Taking a break during a drizzle (it’s not RAIN, and I doubt it’ll turn into it either), I piled up a few leftovers from Friday’s tomato harvest. The mid- and main-season toms aren’t yet ready, so we picked what we could, and didn’t keep track amongst the 50+ varieties. Still, I can recognize most of ’em. There are smaller and larger heirloom Striped Germans (yellow with a beautiful red blush), the large round one in front is Polfast, a new early hybrid that isn’t behaving that early, the smaller reds are Stupice, there are a couple of red cherries, sliding in on the left is Tangerine, and more… Notably absent are the black tomatoes (Cherokee Purple, Black Krim and the others), with their distinctive deep green to earthy red coloring—the few that were ready were sold or eaten! The little yellow cherry tom nestled in the middle on the left was actually given to me yesterday at the market; called Garden Peach, it has a fuzzy peach-like texture, and great taste (I had a couple!). If I can’t find it in the catalogs, I’ll save the seed and hope for the best.
Our tomato harvest in Fort Worth was in middle June to late July but with all the rain–40 inches mostly May through July–the fruit was watery and the bugs easily got to it….a lot ended up in sauce with less really good tasting for eating. Not that we didn’t have our fill, and we were able to give some away to family and neighbors, but just not the spectacular season for tomatoes. Now the heat is over 100 and the tomatoes have shut down…just waiting for cooler weather to cut them back and try to coax the second season out of the vines.
Steve: Those long seasons you have way down south kill me! :) I’d take just one good extra month of summer right about now…then again, with the weird weather, global warming, whatever, I just may get it!