peach, Snow White, Lime Green Salad (from the “koi pond”), Lime Green Salad (back yard), Black From Tula, Zhezha (back yard), Cherokee Chocolate, White Bush, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken, Arkansas Traveler and a new one: a beautiful 13 ounce Painted Ukrainian!
While picking in the front yard, I looked over some of the damage. There was a Red Yellow Cap tomato left, but it too was damaged beyond repair. A couple of Snow White tomatoes had broken, too.
Our Manchester Terrier had picked off two tomatoes of unknown origin. A different tomato that he picked off last week is ripening...but we can't tell what plant it came from.
It looks like we lost between 11 and 12 pounds of tomatoes yesterday.
My wife took a look at the Painted Ukrainian and said “It looks like Mr. Stripey!”. Later on I looked at it and I'll be – it really does look like Mr. Stripey. Do we have another mislabeling?
Today's haul includes 6 Piccolos, 4 Kimberlys, 4 Stupice, 4 Old Ivory Eggs, 4 Paul Robesons, 4 Green Grapes, 4 Husky Cherry Reds, 3 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Arkansas Travelers, 2 Gregori's Altai, 2 Black Krims (front yard, 6 ounces and 6 ounces), 2 Lime Green Salads (from the “koi pond”), Red Currant, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Italian Market Wonder, Black Cherry, Thessaloniki (7 ounces) and a new one: Olga's Round Yellow Chicken!
My wife had enough dark tomatoes to make a sauce. The look and smell of the tomatoes were tantalizing!
We got around to trying Red Yellow Cap, and we like it.
Last night my wife watered the front yard and I watered the back yard.
Saturday's haul included 20 Piccolos, 9 Stupice, 5 Paul Robesons, 3 Kimberly, 3 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Old Ivory Eggs, 3 Husky Cherry Reds, 3 Red Currants, 2 Chocolate Stripes (one 6 ounces), Green Grape, Aker's Plum, Golden Jubilee, Arkansas Traveler, Black Krim (8 ounces, front yard), Black From Tula (7 ounces) and Red Robin.
I had to put in a support for Old Ivory Egg, as it was getting too big for the cage. Also, I added support to Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter.
My wife and I spent most of the day in Oxnard, Santa Paula and Fillmore, looking at houses for her parents.
While driving around, I got a call from our friend from Florida that moved back to SoCal. They're back in town and would like to meet us next weekend. We'll make it work!
However, a close friend that was in the wedding party is moving from SoCal to – you guessed it – Florida! Oh well...
Like a broken record, the Manchester Terrier picked off another Aker's Plum. This one wasn't salvageable...
And today's harvest includes 9 Black Plum Pastes, 6 Piccolos, 6 Salisaw Cafes, 5 Stupice, 4 Red Currants, 4 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Green Grapes, Black Krim (back yard, 7 ounces), Aker's Plum, Italian Market Wonder, Arkansas Traveler, Old Ivory Egg, Red Robin, Jaune Flamme, Paul Robeson, Lime Green Salad (from the “koi pond”), Husky Cherry Red and a new tomato: Blue Fruit!
We succeeded in keeping our Manchester Terrier from picking a tomato last night – we were pretty diligent in watching him. However, when I was picking tomatoes in the front yard, he nabbed one.
I almost picked a few tomatoes, including Carbon and Polish Pastel but decided to wait a little longer.
I propped up Evan's Italian Plum, another plant that is tipping over due to the weight of the tomatoes on the vines.
The harvest picked up today. 14 Red Currants, 11 Black Plum Pastes, 7 Cherokee Chocolates, 7 Green Grapes, 6 Husky Cherry Reds, 6 Salisaw Cafes, 6 Stupice, 6 Piccolos, 4 Sioux (one 7 ounces), 4 Kimberlys, 2 Lime Green Salads (from the “koi pond”), Black Cherry, Arkansas Traveler, Black Krim (back yard, 9 ounces), Prairie Fire, Zhezha (front yard) and a new one, Aker's Plum!
The Aker's Plum was deemed ripe enough to make the harvest pile. And yes, I'll wash it well before eating it or handing it out elsewhere.
In the front yard, Black Krim and Old Ivory Egg tomatoes are ripening. I thought Micro Tom was done, but it has new tomatoes on it.
Today I harvested as many tomatoes (79) as I had in the last two days. The back yard total was 42, the highest it has ever been. The back yard totals have been larger than the front yard totals for 4 of the last 5 days.
Also, this is our highest harvest total since July 1. On July 1 we harvested 98 tomatoes, 78 of them Red Currants.
And this morning's harvest includes 22 Red Currants, 6 Stupice, 5 Piccolos, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Sioux (including a six ounce and seven ounce tomato), 3 Paul Robesons (including a six ounce and seven ounce tomato), 2 Kimberlys, 2 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Black Cherries, 2 Green Grapes, an Italian Market Wonder, Golden Jubilee, Arkansas Traveler, Garden Peach and a 6.5 ounce Gregori's Altai.
Today is the highest back yard harvest total for this year: 23 tomatoes.
My wife spent a lot of time in the garden last night. She pulled out the Taxi and Patio tomato plants. She was concerned over my reaction to this but the plants have been non-productive for some time. I could have pulled them a week ago.
Gregori's Altai looks a lot like last year's Gargantua. Could they be the same?
I brought some of our smaller tomatoes to our computer user group, LA Fox. Almost all of them were taken. One person couldn't stop raving about the Aunt Ruby's German Green that I brought to our LA Fox board meeting, calling it “phenomenal”. I'm afraid that someone may have picked off a few of the unripe Aunt Ruby's German Green tomatoes in the past. I remember some of these tomatoes having a good size and now I simply don't see them.
Today's haul includes 23 Red Currants, 4 Thessalonikis, 3 Piccolos, 3 Paul Robesons (one 7 ounces), 3 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Black From Tulas (both 6.5 ounces), 2 Stupice, 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Sioux, a Cherokee Chocolate, Kimberly, Arkansas Traveler, Prairie Fire, Zhezha, Jaune Flamme and Husky Cherry Red tomatoes.
Sunday night I did a tiny bit of watering in the back yard and last night I completed the rest of the watering in the back yard.
I did a little bit of tomato taping as well.
Today's harvest includes 39 Red Currants, 5 Cherokee Chocolates, 4 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Piccolos, 2 Green Grapes, 2 Gregori's Altai (one 6.5 ounces), 2 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Zhezhas (front yard), 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Italian Market Wonders, Stupice, Kimberly, Black From Tula, Paul Robeson (8.5 ounces), Jaune Flamme and three new ones: 3 Arkansas Travelers, 2 Snow White Cherries and a Lime Green Salad from the “koi pond”!
We have three Lime Green Salad plants, two in the front yard and one in the back. We've now harvested from the two front yard plants. The one in the back had a tomato that was near the ground and should have been ripe about now, but I think our Manchester Terrier picked it off. Speaking of which, last evening he stood guard over a ripening Cherokee Chocolate that he had just picked.
The Snow White tomatoes don't look like the Snow White tomatoes that we're used to. There appears to be something wrong with the plant. It's grown to about three, maybe three and a half feet and has simply stopped growing. Last year's Snow White plant grew to seven feet tall and was tremendously prodigious.
I had some time between work and the board meeting for our computer user group to work on the tomatoes. I harvested five Red Currants and two Husky Cherry Reds. I had to take care of a few other issues around the house before I could get to the backyard tomatoes. By the time I did, I had about twenty minutes.
As quickly as I could, I trained the back yard tomatoes to grow as straight as possible. I tucked and straightened as fast as I could. While training, I noticed two tomatoes on Arkansas Traveler and a tomato on Black Plum Paste. It's possible I could have found more, but I was short on time.
When I got home from the board meeting, I spent a little time in the front yard using the flashlight. I didn't notice any new tomatoes.
For the record, I watered the back yard on Saturday and the front yard yesterday. I added some paper mulch to a fair amount of the front yard tomatoes and some in the back.
The tomato plants are in full growth mode. Branches are growing one to two inches a day. I need to go out both day and night and if there's room, tuck the wayward branches into the cage to encourage vertical growth.
