Do You See What I See?
This past weekend we had some storms roll through our area. I decided it would be wise to tie up the tomato plants to make sure none of them would blow over with the high winds. While tying them up I noticed that a few of them had tiny blooms forming!
I don’t know about you, but the first tomato blossom is really exciting around here. So far the plants I’ve noticed blooms on are: Constoluto Genovese, Principe Borghese, Pompeii, and Zapotec Pleated.
Any tomatoes blooming in your garden?
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Official 2010 Tomato List
I’ve finally planted my tomatoes and have a final list for the 2010 growing season. I was hoping to grow around 10 different types, but the wonderful selection got the best of me again. My final list includes 15 varieties (10 fewer than last year).
I’m growing some of the ones I grew last year and a few new varieties as well. Here’s the official list. New Varieties for 2010 are:
Goldman’s Italian American – Unique, beautiful and large tomatoes that have a squat, pear shape, being ribbed and pleated. These have a bloody, intense red color when ripe. Thick, red flesh is perfect for delicious sauces and preserves. Found at a Roadside stand in Italy, by Amy Goldman and named after her father’s grocery store in Brooklyn. This variety has good flavor, fresh or canned.
Winterkeeper – 10 oz. fruits, solid green until storage then turn a pale yellow outside and red inside.
Lemon Boy – A popular hybrid tomato, particularly with commercial growers, known for its uniform, lemon-yellow colored fruit which generally grow to about eight ounces. Borne in clusters, the fruits are a treat to the eyes and have a nice mild, sweet, tomato flavor. The plants are vigorous and are resistant to several common tomato pests so they are quite easy to grow. The vines also tend to be quite productive. Maturity: 72-75 Days, Determinate
Chianti Rose – Big, beautiful heirloom beefsteak with fabulous flavor: a cross of traditional pink Brandywine and an unnamed Italian variety. More tolerant of cool summers; crack-resistant. (from Renee’s Garden)
Super Bush Container Tomato – This scrumptious hybrid is specially bred for high yields of heavy fruits with juicy-sweet, rich tomato flavor on space-saving 3 foot plants. Perfect for pots and patio containers. (from Renee’s Garden)
Italian Pompeii – Tall and productive Italian hybrid vining variety, loads up early with heavy harvests of meaty, rich-flavored plum tomatoes for fresh eating or sauce. (from Renee’s Garden)
Amish Paste – This large, meaty heirloom was discovered in Wisconsin although it hails from the Pennsylvania Amish. It has a superior taste, brilliant with a nice balance of sweet and acid. Excellent fresh or in sauces.
Varieties that are the same as last year:
Principe Borghese – The Italian heirloom that is famous for sun drying. Small 1-2 oz. grape-shaped fruit are very dry and have few seeds. They have a rich tomato taste that is wonderful for sauces. Determinate vines yield clusters of fruit in abundance, perfect for selling in fresh markets and making specialty products. Determinate, 70-75 days.
Zapotec Pleated Tomatoes – (Lycopersicon esculentum) Rare/Traditional. Named for its creators, the Zapotec people of Oaxaca, the pink fruits are large, with ruffles like a pleated dress. They can be stuffed and baked like a bell pepper, or served raw. Sow seed in flats indoors and plant out in garden in 6-8 weeks when all danger of frost has passed. Plant in rows 24-36 inches apart. Needs trellising. Harvesting tips. Pick individual fruits as they ripen. When frost threatens, entire plant can be lifted, including roots, and hung upside down indoors to ripen remaining fruits. (Soil Temp. for Germ.: 70-85°F, Days to Germ.: 10-14, Plant Spacing: 2′-3′, Days to Maturity: 80-85, Full Sun/Moderate Water)
San Marzano Tomato – For canning, paste, and a killer spaghetti sauce, it’s hard to beat ‘San Marzano’, a sought-after heirloom from the Campania region of southern Italy. A highly prized Italian heirloom tomato for its fruit with firm pulp and thick skin, used in the concentrate industry as well as for canning ‘peeled’ tomatoes. This is truly the Italian standard for sauce and paste and a heavy producer. The fruit are long, often mistaken for large peppers from a distance. Fleshy with few seeds, often with ‘dry’ seed cavities, and with an authentic flavor that will take you back to Italy. A vigorous grower (we couldn’t believe the size of the harvests even in zone 5), vines start bearing later in the summer but then come on fast and furiously, producing heavy, 3½-inch-long tapered fruits in clusters of five or six. ‘San Marzano’ is low in sugar and acid, which gives it superior flavor when cooked. The vigorous plants are extremely prolific and produce until the first hard frost. Indeterminate, 80 days.
Cherokee Purple – Given to heirloom tomato collector Craig LeHoullier by J. D. Green of Tennessee, it is at least 100 years old and was reported as originally grown by the Cherokee Indians. The fruits are large (twelve to sixteen ounces), dark pink with darker purple shoulders. Excellent complex flavor, slight sweet aftertaste, perfect slicer for tomato sandwiches! Try this one for real old-time tomato flavor. Indeterminate, 80 days.
Costoluto Genovese – The Costoluto Genovese tomato is an old Italian preserving tomato variety. It’s heavily lobed and often convoluted shape is indicative of early nineteenth century tomato varieties, but makes an oddity in today’s vegetable garden. The Costoluto Genovese’s stellar flavor is intense and acidic. Because of its odd shape, this tomato is best for sauces and pastes where the skin is removed. This indeterminate variety should be started indoors six to eight weeks before the last spring frost. Sow one-quarter inch deep in flats or pots, keeping the soil mix moist, not soggy. When several leaves have developed, harden off seedlings and transplant eighteen to thirty-six inches apart in the garden. Full sun. Has ribbed fruits, about 5 – 7 ounces, Indeterminate, 90 days.
Brandywine Tomato – 80-100 days, indeterminate – It is by far one of the best known heirloom tomato varieties. There is a lot of lore surrounding the ‘Brandywine’ category of tomatoes. Reportedly it is an old Amish heirloom, dating back to 1885 and named after Brandywine Creek in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The disease tolerant, regular leaf plants yield fruits that are red, globe shaped, and full of flavor.
White Beauty – Plant produces good yields of 8 oz creamy white tomatoes. Tomatoes are very sweet and meaty. It is creamy white inside and outside, with few seeds! Add color to gourmet dishes, or make a white spaghetti sauce! Creamy white, meaty and delicious, most about a half pound. Indeterminate, 85 days.
Sub-Arctic Plenty or World’s Earliest – One of the very earliest tomatoes, the compact plants produce lots of 2 oz red fruit. It one of the best for cool conditions and will set fruit in lower temperatures than most. It has even been grown in the Southern Yukon. Developed by Dr. Harris, Beaverlodge Research Station, Alberta, Canada. 49-59 days.
I started my tomatoes a few weeks ago and earlier this week I repotted them into larger containers. They’ve been living on the front porch and are thriving. It looks like the temps will get down into the 40’s one night later this week which means I’ll be carrying them all into the garage overnight. I might move my cold frame and put them in it so I don’t have to carry them in and out again.
What’s your 2010 tomato list look like?
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The First Tomato Seedling of 2010
Exciting things are happening in the Chiot’s Run basement seed starting headquarters. On Saturday morning while working in the basement, I spotted the first tomato seedling of 2010. Can you guess what kind it is?*
This is when that new macro lens Mr Chiots got me for Christmas comes in handy, I never would have been able to get this close with my other lens. It’s a thing of beauty, since I was working in the basement so I caught it before it even fully emerged from the soil and stood up. I had just checked them that morning and didn’t see anything, later that afternoon there was a tiny speck of green.
I still haven’t started all of my tomato seeds yet, that will happen this week when I can leave the flats on the front porch to warm (it’s supposed to be in the high 60’s). Of course I ended up with more variates than I wanted to grow, but fewer than last year. I’ll give you the full list when I start them.
Do you have any tomatoes growing yet?
*It’s a San Marzano
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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?
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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?
