Today's harvest includes 5 Piccolos, 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Cherokee Chocolates, Thessaloniki, Black Cherry and Evan's Italian Plum.
My wife finished watering the front yard while I watered the back yard.
Also, my wife pulled Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter and Big Rainbow. I turned the dirt in a wide area of the "koi pond", added planter mix and turned again. But it was too dark to plant the last tomato. Perhaps tonight.
Today's harvest includes 4 Piccolos, 2 Stupice, Old Ivory Egg, Lime Green Salad (back yard), Golden Jubilee, Salisaw Cafe and Zhezha (back yard).
I got two more winter tomatoes planted, Husky Cherry Red and Jetsetter. We have one more tomato to plant.
My wife and I discussed which tomato plants will be taken out by the gardener on Saturday. Big Rainbow and Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter will be gone.
The harvest for today includes 10 Salisaw Cafes, 7 Stupice, 3 Blue Fruit (6 ounces and 6 ounces), 3 Zhezhas (back yard), 2 Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifters, 2 Jaune Flammes, 2 Black Krims (back yard, 8 ounces, 8.5 ounces), 2 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Piccolos, 2 Thessalonikis, Old Ivory Egg, Black Krim (front yard, 6 ounces), Cherokee Chocolate, Carbon, Arkansas Traveler, Prairie Fire, Snow White, Black From Tula, Golden Jubilee, Pierce's Pride (8 ounces) and Black Plum Paste.
Last night we visited our friends back from Florida. The have a really cute house in the San Gabriel Valley. We went out for dinner and the time just flew by. We dropped off tomatoes for them as well as our dinner friends from Saturday night.
A Kellogg's Breakfast tomato is maturing...
Today's harvest includes 9 Salisaw Cafes, 6 Cherokee Chocolates, 6 Red Currants, 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Piccolos, 2 Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifters (one six ounces), 2 Paul Robesons (9.5 ounces and 7 ounces), Kimberly, Zhezha (front yard), Big Rainbow (6 ounces), Thessaloniki, Black From Tula, Lime Green Salad (from the “koi pond”), Husky Cherry Red and Gregori's Altai.
Last night I watered the front and back yards.
My wife said that our Manchester Terrier picked off another tomato, probably another unripe Arkansas Traveler.
The harvest numbers have started to fall again. Here are the last five day's numbers: 73-51-57-43-37.
My wife made a tomato sauce from most of the tomatoes harvested over the past few days. She said he used around six pounds of tomatoes. The sauce tastes great! We'll try it tonight over pasta.
Today's haul includes: 24 Red Currants, 11 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Paul Robesons (one was six ounces), 2 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Stupice, 2 White Bush, 2 Black Plum Pastes, a Cherokee Chocolate, Sioux, Prairie Fire, Jaune Flamme, Thessaloniki, Piccolo, Green Grape, a beautiful 15 ounce Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, and a new tomato: 2 Red Yellow Caps! One of the Red Yellow Caps was 12.5 ounces and the other was a whopping 23.5 ounces!
The larger Red Yellow Cap is one of the strangest tomatoes I've picked. Have you heard of Siamese Twins? Well, this tomato is three tomatoes conjoined into one. Siamese Triplets!
In 2006 we had a German Johnson that was a product of two conjoined tomatoes. It looked like a barbell. This Red Yellow Cap vaguely reminds us of cauliflower.
We've taken photos of this tomato and will post them on this blog some time next week.
I did a lot of tomato taping last night and this morning. I did a lot of work on Salisaw Cafe, which exposed some ripe tomatoes. Stupice has a similar problem but because the cage is too small I don't have anywhere to tie the branches. I'm almost sure I have ripe Stupice tomatoes that I just can't see under the jungle of branches.
The numbers for Red Currant are climbing, but don't be fooled. This plant is exhausted. The numbers will drop. But I expect a second wind in a month or so.
We're starting to get some good results from the mid-sized tomatoes and as you see, a couple of beefsteaks as well. This month's numbers will be laughably small compared to July 2007, but at least it feels like the tide is coming in!
And this morning's haul includes 16 Red Currants, 7 Salisaw Cafes, 6 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Black Cherries, 2 Cherokee Chocolates (which isn't Cherokee Chocolate, but I don't have a better label at the moment), 2 Green Grapes, a Jaune Flamme, Red Robin, Kimberly, Sioux, White Bush (yum!) and a new one, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter!
To put this in perspective, this morning I've harvested 41 tomatoes. This day last year, 203. I have a pretty good breadth right now – I'm picking a lot of different tomatoes. What I don't have is a lot of depth – I'm not picking a lot per tomato. A lot of ones and twos per day. This will pick up as the month progresses.
I added fertilizer to all the container plants this evening and added fertilizer to some of the plants in the ground. Then I watered the container plants.
I added green fencing around the two tomato plants near the curb, Lime Green Salad and Piccolo.
I looked at a few tomatoes in the back yard...Black Krim has a small tomato!
While looking at the tomatoes in the front yard, I noticed that Garden Peach had two yellow tomatoes! I let my wife whether or not to pick them and she chose to pick them.
I harvested 16 Red Currants today.
I think I know why the Lime Green Salad in the “koi pond” has no tomatoes. In the late afternoon Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter casts a perfect shadow over it. It has plenty of blooms, but the lack of direct sun should slow it down a bit.
I have a new adapter for my laptop, so the posts should pick up.
I spent a good amount of time training the front yard tomato plants after work. Unfortunately I did break a few branches in the process but it shouldn't cause much of an issue.
I harvested as well, picking 8 Red Currants, 2 Husky Cherry Reds and a Taxi tomato.
While adjusting the branches (training), I noticed a tomato on Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter! And to my mild surprise, I counted four tomatoes on Piccolo. Piccolo was planted on April 27, 33 days ago.
While I was in the backyard throwing away the broken tomato branches in the recyclable trash can, I took another look at Sioux. Within two seconds I noticed a tomato on it, so that clears up the minor issue in the last post.
We added all the tomatoes to the salad for dinner. All of them were quite good. The Patio tomato picked yesterday was the best.
I took a closer look at the tomato plants this evening.
Sioux has a new tomato on it. Lots of others have one or two more tomatoes than previously reported.
The mature Patio tomato is getting more red. A couple of Husky Cherry Red tomatoes are now turning red.
I picked a Red Currant and it looks like more will be picked in the near future.
When my wife got home, she picked the two Taxis. They taste pretty good. Not great, but certainly pretty good.
Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter looks very strong...but still no tomatoes. There was something funny on one of the leaves – initially I thought it was caterpillar excrement but changed my mind – and I got rid of it.
I caught a moth on the underside of a Kellogg's Breakfast leaf. I knocked it off and stepped on it.
I heavily watered the tomato plants this morning in preparation for the coming heat wave. It was time to water, since the last watering was Saturday. In fact, some of the container plants were beginning to wilt.
Other than that, there isn't a whole lot to say. In the backyard, Olga's Round Yellow Chicken, Black Krim and Carbon look good. Jeff Davis looks strong for only being in the ground for a few weeks. Kimberly seems a bit behind the others but still looks healthy. I planted Kimberly about three feet from the lemon tree trunk and I might have planted it near a major root or something.
In the front yard, all the new plantings look healthy and strong. I did a lot of tucking for Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, so perhaps it's having a growth spurt. The most mature tomato on Red Currant is not reddish orange. Overall, I estimate about 250 – 300 tomatoes on Red Currant at the moment. Remember, these are smaller than cherry tomatoes and grow in clusters, so this amount isn't surprising at all. Aunt Ruby's German Green and Big Rainbow are getting tall but have no tomatoes. When they do, though, the plant will support them well.
This heat wave will be the first test of the paper mulch.
I expect growth spurts from all our tomatoes!
Here's a list of tomato plants with visible tomatoes and their planting dates:
Patio (container) – February 26, 2008
Garden Peach – March 1, 2008
Husky Cherry Red – March 1, 2008
Red Currant – March 1, 2008
Taxi (container) – March 15, 2008
Micro Tom (container) – April 6, 2008
Red Robin (container) – April 6, 2008
Tomatoes planted in March that have no tomatoes:
Big Rainbow – March 15, 2008
Aunt Ruby's German Green – March 22, 2008
Zhezha (container) – March 22, 2008
Salisaw Cafe – March 23, 2008
Zhezha – March 23, 2008
Green Grape – March 27, 2008
Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter – March 29, 2008
Do I have a problem with some of these tomatoes? In my opinion, not at all.
Micro Tom and Red Robin are novelty tomato plants. They are actually so small, they're windowsill plants. So I discount those two plants for the purposes of analysis.
Big Rainbow has a very long time to mature, over three months. Aunt Ruby's German Green, Green Grape and Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter have similar maturity cycles, about 80 days. Two of these are large, beefsteak tomatoes.
That leaves the two Zhezha plants and Salisaw Cafe. These plants were from the first batch from seed. When planted, they were much smaller than the plants bought from nurseries (and if you've been reading, we almost lost the Zhezha in the ground). Their lack of size at planting time probably adds two to three weeks to their normal time to maturity.
In short, it appears that everything is fine. However, I may not see a tomato on a new tomato plant for a while.
