Learning How To Harvest Matt's Wild Cherry

Saturday's harvest: 2 Matt's Wild Cherry

I harvested 2 Matt's Wild Cherry at the bottom of the plant. They were dark red underneath the plant, but the color was orange-red after I brought them in the light. No big deal. I'll put them on the counter and let them ripen for another day.

Pineapple now has a tomato.

My wife let me know that she purchased Sweet 100 as a replacement for our Negro Azteca. Negro Azteca was very gray and clearly did not look like it would provide any fruit.

I noticed that a Bloody Butcher and a Black Cherry tomato is maturing.

Sunday's harvest: Matt's Wild Cherry.

After harvesting a bit too quickly with a couple of tomatoes, I brought a flashlight with me today. I looked at the bottom of the plant, found a dark red one, harvested it and it looked orange-red when out from under the plant. Not quite ready yet.

Oh well.

My wife planted Sweet 100. We spent a lot of time deep watering the front and back yard tomatoes. We did not complete the watering in either yard, however.

A Golden Mama tomato is maturing.

Today's harvest: SunGold

I saw similarly maturing Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes that this time I left on the vine!

Ten In The Ground

My wife planted ten tomato seedlings in the back yard yesterday.We're so busy with things that I don't even know their names. I hope to fill in these details later. When I got home last night I opened up a 50 pound bag of gypsum and spread the gypsum over part of our unplanted growing area in the back yard. I shoveled it in as fast as I could, then raked the ground and watered it in to the soil.

TomatoMania was both fun and exhausting as usual. Do a Google search on TomatoMania 2011 and see what's returned.

One of the TomatoMania customers I helped had some mild notoriety about 15 years ago. I recognized him immediately. In the course of asking general questions, I asked him where he resided. I do this to all customers, as the tomato choices will vary if one resides in Venice versus, say Woodland Hills. He told me that he was off of Mulholland and another cross street (I won't say and it doesn't matter) so that verified that I knew the identity of this person. I said "I know who you are." but spoken to convey "I recognize you" and no more. We walked around and I picked out about 20 tomatoes of all shapes, colors and sizes and left him to pick several more. I believe he picked up a few strawberry plants as well but I could be wrong about that. At the counter he held out his hand and said "I'm Bob". Later on I put his seedlings in the back of his car.

He came back to his car and actually tipped me. What a nice thing to do! I immediately put it in my left back pocket...catching my shirt, putting both the end of my shirt and whatever money he tipped into my pocket. The moment I moved, the end of the shirt came out along with the tip. I never saw it again! That's okay, I'm smiling as I write this. He didn't need to do that...not that I wouldn't mind if he came back next year!

Over the last two weeks we pulled out most of the rest of the grass in our new planting area. I pulled up a lot of asphalt with a lot of it in large chunks.

My wife has also planted new tomato seeds recently.

I just got a message from my wife. The ten in the back yard are Snow White, Brandywine (Red or Yellow, we're not sure), Green Zebra, Quedlinburger Fruehe Liebe, Black and Brown Boar, Negro Azteca, Berkeley Tie Dye, Oaxacan Jewel, Coyote and Black Krim.

Filled Out The "Koi Pond" With Our Seedlings

My wife read yesterday's blog post about getting our seedlings in ASAP, liked the idea and talked me into planting out the rest of the “koi pond” with our seedlings. So with the help of her we planted Negro Azteca, Oaxacan Jewel, Indian Stripe, Gardener's Delight, Jaune Couer de Pigeon and Mexico.

And it got cool last night, down to 38 degrees. Not good for our seedlings outside.

For whatever reason, everyone's seedlings grown from seed has been bad. The seedlings from our “seed lady” have been a complete bust. Our friends Ricardo and Liz have had no luck growing from seed this year. Ours started out fine, but when they were transferred to four inch pots, we simply did not have the room to bring in all the trays of tomato seedlings every night. So they stayed outside. We think they got both too hot and too cold too soon in their existence. We'll see how the ones in the ground do and if they flourish, we'll keep them.