Harvested Pierce's Pride and Toni's Round!

Today's harvest includes 15 White Currant, 13 Snow White (back yard), 9 Violet Jasper, 7 Stupice, 5 SunGold, 4 Principe Borghese, 4 Zapotec Pleated, 4 Yellow Perfection, 3 Red Currant(1), 3 Brown Berry, 3 Speckled Roman, 3 Black From Tula, 2 Husky Cherry Red, 2 Marianna's Peace, 2 Ananas Noire (one 6.5 ounces), 2 Nyagous, 2 Jaune Flamme(2), 2 Red Grape, Gypsy, Sweet Tangerine, Red Boar, Lyn's Mahogany Garnet, Red Currant(2), Green Zebra, Green Grape, Black Cherry, Japanese Black Trifele, SunSugar, Patio, Garden Peach, Black Krim (9.5 ounces), Pierce's Pride (new, 10 ounces) and Toni's Round for a total of 100 tomatoes.

I don't have today's weight but the weight for the last two days was 5 pounds 7 ounces and 5 pounds, 6 ounces.

We have our first mislabel – the tomato plant labeled Azoychka clearly isn't Azoychka. Azoychka looks like a typical tomato about 4 – 6 ounces, flattened, only yellowish orange in color. What's growing looks like a thinner version of Yellow Pear. We'll keep it labeled Azoychka until we can harvest from this plant and hopefully identify it for what it is.

My wife watered the whole back yard and all of the front yard tomato plants with the exception of SunSugar. I could tell SunSugar wasn't watered because the fertilizer was still visible. No problem, either she or I will get it watered by this evening.

We need to get a netting around Black From Tula. A bird got another one of these tomatoes.

Big Pink has a tomato on it.

My wife prepared some tomatoes for taste testing during dinner. Here's my mental notes on what we tried:

Chile Verde (upper left corner) – I saw my wife's reaction as she ate this tomato. She gave kind of a far off look which indicated to me she didn't care for the taste. She told me she really liked it and for me to give it a try. I tried it, liked it and gave a far off look as I began thinking how to relate what I was tasting. The taste is unique and doesn't taste tomatoey at all. I took bite after bite doing the same thing and having the same experience. The best I can do is this: If you have ever had the Trader Joes' soy ice cream sandwiches, the mouth feel was similar. It did not feel like a tomato. If you combined that feel with pretty strong fruit taste, you got it. A definite winner.

Green Grape (upper right corner) – Always a winner.

Black Cherry (lower right corner) – Ditto.

Snow White (yellow tomato, far right) – Ditto.

Nyagous (lower center/right) – Excellent taste.

Garden Peach (upper center) – The tomato itself looks somewhat milkier than the Garden Peaches I remember from prior years. It tasted like citrus, very good.

Plum Tigris (lower center) – My wife thought she had cut up a Speckled Roman but I thought it was Plum Tigris. We tasted it and we both agreed it wasn't Speckled Roman. It tasted “brighter”. My wife didn't like Plum Tigris last year and was wary of growing it again this year. She liked this year's version better than last year's version.

Yellow Pear (to the left of Snow White) – A little mushy and thick skinned, but good taste. Our take is that it's definitely worth continuing to try, it's just that this particular tomato was a little past its' prime.

Green Zebra (to the left of Plum Tigris) – The taste was more tomatoey than I remember for Green Zebras in the past. It tasted quite good (my wife loved it) but the tomatoey taste didn't make it stand out for me.

Michael Pollan – This was the only one that missed. The tomato tasted really good at the July 3 party, but not today. It simply wasn't ripe enough. It needed a couple more days to mature. No big deal, that happens.

When I got home Black Krim had a bad lean to the west. I took a hammer to drive in the stake and I could hear it splinter. And it didn't help the lean. I was actually stuck. If I let go it could fall. I tried calling my wife but she was in the kitchen and the door was closed. Fortunately I hit upon the idea of leaning the plant to the east and hanging the hammer off of the top of the frame on the east side. The plant straightened up but didn't topple over. That gave me time to bring my wife over to hold it while I retrieved a thick stake and hammered it into place. All is well with this plant.