Harvested A Mini Japanese Black Trifele

Yesterday's harvest includes 15 Black Cherry, 8 Sweet 100, 6 Vorlon (8 ounces, 6 ounces, 10 ounces), 5 Garden Peach, 4 Juliet, 4 Supersweet 100, 4 Husky Cherry Red, 4 Blue Beauty, 3 German Orange Strawberry (8 ounces), 3 Shah/Mikado, 2 Indigo Rose, 2 Speckled Roman(2), 2 Michael Pollan, 2 Hungarian Heart, 2 Dr. Wyche's Yellow (8.5 ounces, 12 ounces), Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red(1), Stupice, Yellow Perfection, Black Krim (8 ounces), Snow White, Anana's Noire (18 ounces) and Husky Red(1) for a total of 73 tomatoes.

Today's harvest includes 17 Black Cherry, 10 Sweet 100, 6 Husky Cherry Red, 6 Blue Beauty, 4 Garden Peach, 3 Vorlon, 3 Berkeley Tie Dye, 3 Juliet, 3 Jaune Flamme, 3 Black Krim (8.5 ounces, 10 ounces), 2 Speckled Roman(1), 2 Supersweet 100, 2 German Orange Strawberry (7 ounces), 2 Piement, 2 Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red(1), 2 Yellow Perfection, 2 Shah/Mikado, 2 Pineapple, Japanese Black Trifele (new), Porkchop, Black Seaman, Dr. Wyche's Yellow, Speckled Roman(2) and Snow White for a total of 80 tomatoes.

The Michael Pollan plant is basically dead. I don't want any more tomatoes off of this plant. This is somewhat amazing because three weeks ago I could argue that it's the strongest plant I had. Maybe a cutworm got it, maybe it couldn't handle the heat...but I won't harvest from this plant again. There are a few unripened ones sitting on our sill that I may count toward the final total...but the plant is dead. Pierce's Pride, Nyagous, Green Zebra, Black Seaman are functionally dead as well. Green Zebra has been dead for two weeks but we've had no time to pull it.

Piement has an amazing texture! The tomato is unique. It looks like a pepper. Take a chili from the Chile's Restaurant logo and straighten it out -- that's the look of Piement. And it tastes good, too. I don't think I've ever had a tomato with such a pleasant texture. Blue Beauty was good, Shah/Mikado was good but Piement was really good.

While Japanese Black Trifele is a new tomato, it is very small. This falls in line with some of our other plants like Clint Eastwood's Rowdy Red(1), Black Seaman, Berkeley Tie Dye, Pineapple, Pierce's Pride and maybe others.

I think this will be a bad year by comparison to other years. There are lots of "too small" tomatoes, weak/dying tomato plants and more blossom end rot than most years. I think the tomato seedlings were not as strong as prior years.