One very small garden

Spotted today.

Yes, it this tomato plant is growing out of a crack in the sidewalk. It's about a foot and a half tall and it is bearing!

Tomato Overload!

Isn't it glorious?

I've pretty much decided not to grow Black Princes or Black Krims next year. They are handsome tomatoes--such a lovely, smooth mahogany--but they're quite bland and a bit grainy. I thought initially that it might be the cooler weather, but heat hasn't improved their flavor.

Incidentally, most of the folks I give tomatoes to have figured this out as well. The lumpy, bumpy Brandywines, Brandy Boys, and Great Whites with their odd cracks and fissures go instantly. The Princes and Krims go--eventually.

And the cherry tomatoes? Need you ask? Sun Cherry and Sun Sugar are instant hits wherever I take them. The Black Cherries don't get given away. In fact, they don't always even make it into the house. There are some advantages to being the gardener!

More Garden Pictures

Because I am crazy about my garden!

Red Gold Cherry tomatoes ripening. With this recent burst of hot weather, I've got a lot to gather.

You know how you're supposed to let the beans use the sunflowers for support? This flower has been swallowed up! Fortunately for both, there's a nice, sturdy trellis behind them.

Garden goodness: Tomatoes

So far, seven of the eight varieties we planted have produced tasty ripe fruit. Now we have the rest of the summer to spend a) Running around finding neighbors who want tomatoes₍₁₎ and b)Deciding which varieties to grow next year and which ones to give up on. The verdict so far:

The cherry tomatoes:

1) Black cherry: Yum. Rich, complex, and earthy. Definitely a keeper.

2) Sun cherry: Sweet, sweet, sweet, but with a nice tang to make it refreshing as well.

3) Sun sugar: Also sweet. Allegedly, it's even sweeter than the Sungold, but I'm not sure I can tell the relative difference between the red cherry (a red sungold) and the sun cherry itself.

Both are good, but I think one or the other will take care of the sweet tooth. Certainly we're always going to have a Sungold of some sort around.

Bigger tomatoes:

1) Black Prince: It's a lovely tomato--deep, deep mahogany and perfectly round, but it's not that impressive taste-wise. I mean, it beats the store-bought tomatoes by a mile, but it can't hold a candle to the Brandywine and Brandy Boy.

2) Great White: This one is a surprise! It is a lovely ivory color, somewhat smoother than the Brandy Boy, and very delicately flavored, low-acid and slightly sweet. I'm voting to grow it again.

3) Yellow Brandywine: Bumpy, lumpy, and sunny yellow. Also, it tastes exactly like a tomato. I know--as descriptions go, it's not very helpful, but it really is the essential tomato. Absolutely I am growing Brandywines again. I don't know how I ever got through the summers without them.

4) Brandy Boy: Supposedly, this is "just like" the Brandywine, only smaller and more productive. These are good, definitely, but--I don't think they're quite as good as the Brandywines. Probably I should do a blindfolded taste test before giving my final verdict. Probably I won't, even though I admit to a slight bias toward the word "heirloom."

I miss: Bi-Colored Marvels. I first grew those last year & only got a few tomatoes off the bush because the Brandywine fell on it (This years cages are custom-made, ten feet tall, and very strong), but they were delightful--quite as tasty as the Brandywines and stained-glass beautiful.

Still in the running: Zebra tomatoes. I had a terrible time telling when the green zebras were ripe, so I'll try red next time, but I did like their strong, distinctive flavoring.

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(1) This is not necessarily going to be difficult. I took a bunch in to church today and was a little uncertain how well people would respond to the lumpy, bumpy, irregular Brandy Boys. They were gone in seconds. The cherry tomatoes took only a little longer to disappear (and only because there were more of them). People were snacking on them then and there as well as taking some home for later. I have more now, though, that need to find new homes.

First Fruits

There are now 8 kinds of tomato growing in the garden. They're just now starting to ripen. These are the black cherry, sun sugar, and redgold cherry tomatoes.



Only a bowlful so far, but I think there will be mountains ultimately!




Also harvested and ate some of the Painted Lady Runner beans. I forgot to take a picture of the pods , but they're over a foot long! I haven't, I confess, ever grown green beans before and I picked these because of their name and the little blurb on the back of the package--apparently they've been grown since the nineteenth century. It's probably not the best-approved way to choose your crops, but they are both beautiful and tasty and the hummingbirds like them, so I'll call it a success.

Gardening--Global Buckets and Tomatoes

One of the houses I pass when out walking has a tiny yard, but the owners have made the most of it. The steps up to the doorway are lined with buckets full of gorgeous tomato plants. I've admired them for weeks now--I can grow tomatoes in our raised bed, but any attempts to grow them in pots has led to scraggly, stunted plants with stunted tomatoes.  It drives me bats!

Anyway, last week, the house owner was there, and she not only gave me a couple of the tomatoes (yum!) but told me that she was using the method described at globalbuckets.org. It's a promising-looking technique that should help keep the tomatoes regularly and evenly watered. I do wish that the brothers had written out their instructions rather than putting them solely on a video, but that is a minor quibble.  I'm definitely going to try their method next year.

Tomatoes!

Every year, for three seasons of the year, we buy those pink, plastic, pseudo-tomatoes at the grocery store, the ones you put in salads to add a little color or on hamburgers because hamburgers should have tomatoes on them.

And I think they are pretty much pointless, and the only reason for tomatoes is tradition.

And then each summer, we grow tomatoes, and I realize that, after all, tomatoes are really tasty, and I really like them.

This year, we have tomatoes early because a great, sprawling, and by now kind of ugly and out of control, vine of them lived through the winter, and it has started to produce and ripen. They aren't the best tomatoes we ever grew, but they are tomatoes, real tomatoes with real flavor.

So there's a reason we keep them around.