PNW: Tomato Tuesday 2012

another week has gone by im sad because i dont want summer to be over just yet....seems like its only been 2 weeks maybe because we have only had a *real* summer for two weeks....its clouded over today

here she is....our big brandywine ripe on the vine! :drunken:



she weighed in at 1 lb 4oz and is a bit on the ugly side....my hubby said only a mother could love....ha ha....it was because i was all giddy about picking her and saying *isnt she wonderful*



her back side



our five Super Italian Paste are going strong....we have had two ripe so far



they form these pretty clusters all over the plant



still have a lot of sick plants trying to produce



planted a few more rooted suckers yesterday....hoping to put these guys in the green house to see if we can get a few more tom's in the fall....



a couple of Jubilee's....been waiting for these two...they are blushing now...cant wait to taste them....im hoping they taste like the very first tomato we ate this year that was soooo sweet....i loved the flavor of that tomato..but..im not sure what type it is because we forgot to lable the plant when we transplanted it....so im hoping it was a Jubilee!...they are heirlooms and i will for sure save seeds and try again next year.....



our harvest so far for this year (besides the cherry tom's that dont make it in we have to get ouside before our 6 year old son does or we dont get any! )



hugs
rose

August 7, 2012
Rose I love the flip side of your brandywine....if you turn the picture (with the scar) so that the right side is the bottom, you can see the squinting eyes and big nose of an old man who needs to put his teeth in. (maybe it's just me)

Finally, Tomato Tuesday video DONE ON TOMATO TUESDAY!!!!


Go Here ----> for Tomato Tasting "Ranger" F!

Look at my two brandywines - only just big enough to show up on camera last Tuesday, and this Tuesday they are already changing color. Silly little things.

So disappointing. There's a third one up on top - wonder what it will do. Well, at least the plant looks healthy. If you can find those two tomatoes down there, for reference those squares on the trellis are 7 inches.

Awwww Gwennifer, it IS a nice healthy looking plant and PNW Brandywines are prima-donnas. Rose and Steve have got the touch! You are getting fruit! (I do not have any on mine). Chin up girl! You done good!

Lavender Debs wrote:Rose I love the flip side of your brandywine....if you turn the picture (with the scar) so that the right side is the bottom, you can see the squinting eyes and big nose of an old man who needs to put his teeth in. (maybe it's just me)

It is a great photo! I couldn't resist. I see the old man one way, I see an angry bird the other way:

Lavender Debs wrote:Chin up girl! You done good!

Thanks for the love. I'm wondering, after watching that other Brandywine thread for a while, if buying cheap no-name brandywine seed is part of the problem. I learned from that thread that there are actually different varieties and strains within varieties, none of which are listed on my seed pack. But then I watched your vid and sounds like you're experiencing undersized fruits as well, from plants you have previous experience with?

My Romas are also much smaller than I expected. Most of them look like strawberries and my poor 1 y.o. got a shock when he thought just that and popped one in his mouth! However, I diagnosed them as being low in phosphorous after reading this:

Phosphorous - Phosphorous deficiency is commonly confused with nitrogen deficiency. Remember, nitrogen affects color in different shades of green. Phosphorous may cause a purplish tinge in the veins, stems, and underside of leaves. Also, stiff stems and stunted growth are also indicative of phosphorous deficiency. If your fruit seems overly acidic in taste, you may be experiencing problems with phosphorous levels.

Mine are definitely stunted, which I thought was because they were unhappy in their pots. Definitely stiff, purplish leaves, which I chalked up to the cold, wet June at first. Definitely too acidic in taste, which is why I thought I don't like tomatoes! Anyway, since phosporous is needed for flowering and fruiting, and I'm apparently low, that could help explain the tiny fruits.

Today I am seeing a muscular Olympic arm in Roses Brandywine.
August 14

Sunshine and heat and these things change color......who knew?

These tiny plants are Beaverlodge Plum

And the ever faithful Black Plum which are looking very red this year.

We have been eating Siltz and Gold Nugget, delightful!
Debs ......whose head aches with unreleased tears after watching the Kathi G memorial .....whose sister in law got the news that the cancer they though was back is not.....on the day Kathi died. Such is life! I think the blackberry lavender jam is helping!

our family took it hard about kathi G as well

(((hugs))) Debs glad to see red on your tom's!!

im looking forward getting home sometime tomorrow ..been out of town for a couple of days.....our son is getting some eeg testing done....he is doing fine.....missing his dogs though....he cried this morning wondering if the dogs knew where he was and that he will be home soon to take care of them.....( he is the one that feeds them every day and as being only six years old didnt relize that when daddy left last night to go back to our town to work that he went to our house to feed the dogs)

we are hoping to find a tomato or two ripe when we get home!.....there was a lot of green paste tomato hanging on the vines when we left.......

we will be having a taste test too.....we are going to taste a yellow jubilee, a red bradley, a red rainbow, orange/red marglobe, sweetie red cherry, and our orange/yellow cherry volunteer.....we are still waiting for our yellow pear to turn color and another brandywine on our other plant....

i have pictures on our home computer i want to share when we get back home.....the paste tomato plants were so thick and lush that some of the branch's broke off we had to give them a major cut hoping not to get home to find in-shock plants we will for sure grow this plant again next year

we also got rid of a few plants.....they were looking to sick and i dont think we would have enough time in this season to even wait to see if any of the flowers would produce fruit......our brandywine was one of them.....she gave us a huge fruit and lots of seeds......she did her job

hugs
rose

Rose I hope you made it home safely and the testing on your son provided you with some useful results.

You and Debs will have to clue me in on Kathi G? Google isn't helping me...

Well folks, if my Brandywine tomatoes were people, I'd owe them an apology. They were not ripening after all and have grown much bigger over the last couple of weeks. The plant has officially reached the top of the trellis and has five tomatoes growing on it. Here it is:
And here's the two lower tomatoes:

Sad news about Kathie G, I gather she is a local person.
Been through the whole cancer thing and am always nervous about every little thing that it might have returned.

Figure this is as good a place as any to show off my tomatoes
First of all my zapotecs the cute (no longer little) heirlooms from Southern mexico have been the slowest of all to ripen and even as such, I have once again ripened my tomatoes long before anyone else around here, I totally swear by the ripening banana .
These ones are the heirloom Alicante which are supposed to be medium sized english tomatoes, but have turned out almost as big as the brandy wines. They are delicious

And of course my brandy wines, a few have weighed in at 2 lbs thus far. We had a HUGE storm warning the other day, and that there may be severe hail and so I went out and picked all the the semi ripe tomatoes I carried them in in large bowl and weighed myself with each trip and it ended up being 80 lbs. For anyone who has read the barbara kingsolver book "animal vegetable miracle" I am thinking I might be into barbara territory, she said that they harvested .2 of a ton, which I figure must be 400 lbs.



From Janet who is off with my basket of tomatoes to bring smiles to all my non gardening friends

ah our days are cooling off

we have lots of green fruit .....and are going to try and make a temp hoop over the top of them to see if we can get them to ripen

never in our wildest dreams did we think this heirloom Super Itilian Paste would produce so many fruits we had to cut limbs off because they were bending and breaking......we also just cut off the tops so they wont be working so hard to make fruit.....next year...we are going to do only single stem with these guys.....( remind me next year will ya!!)



up close at these pretty clusters of fruit



we are hoping to move these heirloom jubilees into our little green house....we cut the tops off of them too

jubilee #1



jubilee #2



the heirloom rainbow we hope will ripen, the last one we got from this plant was yellow



our son's sweetie in his self water container with MM is HUGE and loaded with fruit....i mean loaded.....we really wish we could move this one into our green house.....hey....maybe we can put some kind of temp hoop over this one as well....



close up of his clusters



three sucker roots that we are going to move into the green house to see if we can get something off of them.....they seem to be doing pretty well.....keeping my eye on the one in the middle...his leaves are starting to curl and the under part is a bit purple.....



our first sucker that we planted into our box #1 SFG has lots of fruit....we have been able to eat a few of them....hoping the others will ripen....



the rest of our tom's are still hanging in there even though they look awful some of the fruit they give is good and others are given to the worm farm....

i believe this is a heirloom marglobe....i really like the flavor of this one.....its also a hard worker even when its under stress of being sick



hoping we get to taste all of our tom's so that we can give a taste test review at the end of our summer season.....i think the yellow pear is the only one we are waiting for to ripen for a taste....

hugs
rose

gwennifer thank you for thinking of us getting home safe....it was a long two day stay and we found out he is not having Seizures which we are thankful for.....he is now going for other testing....praying this test come back normal as well....if not....its not good news....

did your Brandywines turn color yet?

GWN....your tom's look great!....are you still getting a lot?.....how ripe does the banana need to be?....and you just lay it under the plant while still in the peel?

hugs
rose

Hi Rose
Your tomatoes look great, and I think you still have lots of time for ripening and even a bit of growing.
I have cut back all of the leaves right up half of the plants now and am trying to focus the energy on ripening and growing a little larger.
I think about the end of september last year I took all the green tomatoes off my plants and layed them out on cardboard in the basement and they gradually ripened such that we ate our last tomato at christmas.
I had to keep going and getting rid of any that were rotting, but it really extended the season for those outside the hoop house
There is still LOTS left to this year..... at least I think

ROSE
I just put the banana under and in the midst of the tomatoes when it has a few black spots on it.
Wishing you the best for you son and his testing.

Janet

GWN ....please clarify .... Do you use green bananas in the greenhouse to bring red to large unripe tomatoes???

I ask because I have a lot of slightly tinted orange unripe toms in the green house
Or

Do you put both together in a dark warm room so the ethylene gas off the green bananas will ripen the toms and the gas of the toms will ripen the bananas. ( Old commercial friuit & veg wholesalers trick )

we are having a warm spell this week! so with that and bananas under the plants we are starting to get more ripe ones

Super Italian paste....the taste is good...not super sweet but i think they will make great sauce....the plants are healthy, thick and lush .....we will grow them again next year.....



the plants are covered in groups of fruit




volunteer seeds from last year.....we are getting lots of fuit now....but i still dont care much for the taste....hubby and son like them though....not sure we will grow these guys again next year



Yellow pears.....the plant is really sick and im not sure if that matters for the taste or not....but these guys are not the greatest in flavor and they took a long time to ripen.....they are just now turning color



Yellow rainbow....the fruit is very pretty and the flavor is ok



my son's Sweeties.....LOVE this one....big thick lush plant with tons of very cute fruit....fruit lays like grapes ...love the taste....going to plant several of these guys next year and going to also try them in a topsy turvy.....



our daughters Marglobe took awhile to get its fruit.....the plants are not very lush...but the flavor is very good!



Jubilee....half the plants did well....the other half were sick....but...the flavor is awesome and the fruit it so pretty...an orange color with lots of meat inside....we will grow this again next year!....two plants in one pot below.....



Brandywine.....found a few more growing behind the plant LOL....the plants were not very healthy....they only put out one or two fruits and the taste was ok....not sure we will grow them again....they were the first to put on fruit.....



Bradley.....slow to put on fruit....sick plant....very good sweet taste!.....we might try again next year to see if we can get a healthier plant growing.....



my rank in order from best to worst....considering how well they grew in our PNW weather and how they taste.....

will grow again

#1 ......sweeties-OP

#2........Super Italian paste-heirloom

#3........Jubilee-heirloom

#4........Marglobe-heirloom

might grow again

#5............Bradley-heirloom

#6............yellow rainbow-heirloom

#7............red rainbow-heirloom

wont grow again

#8...........Yellow pear-heirloom

#9............saved seeds from last years voluneer

thought we planted 10 differnt types

hugs
rose

Rose - you missed the Brandywine in your list of what you will grow next year. That maybe number 10.

awww yes the Brandywine.......thank you yolos!

even though it was fun to grow this one.....i think only getting one to two fruits is just not a good fit for our PNW weather.....we want to grow productive, healthy and good tasting fruit during our short warm season.....the Brandywine just doesnt cut it....

if i could go back and change my ranking it would be.....

will grow again

#1 ......sweeties-OP
(healthy, lots of fruit, great flavor!)

#2........Super Italian paste-heirloom
(healthy, lots of fruit, good flavor)

#3........Jubilee-heirloom
(50/50 on health, great flavor, good amount of fruit)

#4........Marglobe-heirloom
(sick plant, good amount of fruit, great flavor)

might grow again

#5............Bradley-heirloom
(sick plant, a few fruits, great flavor)

#6............yellow rainbow-heirloom
(sick plant, few fruits, good flavor)

#7............red rainbow-heirloom
(sick plant, few fruits, good flavor)

wont grow again

#8........Brandywine-heirloom
(sick plants, not much fruit, ok flavor)

#9...........Yellow pear-heirloom
(sick plant, ok amount of fruit, poor flavor)

#10............saved seeds from last years volunteer
( ok/poor health, lots of fruit, a few tasted good as long as they were really ripe, but on the most part yucky flavor)

hugs
rose

It is turning out to be a good tomato year. I had tried a few new types and I am happy with the Sungold and Green Grape (Baker Creek) varieties. We have had plenty of tomatoes for daily eating and I am canning them as I go. Today I did a few more of the 1 1/2 pints of cherry tomatoes. When I can tomatoes they are usually for specific family favorite recipes so I always have several jars of mixed colors as well as like colors. At the end of the growing season they all get mixed and become tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce.
A picture of today's efforts..

happycamper those jars look so pretty!!

hugs
rose

September 18 (with moments to spare)

This is the first ripe ox heart and good golly was it good! It isn't even the biggest.

More coming. I made a cognac tomato soup from the last of the early season tomatoes. It was good cold with cubed avocado but not as good as late season soup...BUT there was one ox heart ready so I picked it for the soup.... Had a taste before it all went into the pot....YUM!!!!

how beautiful your ox heart is Debs!

so glad to see the weather up north in Sept is treating you well and your tom's are ripening

hugs
rose

You can tell it is Sept in the PNW by the quantity of ripe tomatoes on the plants. I picked last night.
Bag one,

Bag two,

And it begins....

looking good happycamper! are you going to can them? ....i have been wanting to ask you if you peeled the skin off of the canned cherry tomato you have for your avitar pic?...they look so pretty

tom's are getting ripe here too in our family gardens

super Italian pastes.....we had to cut back a lot of foilage....we have been with holding water as well....along with a ripe banana.....we are getting lots of ripe fruit....i think we are going to have enough to can some sauce



our son's sweetie continues to give us a ton of sweet fruit!!



jubilee still going strong....we cut off the growing tips....been getting very pretty orange tom's




sucker plant doing well



these two came from suckers as well....starting to produce fruit...going to move these guys into the green house when the weather turns colder.....





hugs
rose.......

FamilyGardening, Yes I canned nearly all of them. Most of the Sungold's were dehydrated and vacuum sealed in quart jars. Most of the red tomatoes made 3 cases of 1 1/2 pint jars of Italian tomato sauce. The yellow's and the rest of the red tomatoes made a mixed case of golden (yellow) soup and regular tomato soup (along with soup for lunch).
To answer your question about canning the cherry tomatoes, I do not remove the skins. Some people do remove them because the skins will peel off and curl up when they are reheated in recipes but my family doesn't care and for this I am glad.
Your plants look great, keep up the good work.

My dad, while Mom was out of state caring for a relative, was faced with lots of tomatoes ripening up; but he had no idea how to deal with them. So he wiped them off, packed them in freezer bags and tossed them into the freezer to await She Who Cans. Turned out to be an inadvertent genius move: Mom could remove a sack of tomatoes from the freezer, let them BEGIN to defrost; grab hold of a tomato and squeeze it; out would pop the center ready to be canned, made into soup, or added to a stew. Of course, you have to have extra freezer space, but it's a great solution to an immediate problem. Nonna