Tomato 2022

[ducks4you]

I'm good with volunteers!
Still, it would be nice to have cherries early, bc that's the point of growing cherries--Early tomatoes to eat.
Thx for the advice!

 

[heirloomgal]

we've only grown Romas and yep, i didn't much like them either. without the snot/juice you don't get as much umami. perhaps there are some varieties which are better? i don't know, i'm not a tomato expert.

S.....juice!?

 

[flowerbug]

S.....juice!?

some people really do call the gunk that surrounds the seeds in the more juicy tomatoes snot and they will remove it from the tomato before eating it, but that is were the flavor is at.

 

[flowerbug]

i picked three full buckets this morning. going to get started on them in a few minutes as i know as the day goes on i'll want to do it less and less and the temperature is more reasonable. also since i'm a tightwad the electric rates are lower now too.

 

[Artorius]

I love heart-shaped tomatoes. Several from Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Sprint-Taymer


Ogromniye Zheltiye ot Borisovny


Chudo Zemli Ukrainskoye


Zheltiye Grebeshki


Chernoye Serdtse s Nosikom ot Borisovny


Zailiyskiy Alatau Zheltiy


Gopak

 

[flowerbug]

I love heart-shaped tomatoes. Several from Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

for me i don't care as much what they look like as compared to the flavor. ok, i do admit that the brainlike tomatoes we get sometimes in the beefsteaks do leave me desiring a more simple outline as it makes them much easier to process than the brains...

you find me a heart shaped tomato that tastes like a beefsteak and i'd be happy to try it out.

 

[flowerbug]

i thought there might be 6-8 buckets out there but i brought in 11-13, so the next two days will be busy putting them up.

just waiting for the water to get hot enough and i can start dunking the first three buckets.

 

[flowerbug]

picked three buckets of tomatoes yesterday and we had two and half buckets finishing up on the patio chair that i could bring in and process so getting all those done yesterday was the main task of the afternoon and evening (with a break in between batches to give my body a rest).

this went faster than Friday's processing because we had fewer brains (complicated tomatoes) so i didn't need to spend quite as much time cutting and finding all the stuff that shouldn't be there. also Mom did help (as she did Friday) so that makes it go faster as she can work on the simpler tomatoes while i go through the messy ones. we both finished cutting at the same time even if in terms of quantity it comes out that she got through about 2/3rds of the tomatoes while i did 1/3. she says i have a lot of patience, but to me it's a matter of trying not to waste things we've put an effort into growing and if i can get it done i will. the messy tomatoes also tended to be the ones that were more ripe so they went well with the just ripe ones that i picked to make a nice blend. it all works out.

i'll check everything again in a few days. raccoon damage hasn't been nearly as bad as i feared it might be. haven't looked yet this morning. have to bury scraps from processing so i'll check for anything i should bury on the way out to get the pail emptied when we get a break in the rains.

 

[digitS']

Tomatoes are so late this year!

What a combination of impediments for the plants . 1) very little sunlight during early Spring for greenhouse starts, 2) a very cool May and much of June after the plants had been transplanted out, 3) flea beetle attack that had to be fought off, 4) exceptionally hot Summer weather that must have interfered with fruit development.

The plants look absolutely fine, despite all of this and the severe hailstorm event. Luckily, most of the fruit was small and presented a smaller target to the quarter-size hail.

The only variety that has been loaded with fruit in the recent 7/10 days has been the Yellow Jellybean, and that is only the backyard Jellybean, a more protected environment than the open garden.

We have already passed the August days when the garden has experienced a light frost in earlier years. No chance of that anytime soon - more HOT days!

It's okay for the harvest - there are toooo many big plants in total and the kitchen table is becoming loaded with fruit that need to find a home in the freezer.

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

Tomatoes are so late this year!
...

today i was buying some green peppers (Mom wants to make more stuffed peppers and we're out in our patch) from a produce stand that sits outside the barn of a friend of ours. in talking to the guy who runs it he mentioned that he has 6,000 tomato plants and that he buys seeds for them at the price of $0.25 each. but that is all asides to the fact that he said his tomatoes were late this year too and that he can't fill orders because they're not ripening fast enough. he also said that in talking to others they're facing a similar issue.

for us normal ripening usually kicks in about mid-August and the past few weeks have worked out ok for me getting enough tomatoes at one time to make processing worth it. i'll be picking again tomorrow.

we talked for a few minutes and he mentioned a few things, like removing fruits from plants to encourage larger fruits and just discarding anything that looked like it wasn't a perfect round tomato. i'm like, noway can i do that!