Winding Down The Harvest...

Tuesday's harvest: Snow White(1), Snow White(2), Babywine and Patio Princess for a total of 4 tomatoes.

Patio Princess is now ready to be pulled. Also, it got down to 36.9 degrees in the morning.

Wednesday: No harvest done – too cold. It got down to 35.7 degrees and around harvest time had only warmed up to about 37 degrees.

Thursday's harvest: 4 Snow White(2), Snow White(1) and Babywine for a total of 6 tomatoes.

My wife watered both the back yard and front yard tomato plants.

Today's harvest: Babywine.

Brrr! Getting Cold In The Morning...

Friday's harvest: 4 Snow White(2), 3 Babywine, Mong and Patio Princess for a total of 9 tomatoes.

Saturday's harvest: 2 Snow White(2).

My wife watered the back yard. In the afternoon we both worked on her rose bushes in the front yard, giving them rose food and scraping out the weeds nearby. Some of them got watered.

There was no harvest done Sunday as it was simply too cold. It had gotten down to 36.7 degrees overnight and was only a couple of degrees warmer when I went outside to harvest. It wasn't worth it.

My wife completed watering the front yard roses.

Today's harvest includes 8 Snow White(2), 2 Babywine, Snow White(1) and a back yard Husky Cherry Red for a total of 12 tomatoes.

I did find a full size, adult caterpillar on Snow White(1) this morning. I'm surprised the caterpillars can survive the cold of the night. The low this morning (at 6:30 AM) was 37.8 degrees. The temperature when I harvested was only a degree or so warmer than the day before but there was less moisture in the air so it didn't feel as bad.

Double Digit Harvest Days Are Behind Us For 2009

Sunday's harvest: Snow White(2) and Babywine for a total of 2 tomatoes.

On Saturday I mentioned to my wife that I think our double digit harvest days are over this year. I had pored over Snow White(2) and while there are a lot of growing tomatoes on this plant, there were few mature ones. As you can tell by this harvest, that proved true.

Today's harvest: 2 Snow White(2) and Patio Princess for a total of 3 tomatoes.

I stapled the loose fence on the west side of the “koi pond” back to their fence posts Sunday afternoon.

Harvested Over 11,000 Tomatoes For The Year!

Today's harvest includes 7 Snow White(2), 2 Babywine, Patio Princess and Husky Gold for a total of 11 tomatoes.

In spite of our modest harvest total, we did reach over 11,000 harvested tomatoes for 2009 (11,006)! And while we've passed the official 2007 totals, I believe the 2007 total ended up to be equivalent or more than this years total.

For starters, I stopped counting the 2007 harvest on October 4. On that day my wife and I started a three week honeymoon. So 23 days of the harvest were lost. Also, some of the plants continued on after we got back but the harvest wasn't recorded. A Husky Cherry Red continued producing all the way until a January frost finally got it.

So in 2007, using only 33 plants, we harvested 10,990 tomatoes by October 4. While I haven't done an official count, probably 10,000+ of those came from the front yard. Why so high? In March of that year I dug out the soil in the “koi pond” (thus the moniker -- when it was dug out it looked like the beginning of a koi pond) and the “corner office” and replaced it with new dirt, compost and mulch.

So we'll never know the true amount of harvested tomatoes for 2007.

But the fact that we're comparable with the 2007 totals shows this to be a very good harvest year.

Harvested Over 1000 Snow White(2) Tomatoes!

No harvest done on Monday.

Today's harvest includes 19 Snow White(2), 2 Snow White(1), Sweet 100 and Patio Princess for a total of 23 tomatoes.

On Sunday I re-stapled the fence in the “koi pond” where it had been pulled down by the wind and Snow White(2).

We've now harvested over 1000 Snow White(2) tomatoes (1016)! The plant is still going strong although the amount of tomatoes have started to thin out a bit.

My wife watered the rest of the front yard yesterday.

We got new windows installed over the weekend. We're loving it! The house is more temperate and it's much quieter at night.

Pulled Four More Back Yard Tomato Plants

And today's harvest includes 18 Snow White(2), Snow White(1), Dr. Wyche's Yellow, Black Krim, White Currant, a back yard Husky Cherry Red and Patio Princess for a total of 25 tomatoes.

My wife watered the front yard tomato plants yesterday.

Yesterday I turned the dirt in the “corner office”, preparing for a winter garden.

Today I took out four tomato plants in the back yard – Red Grape, Italian Ice, Turkish Striped Monastery and, sorry to say, Yellow Perfection was pulled as well.

I count 18 tomato plants still in the ground.

It's Cold Again; Back On The Workout Routine

Today's harvest includes 7 Snow White(2), Snow White(1), Babywine and Old Ivory Egg for a total of 10 tomatoes.

It's cold again! It got down to 39.4 degrees this morning – right when I was harvesting at 7:20 AM. And there was just enough of a breeze to take away your body heat. Not good when you're wearing shorts. I wasn't particularly thorough with today's harvest.

I forgot to mention that when we were moving things around to store our air conditioner a couple days ago, I moved Patio Princess. Apparently a small caterpillar fell down from the plant. Yesterday morning I found a caterpillar on Italian Ice.

On a personal front, I was happy to complete my workout routine again. I had fallen off the wagon due to the bad air from the fires two months ago. I'd slowly build up again and then something else came up, etc... I wanted to work out when I was out of town at a conference, but that didn't happen.

So I completed 20 minutes/5 minute cool down on the elliptical for a burn of 335 calories and more importantly, 30 minutes of rowing for a burn of 390 calories. Toward the end of my rowing routine someone took the other machine and asked “How do you do it?”. That made me feel good. Now...I have to maintain it. Let's see if it happens.

Then the “2^nd shift” started. After a shower and dinner I had to do stuff for out accountant, two clients, our computer user group, NetBook research and other assorted emails. I was going to move some files into a file cabinet but files were flopping around everywhere and spilling – I hit the wall.

Back to the tomatoes – Snow White(1) is inching toward 1400 harvested tomatoes (1396), Snow White(2) is headed toward a 1000 harvested tomatoes (971), Babywine is inching toward 500 harvested tomatoes (487) and overall we're heading toward 11,000 harvested tomatoes for the year (10920).

Harvested Over 800 Snow White(2) Tomatoes!

Today's harvest includes 15 Snow White(2), 13 Snow White(1), Babywine, Turkish Striped Monastery, White Currant, Patio Princess and Sweet 100 for a total of 33 tomatoes.

The low today was 43.7, still cold. The cold nights are affecting the harvest, especially the back yard harvest. Only four tomatoes harvested today from the back yard.

Snow White(2) has now reached over 800 harvested tomatoes (813)!

I found a tiny caterpillar on Snow White(2) this morning.

What a Wacky Harvest This Month!

Today's harvest includes 67 Snow White(2), 6 Snow White(1), 6 White Currant, 5 Red Grape, 3 Green Zebra(2), 3 Yellow Perfection, 3 Babywine, 2 Husky Cherry Red, 2 Sweet 100, 2 Patio Princess, 2 Plum Tigris, 2 Black Cherry, Green Grape, Oaxacan Jewel, Italian Ice, Green Zebra(1), Paul Robeson, Garden Peach and Cuor de Bue for a total of 110 tomatoes.

Those numbers for Snow White(2) are accurate. I can only explain it this way: We recently had a big heat wave, which really helps tomatoes to mature (and blooms to sterilize). And a batch of Snow White(2) started to mature just as the heat wave ended. Other plants simply didn't have enough tomatoes on them, having been harvested during the prior heat wave a few weeks prior.

Three days ago we harvested 21 tomatoes. Today we harvest 67 Snow White(2), 110 tomatoes overall. This date, last month, the harvest was 41 tomatoes. It continues to be a wacky harvest month. Unpredictable.

But here's a prediction I think will stick – we'll reach 10,000 harvested tomatoes tomorrow! We're only 15 tomatoes away from that total.

We've now harvested over 1000 back yard tomatoes for the month of September (1006)! Also, we've harvested exactly 150 Italian Ice and 150 back yard Paul Robeson tomatoes.

What a wild ride this has been!

Harvested Over 5000 Back Yard Tomatoes This Year!

Before today's harvest I picked off a small caterpillar on Babywine, within an inch or two from where the last one was spotted.

Today's harvest includes 13 Snow White(2), 8 White Currant, 5 Black Cherry, 3 Red Grape, 2 Snow White(2), 2 Babywine, 2 Paul Robeson, 2 Yellow Perfection, Silvery Fir Tree, Vintage Wine, a front yard Husky Cherry Red, Italian Ice, Tiger Paw, Japanese Black Trifele, Cuor de Bue and Patio Princess for a total of 45 tomatoes.

It got up to 102.8 degrees at Pierce College yesterday, a mile from where we live. I think we have another heat wave harvest bump occurring. There just isn't that many tomatoes to harvest!

We've reached over 5000 harvested tomatoes in the back yard (5002)! Putting this in perspective, this year's back yard harvest total and front yard harvest total to date (4681) beat the total 2008 tomato harvest of 4503 tomatoes. We've doubled last year's harvest and we have a ways to go.

A little addition will show we've harvested 9683 tomatoes in 2009. This may be the kiss of death but I think we'll make 10,000 tomatoes this year. Even if the harvest drops significantly – which I expect to happen after this heat wave – we'll have enough to get us to five figures.

We've now harvested over 400 White Currant tomatoes (402)!

Harvested Patio Princess Today!

And today's harvest includes 6 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 5 Snow White(1), 5 Snow White(2), 5 Paul Robeson, 4 Garden Peach(2), 3 Yellow Perfection, 3 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 2 Black Cherry, 2 Turkish Striped Monastery, 2 Red Currant, 2 Jaune Coeur de Pigeon, 2 Babywine, Vintage Wine, Mong, Patio Princess, Red Grape, Mexico (10.5 ounces), White Zebra (6.5 ounces), Tiger Paw, Sweet 100 and a back yard Green Grape for a total of 50 tomatoes.

We finally got a reasonable Patio Princess tomato! We received this plant from Liz and Ricardo a few months back. It got planted in a small green plastic container and took off. However, the confines of this container came back to bite us. The growth was constricted. More importantly, the container would get too hot.

We've actually “harvested” about 20 tomatoes off of this plant but they've had terrible end rot. Unlike Speckled Roman, if a Patio Princess tomato has about 25 percent end rot, it's no good. You can salvage part of a Speckled Roman tomato, but not Patio Princess. And most of the tomatoes had around 50 percent end rot due to the container getting too warm.

This harvested tomato has end rot as well but it isn't bad, maybe 10 percent of the tomato.

The harvested Mexico tomato was a little odd. These oddities occur frequently at the end of the season. One side of the tomato, perhaps 65 percent of the tomato overall, was ripe and if anything, a little too ripe. The rest of the tomato was green. But not just green, a not ripe any time soon green, a “it's still three weeks away, if not more” green. That part will have to be cut away.

My wife watered all of the back yard and parts of the front yard. That's saying something because it got up to 103 degrees yesterday with our bad air from the fires.

There was some humidity and clouds in the air this morning. There's a tropical storm coming up from Baja and I believe we're seeing some moisture from it.

The tomato growing from the volunteer tomato plant also looks like Old Ivory Egg.

Harvested Black Chery; Patio Princess Has A Tomato

And today's harvest includes 3 Sweet Olive, 3 Red Grape, 2 Sweet 100, 2 Patio, 2 SunSugar, a back yard Speckled Roman (unfortunately with blossom end rot), Red Currant, Yellow Perfection, White Currant, Italian Ice and Black Cherry (new!).

Turkish Striped Monastery is close and appears to be turning red. It could be ready tomorrow.

I didn't know a Black Cherry was maturing. I was looking at another tomato plant, looked over and hey! There's a maturing Black Cherry! I went over and it was ready for harvesting.

Also, it appears that our Manchester Terrier has picked off more Beaverlodge Plum tomatoes.

One more thing...Patio Princess already has a tomato on it!

Harvested Italian Ice!

Today's harvest includes 3 Sweet Olive, 3 Red Currant, 3 SunSugar, 2 Italian Ice (new!), Red Grape, Yellow Perfection and Sweet 100 tomatoes.

Yesterday evening I did some minor tomato taping in the back yard. Also I watered three plants in the back that looked like they needed it. Two of the three sprung back to life in an hour so they were thirsty.

My wife watered the front yard (including the tomatoes) yesterday.

Patio Princess looks great and already has blooms on it.

Another good sign: I'm seeing a lot of new tomato growth 4 and 5 feet off the ground. Everywhere I look I see tomatoes.

And the weather is warming up which will help push out and ripen these tomatoes.

Back Yard Tomato Work Caught Up!

On Saturday my wife and I went to a graduation celebration out in Murrieta. That took all day, so no harvesting or tomato work of any kind.

On Sunday there was a lot done. First, we picked 7 Sweet Olive and a Sweet 100 tomato.

I began working on the three chores on the back yard tomatoes but I quickly ran out of tomato twine used to obstruct the Manchester Terrier from nosing in the plant. I continued on, getting through all of the back yard tomato plants in the ground.

I added paper mulch to White Currant and the new Patio Princess.

I began to do the same work in the front yard “corner office”, but began having a sneezing fit and soon had to stop. After my sinuses settled down about an hour later, I finished up the “corner office”. Also, I did a lot of tomato taping in that area in order to make paths just to reach the other plants.

While this was going on my wife watered the back yard (noting that Orange Blossom was looking particularly weak), including the tomato plants in the back. Jeff Davis was only watered lightly.

While working in the “corner office” I noticed that Jaune Flamme has a maturing tomato! On the one hand this is good news but on another front, bad news. I've noticed that damaged plants tend to mature faster than normal and I think that's what is going on here. This should be ready to pick in a day or so.

I fertilized the container plants as well as most (but not all) of the plants in the ground, both front and back yards, that didn't get their second round of fertilizer.

In the afternoon Liz and Ricardo came over to finish off the patio cover frame. Soon my wife and Liz went out for supplies and I helped with Ricardo when needed. In between those times I tomato taped many of the back yard tomato plants as needed, as well as adding stakes to several others. For instance, Black Cherry had grown so much that it was leaning in one direction and actually pulling the cage out of the ground. I ran out of tomato tape for a while but after a half hour or so found another roll.

By that time the women had come back and my wife had bought additional tomato twine. During the construction I used the twine on the rest of the cages in the ground in the back yard.

German Orange Strawberry is now the tallest tomato plant. Not only is the plant over six feet high, it has tomato blooms over six feet high. What will be funny is that in a month the plant will have grown even more, but not be as tall. Why? The branches at the top will get heavier and fall in one direction or another. I'll be able to tape them together for a period of time but soon they'll get too heavy and naturally droop, also due to growing fruit on the vines.

So the back yard is completely caught up with the tomato chores – moats remade, loose branches taped up, twine used to obstruct the Manchester Terrier from below, low branches growing into the dirt removed.

All that is left is to clean up the “koi pond” before the hot weather hits.

Speaking of which, we experienced something on Sunday that we hadn't experienced in quite a while. The sun! The sun came out for most of the day yesterday though it did cloud up a bit in the afternoon.

By evening, Jeff Davis looked a bit better. We're guessing that Jeff Davis is being watered too much (because the plant is also in the range of the sprinklers that go off twice a week, including today) and not enough sun. We'll monitor Jeff Davis to see if it improves.

Planted Patio Princess

During the day my wife bought a pot and planted Patio Princess in the new pot. It was placed next to White Currant.

There was no harvest yesterday. When Sweet Olive goes from 0 to 2 to 10 to 16 to 0 tomatoes harvested, that's an indication the harvesting by my wife was done too aggressively. Then again, the Manchester Terrier didn't get any.

Yesterday was the second day of no sun all day.

When I looked at the back yard tomato plants in the evening, I thought some of them were turning a bit gray and getting a bit of a leaf curl. That was surprising to me, until I realized that the back yard tomatoes are more affected by the cloudy weather. Even on the partly sunny days, the sun has broken out in the afternoon. That still misses some of the back yard tomato plants.

This morning, the sun broke through a bit of the haze before clouding up again.

Four More Tomatoes Harvested; Two Plants With New Tomatoes

No tomatoes were harvested on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday we harvested 2 Sweet Olives, a Sweet 100 and a new tomato, SunSugar. My wife ate half of the tomato right off the vine and loved it; I liked it too.

On Saturday I began to do additional work on the tomatoes in between priming the crossbeams to our new patio cover. I went through about a dozen tomato plants in the back yard, doing three things: 1) Reestablish the “moat” around the plant to keep the water underneath the plant. 2) Trim any branches that were growing into the dirt and 3) Adding a thin wire around the bottom of the cages to dissuade the Manchester Terrier from poking in the plant. However, I started to have nerve issues running from my hip down to my foot (my wife says it's the sciatic nerve) and I had to stop. Fortunately by Sunday that problem went away.

On Friday, Yellow Perfection began to lean. In essence it became so top heavy, the weight of the branches out the top of the cage pulled the plant to the northeast. On Sunday I took two six foot stakes and hammered them in on opposite sides of the outside of the cages. Then I took tomato tape and began corralling the branches. Lastly, I tomato taped the two stakes together to provide additional support.

I continued with tomato taping other tomato plants. Taping the branches also means that training the plants will begin to fade away. In essence, I've run out of room to stuff branches inside the cage and/or they've grown out the top of the cage and these branches need corralling.

While taping, I noticed that in the back yard, Pierce's Pride has a tomato and in the front yard, Dr. Wyche's Yellow has a tomato.

My wife watered the back yard (including the tomato plants) on Sunday morning.

We visited our friends, Liz and Ricardo, and saw the seedlings that we planted a few weeks ago. They're doing great! They didn't use cages and now they have branch sprawl...but that's a good problem to have. It appears that every tomato plant they have in the ground has a tomato on it. Great job!

As a parting gift Liz gave us a Patio Princess tomato seedling. Another tomato plant to manage!

We were going to transplant Marz Round Green in to the front yard but my wife and I couldn't find the time.