Twelve Tomatoes, Ten Caterpillars

Today's haul includes 3 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Evan's Italian Plums, Stupice, Old Ivory Egg, Italian Market Wonder, Black Plum Paste, a tiny Polish Pastel, Carbon and Piccolo.

Forgot to mention in the last post: Micro Tom was pulled on Wednesday.

Last evening I taped up several plants, including Thessaloniki, which needed lots of tape. The taping exposed the caterpillars that I suspected were on the plant. From that evening, night and this morning I believe I found three adult caterpillars and a couple small caterpillars on Thessaloniki alone, a couple on Evan's Italian Plum and several others for a total of around 10 caterpillars.

I need to get some more of the thin tomato tape.

We've had mild weather this past week. I'm seeing blooms on tomato plants that I haven't seen in about a month.

Salisaw Cafe is ahead of Piccolo again for second place (313 – 312).

I've had requests to post more pictures on this blog. Unfortunately at this time of the year, the tomato plants aren't very picturesque at all.

There won't be any weekend updates to this blog. My wife and I will be leaving tonight to go to the Carmel TomatoFest. The next update will be Monday (our first wedding anniversary!).

The "Corner Office" Is Done...

Today's haul includes 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Italian Market Wonders, 3 Piccolos, 2 Black Plum Pastes, Micro Tom, Red Robin, and overripe Old Ivory Egg, Salisaw Cafe, Stupice, Arkansas Traveler, Kellogg's Breakfast and Blue Fruit.

I watered the back yard last night, which included the tomatoes to be planted.

This morning, I found a tomato underneath a chair in the bedroom. That sneaky Manchester Terrier...

The “Corner Office” in the front yard is basically done. There's a couple of blooms on Green Grape and the front yard Black Krim still looks rather healthy, but at a cursory glance there's no tomatoes in this area of the front yard.

The Old Ivory Egg plant is getting huge...

LA Fox User Group Loves Tomatoes!

Today's harvested tomatoes include 3 Black Plum Pastes, 3 Piccolos, Salisaw Cafe, Evan's Italian Plum, Zhezha (back yard), Golden Jubilee, Cherokee Chocolate and Micro Tom. That's all!

Last night I brought a bunch of tomatoes to our computer user group. There were no tomatoes to bring back! I got home around midnight.

Piccolo Getting a Second Wind

And today's haul includes 10 Piccolos, 4 Black Plum Pastes, 3 Salisaw Cafes, 3 Stupices, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, Kellogg's Breakfast, Polish Pastel, Micro Tom, Evan's Italian Plum (8.5 ounces), Painted Ukrainian (9 ounces), Blue Fruit and Jaune Flamme.

Both Piccolo and to a lesser degree Micro Tom are getting a second wind. Before yesterday, the prior harvest day for Micro Tom was July 2.

The Manchester Terrier picked off another tomato of unknown origin.

My wife found a caterpillar on Blue Fruit.

It looks like a half dozen tomato plants will be pulled in the front yard next Saturday.

Reached 4000 Tomatoes Today!

And our harvest today includes 5 Piccolos, 4 Kellogg's Breakfast tomatoes, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Black Plum Pastes, Stupice, Evan's Italian Plum, Green Grape, Micro Tom, Polish Pastel (6 ounces), Italian Market Wonder, Jaune Flamme, Black Krim, Gregori's Altai, and a gorgeous Painted Ukrainian (16.5 ounces).

Today we reached 4000 tomatoes for the year! This pales compared to last year's numbers but we trudge on nonetheless.

We visited a farm in Fillmore that had an open house. This farm grows tomatoes for the Encino Farmer's Market (and other Farmer's Markets). Wow, what an education! They had a very scientific method to their watering and growing of their tomatoes. I'm not joking when I say that some of the tomato vines were 20 and 30 feet long. Again, no joke. Playing on an old joke, they've forgotten more about tomatoes than I'm ever going to know. We came away with a lot of good ideas for next year's tomatoes!

Our Manchester Terrier knocked off a good sized Kellogg's Breakfast and an Evan's Italian Plum, ruining them both.

Harvest Totals Dwindling...

And tonights harvest include 39 Red Currants, 2 Salisaw Cafes, a Husky Cherry Red, an Aunt Ruby's German Green, Black Plum Paste, Micro Tom, and a sunscalded Taxi tomato.

Yesterday's Aunt Ruby's German Green was too damaged to eat. Today's tomato looks better.

I did a fair amount of taping up wayward tomato branches while I was harvesting.

Now we're in that downtrend I've been predicting for a couple of weeks. The last five days totals are thus: 159, 145, 106, 98, 46. Quite a drop!

Tomato Analysis For June

Let's compare June's totals with the June 2007 totals...

In June 2007 we harvested 1259 tomatoes. In June 2008, we harvested 1538 tomatoes – 22% more.

However, last year I harvested from 22 different tomato plants among 34 planted tomatoes (65%). This year, I harvested from 23 different tomato plants among 52 in the ground (44%).

This year's June totals have been dominated by the Red Currant harvest. Out of the 1538 harvested, 1337 were Red Currants. That left only 201 tomatoes over the other 51 existing tomato plants (one died).

A week or so ago I predicted that we wouldn't hit last year's numbers. Then Red Currant really kicked in, harvesting 97 followed by 139, 136 and 98 tomatoes.

Therein lies the rub: Until the other plants start “cresting”, the numbers will rise and fall based on the Red Currant harvest. And Red Currant's best harvest may very well be last week's numbers. The second largest harvest, Husky Cherry Red shows signs of “cresting” having harvested 7 followed by 10, 19, 17, 15, 7 and 6 tomatoes over the past week.

We'll get a good harvest total from a lot of the smaller backyard tomatoes. These include Salisaw Cafe, Stupice, Black Plum Paste and perhaps Sioux and Kimberly as well. In the front yard, Piccolo looks pretty good. And Red Currant looks healthy enough to get a second wave.

Beefsteaks: Paul Robeson and the back yard Black Krim look particularly happy.

Disappointments (so far): Garden Peach, Snow White Cherry, Big Rainbow, Micro Tom.

In short, this year's tomato plants appears to be about two weeks behind last year's tomato plants. The July numbers should expose this.

Olga's Round Yellow Chicken Egg Has A Tomato!

Yesterday's high at Pierce College was 111 (111.4 to be exact). Today is supposed to be just as hot.

Yesterday evening I picked 64 Red Currants, 3 Husky Cherry Reds, a Micro Tom and a Taxi tomato. The Taxi tomato was a bit sunscalded.

Stupice branches came out of their tomato tape. I took a wooden stake and wrapped a couple of the tomato tape “girdles” around the wooden stake and hammered it into the ground.

Early this morning I watered the back yard while my lovely wife watered the front yard.

I "girdled" some of the longer Black Plum Paste tomato plant branches with tomato tape.

I was going to write a paragraph on how tomatoes can't really form from buds because it's too hot right now. But while watering, I noticed a small tomato on Olga's Round Yellow Chicken. It's the first tomato I've seen on this plant. Go figure.

Later on, I gave yesterday's harvest to a visitor.

Harvested First Micro Tom

Last night I was the main speaker at our computer user group, LA Fox. That left only a little time between work and the speaking engagement.

In that time I picked 76 Red Currants, a Husky Cherry Red, Taxi, Garden Peach and Micro Tom tomatoes.

This is the first Micro Tom I've picked this year. This particular tomato turned orange a couple of weeks ago...and stayed that way. I was expecting it to turn red. When I handled it, it came off fairly easy.

I brought all of the Red Currants picked over the last two days and a few others to the user group. They were all taken by the attendees.

76 Red Currants sounds like a lot, but the average size of these Red Currants is a little over a pea. 76 peas isn't a lot of mass but it makes for an impressive count! Still, they're great in salads – simply drop them in! And this year's crop doesn't have the slightly bitter “bite” of last years tomatoes. They simply taste good.

The weather is heating up...

We live close enough to Pierce College to make their weather measurements accurate to where we live. The link to the current month's temperatures can be found here. Monday, the high was 99 and yesterday, 101. Today's temperatures will be similar.

Old Ivory Egg Has A Tomato!

When I got home from work, I harvested 23 Red Currants. I noticed a bug on Red Currant so I'll probably hit it with neem oil again.

There are two Patio tomatoes that are very close to being picked. A Micro Tom and one or two Husky Cherry Red tomatoes are orange. A Red Robin and Taxi tomato are starting to turn.

Also, Old Ivory Egg has a tomato on it! I'm surprised because that was the last tomato planted in the garden.

I put on latex gloves and worked on all the tomato plants.

Because of the Red Currant harvest we are only two tomatoes behind last years totals at this date.

More Tomatoes!

There are lots of new tomatoes noted this morning. All of them were quite small, but they were tomatoes nonetheless. In the order they were found, Kimberly, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Lime Green Salad and Red Yellow Cap have tomatoes.

For point of reference we have two Lime Green Salad tomato plants in the front yard, one near the curb and one in the “koi pond” (our signature area). The one with the tiny tomato is the one near the curb. In my internal front yard tomato document this is the first one listed. Thus, the one near the curb will be Lime Green Salad (1) and the one in the “koi pond” will be Lime Green Salad (2).

A Micro Tom tomato looked as if it may be slightly darkening. Next to it is Red Robin, which looks very happy in the container. It has another branch of tomatoes and now numbers at least a half dozen.

The only “koi pond” plants without tomatoes are Lime Green Salad (2) (understandable, it was planted April 26) and Snow White Cherry. I was a tiny bit worried about Snow White Cherry about a week ago. But since then the growth on this plant has taken off for the better. Also, I remember tomatoes arriving late last year for this plant but it ended up the second most productive tomato plant in the garden. In other words, no worries.

Visible Tomatoes and Planting Dates

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.

Gregori's Altai Has No Tomatoes

Gregori's Altai, located in the “corner office” has two tomatoes on it. two round buds that look like tomatoes.

Micro Tom has three tomatoes on it. Garden Peach has more than two and the bottom leaves are yellowing, indicating that it's concentrating on making tomatoes.

I put a cage on Old Ivory Egg and staked it. I made paper mulch and went through the back yard, looking for spots I missed. I used about half the pile and threw the rest away. For now, I'm completely caught up on mulching.

I was going to individually report on the back yard tomatoes since I was back there adding mulch...but, darn it, they all have good color. In terms of the way the plants look, the standouts are White Bush, Yellow Brandywine – Platfoot Strain, Arkansas Traveler and Jeff Davis. Even our problem child has new growth on it and good color again but it's still a very thin and wispy plant.

I gave Cherokee Chocolate some worm castings as it has a lot of blooms on it and the growth has slowed down. I gave some worm castings to Purple Russian yesterday.

The weather in the San Fernando Valley this week has been overcast and cooler than normal. I just want to make note of it for when I look back on this entry 60 days or 90 days from now.

Another day...

Not much to report today.

Mulched the paper last night and distributed the shredding among three plants. I did take this image, though...

As you can see, this is a picture of an egg next to the tomato plant Micro Tom. I doubt you'll see it in this reduced image, but there's a tomato growing on the plant, on the far side of the egg (at the 12 o'clock position).

Fertilized the container plants and some of the tomatoes in the ground as well as watered this morning. Tedious.

Update on our problem children: Purple Russian looks the same, thin and droopy. The backyard Zhezha has better color than before.

Oh, I put the rest of the seedlings in front of my wife's car door so she'd distribute them at work. In moving, I noticed one of the plants had “Tula” on one side (for Black From Tula) but on the other side, 180 degrees away, it said “OIE”! There's our Old Ivory Egg! Or is it Black From Tula? I talked it over with my wife and we simply do not know which plant it is.

I glanced at the others and didn't note any indication of Speckled Roman, though I didn't look too closely. The other clay pots were taken back over the weekend by our seed grower. So who knows? Maybe one of our recent plantings is really a Speckled Roman....time will tell.

Paper Mulch Added, Micro Tom Has A Tomato

I shredded today's, yesterday's and Saturday's newspaper in my shredder and spread it around the tomatoes in the front yard. It was tedious, and the shredder shut down for about an hour – it may have gotten too hot – but I think the shredded paper will help.

I put the shredding around the lip of the bowl, keeping at least one inch between the stem and the shredding.

I'll do that with each newspaper until I've covered all the tomatoes. As the shredding tamps down due to water, I'll probably start over and do it again. This will also force me to landscape some of the areas around the tomatoes, especially the ones in the back yard.

The high here in the last three days has been in the mid to upper 90's. As noted previously, the plants have grown. Red Yellow Cap and Gregori's Altai appears to have doubled in size in a week.

Micro Tom has a tiny little tomato on it. The plant itself is about the size of an egg (actually an egg is bigger - no joke). Red Robin has a second tomato on it.

My wife may fertilize some of the tomatoes that are blooming this evening.

Below are pictures taken of Red Currant last evening.

This plant took off weeks ago and it about four feet tall! In the first shot you can see some of the paper mulch laid down around the tomato plant. Also, it probably isn't noticeable in the shrunken image but there's at least five tomatoes visible in the lower left and center.

The second shot, taken from the opposite side, shows hundreds of blooms on the plant.

In the shot below, taken March 10, shows Red Currant on the left and Husky Cherry Red on the right.