This morning's harvest includes 15 Red Currants, 4 Husky Cherry Reds, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 2 Piccolos, 2 undersized Garden Peaches, a Jaune Flamme, Kimberly and Salisaw Cafe.
A couple of Red Yellow Cap tomatoes are ripening as well as Stupice and Gregori's Altai.
The tallest tomato plant right now appears to be...Evan's Italian Plum!
I have to do some more tomato taping.
Today's morning haul: 23 Red Currants, 5 Salisaw Cafes, 4 Husky Cherry Reds, 3 Cherokee Chocolates, 2 Black Plum Pastes, a Red Robin, Prairie Fire, Taxi and Green Grape tomatoes.
41 tomatoes overall. This date last year (no joke) 359 tomatoes. I believe the picture at the top of the KCRW posting of my interview with Evan Kleiman is an image from that day.
My wife started wondering last evening about this disparity. The only thing I can say is that we were at “high tide” this time last year while this year, the tide is still coming in. For instance, last year I started harvesting Jeff Davis on July 3. This year the plant looks great but there's not even a tomato on it yet due to the late planting.
Today (July 8) is Jim's (my brother) and Evie's first wedding anniversary.
Congratulations Jim and Evie!!!
I have a plant labeled Cherokee Chocolate...but it clearly isn't Cherokee Chocolate. Cherokee Chocolate a typical beefsteak in size and obviously a dark brown color. An image can be found here.
The original plant came from the Encino Tomatomania event.
A picture of the plant I'm growing can be found here.
What am I growing? It appears to be a red cherry tomato of some type. The tomato is shaped like a tiny pineapple for lack of a better analogy, about ¾ inches tall, flat top, more rounded bottom, taller than it is wide. I've seen several images on the net that look like it, but there's nothing I've seen where I go “That's it!”. At times a Juliet tomato looks a lot like this tomato, but Juliets get too big. This picture of Grape tomato is close, but the tomato I'm growing is a bit more squat than that. This picture of a Sprite tomato is fairly close, especially with the mottled tomato in the lower center whose color could be mistaken for brown but is in fact a day or two away from full red maturity. But there are too many tomatoes per cluster for it to be Sprite.
Sooooo....I don't know what I'm growing, but it isn't what the label indicated.
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.
The morning's harvest included 18 Red Currants, 5 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Black Plum Pastes, 2 Piccolos, a six ounce Aunt Ruby's German Green, a Husky Cherry Red, Paul Robeson and Prairie Fire. Not a large harvest for July.
Last night I saw our Manchester Terrier with another unripe tomato. Eventually, he ate it.
When I came home this evening, I found a half dozen tomatoes had been knocked down in our front yard. A couple of Big Rainbow tomatoes, one about a half pound and another a little less, had been knocked off or picked off and dropped on our driveway. Other smaller tomatoes were knocked off as well, either other Big Rainbows or Thessalonikis. It was clearly deliberate damage, for whatever purpose or reason.
I brought almost all of the tomatoes picked over the last two days to our computer user group board meeting. By the end of the meeting they were all gone!
I didn't pick tomatoes on the 5th. Today I harvested tomatoes first thing in the morning.
Today I picked 42 Red Currants, 9 Black Plum Pastes, 4 Husky Cherry Reds, 4 Cherokee Chocolates, 3 Red Robins, 2 Piccolos, 2 Salisaw Cafes, 2 Green Grapes, a Paul Robeson, Jaune Flamme, Prairie Fire, a leathery Taxi (which my wife threw away – the Taxi tomato plant may be done), White Bush, Golden Jubilee and two new tomatoes, Sioux and Kimberly!
From now on, I'll try to harvest in the morning.
On July 4, I harvested during the midday sun. I picked 29 Red Currants, 6 Husky Cherry Reds, 2 Black Plum Pastes, a Thessaloniki and a new tomato, 2 Lime Green Salads!
We tried the Aunt Ruby's German Green and Zhezha tomatoes and we liked them both. The two Big Rainbow tomatoes were deemed to be overripe and were discarded.
My wife took all the harvested tomatoes and cut them up for a caprese salad. We brought the salad and other foodstuffs over for a picnic at the Hollywood Bowl. My wife's parents and our neighbors came as well. A good time was had by all!
