Eight More Seedlings Planted

On Tuesday my wife surprised me by planting four tomato plants -- Blue Boar Berries, Black From Tula, Snow White and Kentucky Beefsteak.

However, I wasn't able to dig any holes for the rest of the week -- I was just too busy with other priorities in the evening.

On Saturday I dug four more holes in the back yard. Yesterday I prepped the dirt and in the evening my wife planted four more tomato plants -- Nyagous, Yellow Perfection, German Orange Strawberry and Pineapple.

Tonight I managed to dig a couple more holes in the back yard and moved around some more compost.

Our seedlings are getting quite large and should have been planted weeks ago. We'll simply do the best we can and leave it at that. 

Harvested Gold Medal!

Saturday's harvest includes 19 Black Cherry, 7 Supersweet 100, 3 Blue Beauty, 3 Missouri Pink Love Apple, 3 Speckled Roman(1), 2 Indigo Rose, 2 Husky Cherry Red, 2 Japanese Black Trifele, 2 Shah/Mikado, 2 Jaune Flamme, Gold Medal (new), Black and Brown Boar, SunGold(1), Green Grape, Kellogg's Breakfast (13 ounces), Hungarian Heart (7 ounces), Porkchop, Yellow Perfection, Dr. Wyche's Yellow (11 ounces), Jersey Giant, German Orange Strawberry, Speckled Roman(2), Grande (15 ounces), Garden Peach, Ananas Noire (12 ounces), Cuor de Bue, Kentucky Beefsteak (8.5 ounces), Juliet and Isis Candy for a total of 64 tomatoes.

The gardeners came again today and pulled out Stupice, Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red(1), Berkeley Tie Dye and Kentucky Beefsteak. The gardeners also removed some of the sunflowers in the front yard. My wife cleaned up the remaining Michael Pollan tomatoes on the ground and tossed them out.

The new Gold Medal tomato is not impressive. Like many other plants this year, the fruit is undersized.

My wife watered the front yard tomatoes.

Sunday's harvest includes 23 Black Cherry, 7 Supersweet 100, 6 Shah/Mikado, 5 Blue Beauty, 5 Garden Peach, 4 Isis Candy, 4 Ananas Noire (8.5 ounces, 10.5 ounces, 13 ounces), 4 Speckled Roman(1), 4 Husky Cherry Red, 3 Jaune Flamme, 3 German Orange Strawberry (8 ounces), 2 Indigo Rose, 2 Black and Brown Boar, 2 Juliet, 2 Sweet 100, 2 Missouri Pink Love Apple, Hungarian Heart, Porkchop, Yellow Perfection, Pineapple, Dr. Wyche's Yellow, Gold Medal, Crynkovic (6 ounces), Japanese Black Trifele, Speckled Roman(2) and "Something Orange" (15 ounces) for a total of 88 tomatoes.

The Ananas Noire tomatoes are beauties! More importantly they taste good. I have not been a fan of Ananas Noire in the past. I didn't get it. When we grew it in the past they were relatively small and not great tasting. These Ananas Noire tomatoes are crisp, juicy and delicious.

There was no harvest on Monday.

Today's harvest includes 29 Black Cherry, 10 Jaune Flamme, 9 Garden Peach, 8 Husky Cherry Red, 6 Indigo Rose, 6 Blue Beauty, 6 Shah/Mikado, 5 Green Grape, 4 Japanese Black Trifele, 4 Supersweet 100, 4 Speckled Roman(1), 4 Jersey Giant, 3 Yellow Perfection, 3 Isis Candy, 2 Juliet, 2 Sweet 100, 2 SunGold(2), 2 Speckled Roman(2), 2 Grande (17.5 ounces, 9.5 ounces), 2 Missouri Pink Love Apple, 2 German Orange Strawberry, 2 Ananas Noire (12.5 ounces, 11.5 ounces), 2 "Something Orange" (11 ounces, 9 ounces), 2 Cuor de Bue, 2 Pineapple Pig (6.5 ounces, 8 ounces), 2 Piement, Porkchop, Dr. Wyche's Yellow, Gold Medal, Black and Brown Boar, Kellogg's Breakfast, Crynkovic and Husky Red(1) for a total of 132 tomatoes.

We tried Grande last night. Good looking, meaty interior. My wife absolutely loved it. I was less high on it than my wife was but I wasn't really in a tomato mood and I think I hit a mealy part of the tomato. It looked great and I will definitely give it a second try.

My wife watered most if not all of the back yard tomato plants last night.

"Something Orange" looks like Dr. Wyche's Yellow to me. My wife made a compelling argument that the mystery tomato is Kellogg's Breakfast. But today's tomatoes look like Dr. Wyche's Yellow -- slightly more white and pink compared to Kellogg's Breakfast. We'll try it at some point and the taste will help clarify the situation.

Today's harvest covered a lot of the counter space. The larger tomatoes that are currently being harvested look quite nice. 

Harvested Kentucky Beefsteak!

Tuesday's harvest includes 13 Black Cherry, 6 Snow White, 5 Sweet 100, 5 Supersweet 100, 3 Husky Red(1), 2 Speckled Roman(1), 2 Isis Candy, 2 Dr. Wyche's Yellow (14.5 ounces), 2 Indigo Rose, 2 Blue Beauty, 2 Piement, 2 Husky Cherry Red, 2 SunGold(1), 2 Porkchop, Hungarian Heart (7 ounces), Jersey Giant, Missouri Pink Love Apple, Green Grape, Speckled Roman(2), Amos Coli (8 ounces), Ananas Noire (16 ounces) and Juliet for a total of 58 tomatoes.

Most if not all of today's harvest was brought to my in-laws later in the day.

Wednesday's harvest includes 7 Garden Peach, 6 Black Cherry, 4 Shah/Mikado, 3 Husky Cherry Red, 3 Supersweet 100, 3 Blue Beauty, 2 Missouri Pink Love Apple, 2 Black and Brown Boar, 2 Green Grape, 2 Berkeley Tie Dye, 2 Crynkovic (7 ounces), 2 Isis Candy, 2 Juliet, 2 Sweet 100, 2 Japanese Black Trifele, 2 Speckled Roman(1), 2 Dr. Wyche's Yellow (13 ounces, 9.5 ounces), 2 Stupice, Hungarian Heart, Vorlon, Jersey Giant and Pineapple Pig for a total of 54 tomatoes.

We've now harvested over 1000 tomatoes for July! Some of Wednesday's harvest was brought to a barista in Tarzana.

Today's harvest includes 15 Black Cherry, 8 Shah/Mikado, 6 Sweet 100, 6 Supersweet 100, 5 Isis Candy, 5 Garden Peach, 3 Snow White, 3 Juliet, 2 Missouri Pink Love Apple, 2 Blue Beauty, 2 Jaune Flamme, Kentucky Beefsteak (new), SunGold(1), Green Grape, Husky Cherry Red, Hungarian Heart, Porkchop, Yellow Perfection, Berkeley Tie Dye, Jersey Giant and German Orange Strawberry for a total of 67 tomatoes.

This ends a four day slide in the harvest numbers. But having noted that, it's clear it will not only be a bad year according to the numbers, it may be an atrocious year. Still, I've been pleased with the full sized tomatoes so far. But there's been a lot, and I mean a lot of tomatoes that are miniature-sized versions of their full sized brethren. 

Harvested Stupice!

Today's harvest: 5 Stupice (new), 2 Yellow Perfection, 2 Husky Cherry Red and Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red(1) for a total of 10 tomatoes.

I did some minor tomato training last night while moving some plants in place. The plants were moved originally because our house's exterior was painted. Yesterday, some rain gutters were added.

An incomplete list of tomato plants with growing tomatoes include Gold Medal (mentioned in the last blog post), Grande, Amos Coli, Kentucky Beefsteak, Cuor de Bue, Orange Paruche and Juliet.

I make sure Pineapple got a good soaking last night. Brad's Black Heart has tomatoes but the plant looks terrible. But the grafted plants in the "south garden" look terrific.

Out of the tomatoes we taste tested during yesterday's dinner, Pierce's Pride was the most memorable. 

I Couldn't Remove The Rock. Planted Kentucky Beefsteak

This morning I only spent a few minutes on the rock left by last night's digging. No luck.

My wife was too busy to plant or prepare any tomatoes. So when I got home from work I continued working trying to get the rock out.

As you'll see I was unsuccessful.

You can see the shovel next to the rock or concrete structure that I simply could not remove. To the right is a one gallon container filled with rocks and asphalt. Laid out in front of the one gallon container are several asphalt pieces that couldn't fit into the container. On one hand it's good to get the rocks and asphalt out of the ground. But it's a pyrrhic victory. The area where this dreck was removed isn't much of a plantable area.

Here's a closeup of the rock:

We planted Kentucky Beefsteak just west of the rock and called it a night.