The Last of the Tomatoes

Picked the last of the tomatoes Saturday in the rain

Here's why.

Awoke to a chill vista this morning. Brrr...

Here are the tomatoes:

Way cool MutantMater - front and rear views.

The Tomatoes Are Finally Ripening

Black tomatoes, an heirloom variety, either Krim or Black From Tula.

Better Boys, my insurance tomato.

Sun Sugar, best cherry tomato ever.

TOMATOES!

Guess what we're having for dinner tonight.

And tomorrow night,

and the next night,

and the next...

The State of the Garden

The tomato plants in the raised bed are as high as an elephant's eye.

But all the tomatoes are still green.

The Spicy Globe Basil is ready -- I snipped off all the flowers after I took this picture.

Looks like we will actually be having a grape harvest this year.

Two full size peppers - picked one.

And in the 5 gallon pot, Silvery Fir Leaf Tomato, a determinant, has a couple of ripe fruits. I ate them and they were good.

First Tomatoes

It's been a late year because of a long, cool spring, but the first of the Sun Sugars are finally ready.

The Tomato Report

Believe it or not, I have some tomatoes left from the garden. I took these pictures this afternoon.

True, they don't taste like fresh off the vine summer tomatoes, but they're still better than the damp reddish styrofoam jobbers you can buy at the grocery store.
Though there are a bunch of the small gold Sun Sugar tomatoes left, most of them were looking rather withered. The Engineer's been bugging me to pickle some, so I did. We'll see how they come out.

And I owe Kate a bit of an apology. She came over for dinner last week to sample the red lentil stew and I forgot to add tomatoes to the salad. Now I have to think of a good bribe so she'll forgive me.

Goodbye Cold World

It was cold and wet, a combination of rain and sleet, not pleasant weather for picking the last of the tomatoes. I picked until my fingers wouldn't bend any more. Got a bunch of 'em.We had a week of unseasonably warm weather between the snowstorms, and it fooled the plants into thinking they should grow and set fruit again. I have many itty bitty eggplants and Armenian cucumbers. The cukes set on in the cooler weather but don't enlarge. Patty pan squash bloom, but don't seem to get pollinated, so the female blossoms turn brown at the end before they can even start growing.

The Engineer has gone on a pickling craze. He likes the Runge pickles so much that he wants me to try pickling everything, especially all of those green cherry tomatoes.

I did the last few Armenian cucumbers last night, so I guess if any of the little tomatoes are still firm when I get home from my trip, I'll give them a try.

But tomorrow I fly south-east, (Warm!) Until the first of November, this blog will lie quiescent.

Bye for now. See you in a couple of weeks.

Blossom End Rot

It's been hot, hot, hot, but the raised bed veggies seem to be happy with it. Good thing since the WeatherLiar predicts more of the same and no rain. Fortunately we're fairly high up on the side of the mountain bench, so it doesn't stay as hot at night as it does down in the Salt Lake valley and tomatoes are still setting on.

I put black soaker hose in the raised beds and covered them with mulch. Even with the temperatures in the 100's, I've only had to run the hose once every five or six days. None of my little green tomatoes have blossom end rot, It's amazing how well the stuff I filled the beds with holds the water.
Since I don't have any blossom end rot for a demo photo, I snitched this picture from the University of Georgia web site. Pretty much anyone who's grown tomatoes has seen this ugly sight.

I've heard lots of theories about what causes blossom end rot and have tried all of the assorted cures for it. My highly scientific observations (do paper cocktail bar matches or wooden kitchen matches work better as a source of sulfur? -- or was that for peppers? do eggshells really help? or topical calcium spray?) have lead me to conclude that root development and moisture are what really make the difference when growing tomatoes.

Consider that most tomatoes are grown as transplants in relatively small containers. Though good practice is to remove the lower leaves and plant the tomato deep so that roots can form along the buried stem, it takes a while for those roots to form.

Because of this, I resist the temptation to allow the early blossoms to set tomatoes. I snip them all off.

At the point when I don't notice any midday wilting on the plants, I start allowing the blossoms to fruit. By then the plants have developed enough roots to support the growing fruits and, voila!, no blossom end rot.

I definitely don't get the earliest fruit around (I have a friend who's usually picking a few by the end of March; he's a fanatic), but I have fewer throwaways than most folks.

Once the tomatoes start to color up, I will post some photos, but until then, here are a couple of other garden denizens. The sugarbaby on the right's grown since its first picture two days ago. (Yay, hurray!)

For those of you interested in more scientific information about tomato problems, a friend of mine just had an article published in the Salt Lake Tribune. She's a county extension agent and college horticulture professor, so she knows her stuff.

The Garden Is Growing

For the most part. Only the beans seem truly unhappy. I planted four short rows of bush beans and four trellis feet of pole beans. None of the pole beans have sprouted and only a very few of the bush beans. I think I'm going to sprout some between paper towels this week and put them into the garden as soon as the tips of their roots begin to show. See if I can get a decent stand that way.

The sugar baby watermelon are doing very well and have cute tiny babies to show. The squash and cucumbers are up, the cucumbers starting to vine. The horseradish I transplanted is recovering and putting out green leaves. The shallots, however, are suffering from being laid on by cats. Why cats like to lay on the shallots, I don't know, but they seem to find them a delightful bed.

The tomato plants are finally starting to take off and the first Black Prince (a Russian heirloom variety) is setting.
I have basil to go with the tomatoes.













Of course the bindweed is trying to make a go of it too.