harveyc

Having pretty warm weather now, mid-90s today. Picked quite a few of my smaller tomatoes this evening, including Sungold F1, Black Cherry, Magalia Rosa, and Blush. Tasted great with dinner!

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venturabananas

I'm so jealous. I have lots of small, green tomatoes, but not even a hint of ripening yet.

So, which one did you like best?

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harveyc

All of them were quite good and the single Black Cherry and Magalia Rosa (most red elongated tomato) were shared between myself with my wife and dad so I'd like more tasting. I ate a couple of the blush (the other elongated ones) and they were quite good. I like the Sungold but they do have a thicker skin so far. The Black Cherry tasted better than I expected since I wasn't sure if it was even ripe yet since this is the first year I've grown it. My dad commented that it was very good and he's very much a traditionalist so I wasn't sure if he would like many of these. I've got some pretty large (8 ounce?) tomatoes of other varieties without any coloring up in those, but maybe that will come along pretty soon with this warm weather.

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Starwanderer

Congratulations to him!

And congratulations to both of you for what looks like a great tomato growing setup. A lot of effort I'm sure, but well worth it.

I got my plants out pretty late this year, so I have yet to see or taste any ripe fruit of my own yet, but at least I can see your pictures until mine starts coming in. I'm only growing seven varieties, so very small scale compared to you.

Learned something too. I'd never heard of grafting tomatoes before. How cool!

Best of luck to both of you.

harveyc

Okay, things are picking up now. Picked about 10 pounds of tomatoes today including my first Brandywine of the year (from a plant that was grafted onto Maxifort rootstock, I believe):

Brandwine weighed in at 0.73 pounds




Besides Brandywine, included here are New Girl, Black Cherry, Sungold F1, Blush Cherry (elongated yellow), Magalia Rosa (elongated light red), and Striped Roman.

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venturabananas

Nice harvest. Still jealous. I've harvested a grand total of two cherry tomatoes: Sungold and Snow White. Lot's of greenies. Just need to keep fighting back the fungus long enough to get a decent harvest of ripe fruit.

Good work. Getting enough to sell them yet?

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GreenFin

Ha, I'm in the same boat: I just picked my first two (a couple of small grape tomatoes) yesterday.

I can't actually stomach tomatoes. I really wish I could. I test a bite from a couple every year just to check to see if my taste buds have come to their senses yet, but they always make me gag. Crazy thing is that I absolutely love ketchup, salsa, and other tomato-based products (sans V8, which is just gross).

I'm growing tomatoes as a windblock for outdoor bananas and papayas: I've got tomato cages along the perimeter of about a 30'x30' square that creates a thick wall of vegetative protection for the plants in the square that don't like our constant 20-80 MPH winds beating on them all day every day. I've got sweet corn in there now that's just coming ripe (ate the first ear yesterday), and when it's done in a couple of weeks I'm going to start planting pups there. The plan is to then put up a greenhouse around it before winter.

/ramble

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Set out runnin', but I'll take my time; a friend of bananas is a friend of mine.

www.GreenFinGardens.com

harveyc

Yeah, we've got enough for five $10 orders plus some for sharing and ourselves.

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harveyc

Today's harvest.

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harveyc

Here are orders Michael is delivering to his Boy Scout meeting tonight.

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Starwanderer

Nice! What's the black variety in the lower left corner of the box on the right?

harveyc

The tomato in the lower left hand corner of the box on the right is Amazon Chocolate (on top are Black Cherry). I think I may have picked it a day or two early although it was already feeling pretty soft. With so many new varieties this year I've got a bit of a learning curve to deal with for myself and also am going to have to supervise Michael closely.

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Starwanderer

Thanks. Very nice. I figured the ones at the top were Black Cherry. Those are pretty recognizable to me as I grow them too.

I'm growing a few different black and purple varieties this year. I may have to get seeds for Amazon Chocolate for next year. Nice looking tomato.

harveyc

Had a pretty good time on Father's Day spending a little bit of the day picking tomatoes with Michael.

Saw a big carpenter bee visiting the Sungold F1 flowers:





Picked some Green Zebra today

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harveyc

Some of today's harvest. Also had 20 pounds of Sungold. The big yellow/orange one in the upper right is supposedly Orange Strawberry or maybe Dawson's Oxheart, weighed 1.28 pounds.

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Brian

Nice. Are you growing any Indigo Rose? Mine seem to be carrying a lot of fruit.

harveyc

No, that's not one we're growing. I thought about it but found some comments that made it sound like maybe the flavor wasn't very impressive. I look forward to hearing on how it does for you and maybe we'll add it this year. There are some already that I'm culling from our list.

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Brian

Yes, I think I read the same comments somewhere about flavor. Still I got curious. Besides that I'm just doing SunGold which does very well for me, Green Grape, and Mt. Vesuvius. Honestly, there might be a problem because if the Indigo Rose was ever totally blue it would be hard to tell when it's ripe.

harveyc

Have been a bit too busy lately to take photos and update the thread. Harvest has been going pretty strong for the past three weeks now with over 500 pounds of fruit harvested so far. That includes about 175 pounds of SunGold cherry tomatoes which means that's a lot of tomatoes. Despite hearing from some (Mitchel included) that SunGold splits easy, that's not been our experience. They have been pretty tough which makes harvest a bit easier for a cherry tomato. We might need to discontinue harvest of some of our 120 SunGold plants due to the volume of fruit the produce and time required for harvest. Michael starts school in about five weeks which will certainly make things more challenging. Many of our heirlooms are cranking out good volume now with many fruits exceeding a pound. Consumer seemed slow to buy some of the green heirloom varieties at first but that has improved. Maybe we'll hold a tasting at the local stand soon to help increase sales. Overall, it's been a good learning experience for Michael and he is earning some good money and the buyers are happy with the quality of product.

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harveyc

Okay, finally an update with some photos! To date, we've harvested over 800 pounds of tomatoes. All of them are doing well with the exception of one Sungold plant that might be dying (with 119 others, it won't be missed!). Production of Sungold is now exceeding what we can harvest and sell but they've already served their purpose well by providing lots of early tomatoes.

Here's a photo of Michael at the local farm stand down the road from our place when we stopped by to check on inventory on July 1st.


On July 11th I took this photo of a Maxifort plant I planted isolated from itself just to see how the plant performs. This is the primary variety I used for rootstock on the 20 or so plants I grafted. This plant hasn't been watered for 3-4 weeks and is growing strong and is presently about 10 feet in diameter. Although it's a hybrid, I'm fermenting some seeds now and plan to plant some soon just to see how they grow to see if they might be a cheap alternative to buying the hybrid seeds (cost for 50 seeds was about $27 with shipping).


Here's a photo taken today to show the abundance of ripe fruits we've got on the Sungold (pretty much all 120 plants look like this right now)


Today Michael and I picked all of the very ripe fruits from one side of about 10 plants and got about seven pounds. After sorting, washing and slicing in half, I've got about six pounds in my six-tray dehydrator right now. Here is what they looked like 15 minutes ago after about three hours of drying:

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