Planning My 2010 Tomato List
If you were reading this blog last year about this time you’ll remember that I grew around 25 different varieties of tomatoes last summer (here’s the list). I had great intentions of doing photos post reviews of each kind, but I got too busy in the garden tending that many plants to have time to make the posts.
This year I’m trying to keep my list at about 10-12 different varieties. I’ll be growing San Marzano for sure, these will be my main canning tomato. Principe Borghese will be grown at Chiot’s Run until I can no longer garden. They’re most wonderful little tomatoes to dry and add to just about any meal.
I’ll be growing another variety or two of paste tomato, I haven’t decided on the variety yet (any suggestions). Of course I’ll be growing a few eating tomatoes for eating fresh off the vine: a Brandywine variety (perhaps pink), Cherokee Purple, Sub-Arctic and Silvery Fir Tree (which will be new to the garden this year).
I could grow the same tomatoes year after year, but with so many wonderful heirloom varieties out there I want to try as many as I can. I’m going to try to add a few new varieties each year. I would like to try a current type tomato and a cherry since they ripen early and provide that fresh from the garden tomato so much earlier than the bigger varieties. I’ve been leafing through catalogs trying to nail down what kinds I’d like to try. I really need to buy The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World’s Most Beautiful Fruit to keep as a reference when I’m trying to decide what kinds of heirloom tomatoes to grow each year.
Have you narrowed down your list of tomatoes for 2010? What kinds are you growing?
Filed under Edible, Tomato | Comments (41)Book Report: Heirloom, Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer
“What taste I got of the kind of farming I would eventually embrace came on the mornings I helped Jimmy and Mildred King, the couple from Mississippi who have moved into Milt’s farmhouse, clear a tree-strewn patch of rocky, sloped Eckerton land. With nothing more than a shovel, they had turned every square inch of the half acre their house was situated on into a lush vegetable garden. But before Jinny could get this shovel to break the surface of the ground we made available to him, he had to clear out hundreds of trees, stumps, and rocks the size of radial tires. It was Mildred and Jimmy who first turned me on to fresh-out-of-the-ground carrots, sweet potatoes in need of no sugar, tender okra, lettuce with identifiable flavor, peas direct from Valhalla. Mildred’s basement full of canned vegetables, too. Pickled garden-fresh beets were my favorite. I would slurp the purple vinegar from the softened nuggets and then devour the tangy earth-flavored flesh. Mildred gave me some jars of pickled beets in exchange for my labor.”
-Tim Stark, Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer
Since we talked about winter reading lists yesterday, I thought I’d recommend adding Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer to your list. It’s a fantastic book about gardening and life. It’s filled with lots of laughs and a few touching moments. Tim, the author, fell in love with heirloom tomatoes while living in New York, these tomatoes took up all the space in his tiny apartment and finally the landlord made him move them. He planted on his family’s land and ended up with a glut of tomatoes, which he decided to sell at the farmer’s market. This book will be a wonderful read for anyone that enjoys gardening. Tim stories of weeding, groundhogs, tractors and mud will lift your spirits during these cold winter months when working in the garden is impossible.
What kind of books do you usually read in the winter? Gardening books, or novels?
Filed under Books, Tomato | Comments (3)Picking the Green Tomatoes
On Sunday afternoon I went out and picked all of the green tomatoes. I ended up with 3 boxes of them. They’ll all be on shelves in the basement soon, slowly ripening into a shadow of what they would have become if we had more warm sunny weather. They’ll still be quite delicious in soups and stews though, so there’s no reason not to pick them and use them up. Not to mention they’ll probably add 30 lbs to my October harvest totals!
I think green tomatoes are really beautiful. In fact I almost like them more than when they’re colorful and ripe.
One reason I have this blog is to keep track of my gardening schedule. I noticed I blogged about picking my green tomatoes last year on October 19. They were made into green tomato chutney last year, but since I still have a lot of that left from last year, these tomatoes will be eaten slowly as they ripen.
What do you do with green tomatoes?
Filed under Edible, Harvest Keepers Challenge, Tomato | Comments (23)The Last Ripe Tomatoes of the Season
This past week I went out and picked the last ripe tomatoes of the season. With lows in the mid 30′s tonight I think it’s the end of tomato season. I still have some green ones to get out and pick later today, but I don’t think I’ll find any more red ones on the vines.
These tomatoes aren’t as tasty as the ones that ripen in the warm August weather, but they’re still better than the supermarket variety! I’m very sad to see tomato season over, it seems like it flies by so fast.
Have your tomatoes come and gone, or do you still have some in the garden?
Filed under Edible, Tomato, harvest | Comments (17)Vote for Me
I just noticed on the Fennel & Fern blog that one of my pictures is in the running in their contest. Head on over there and vote for me. I had no idea until today that they had chosen one of my photos, is is one of my favorites from this summer.
Do you have a favorite photo from you garden this summer? If so post it on your blog or photo sharing site and add the link to the comments, I’d love to see them.
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