How we differ, you are thinking of planting and I am thinking of harvest :) I have been canning and freezing my summer bounty planning for the winter while on the other side of the planet the summer is upon them.
In a way it does seem like, I am in the Muggle's world and the other side is just past the 9 and 3/4 magical world.
That is my plant for next year. I have also picked out the spot for next year's tomatoes -- where the corn is growing this year. It hasn't had tomatoes in it. In fact, this year's plot was fleshly plowed for this year. Only grass on it for years.
Yes. He had his head in what was left of the cantaloupe.
I just made 3.5 pints of sauce from my grape tomatoes. Couldn't think of anything else to do with them. About tomorrow I guess I will be canning another7 quarts of tomatoes. I'm thinking about gazpacho, hummus and tzatziki today. Bought some pita since I doubt I will feel like making them today. Maybe I will search the freezer and see if I still have some there.
The NY Times has a great way of using cherries in a caramelized tarte. ...and 25 other ways to use tomatoes, too.
Boron
I don't believe heirloom tomatoes are supposed to satisfy that criteria, you can saved the seeds for next year, that is about it.
There seems to be some misconception that modern hybrids were bred solely for looks and shelf life, this is of course true for some hybrids, used by commercial growers. But the other side of the coin is that another group of hybrids have been bred solely for taste for the home gardener, that are far superior in taste to any heirlooms. The hybrids took over pretty quickly when introduced was no accident, they are better in every way, but you have to pay for the seeds every year.
Names please, I know of none that are superior in flavor to my heirlooms.
>
May be, but when taste tests are done, "Brandywine" almost always wins. At the risk of starting another battle, "heirloom" implies "open pollinated," but the reverse depends on your definition of "heirloom."
I do not think you understood at all what I posted.
I don't care what variety the tomato I grew was - whether heirloom or hybrid - I just want it identified.
I have not praised hybrids or heirlooms over each other, and place my interest in flavor above all. It does me no good if a tomato withstands all blights and predation only to produce cardboard fruit. Similarly, I get no benefit from a potentially delicious fruit that never gets to ripen on the vine.
Although I am an inveterate seed saver and known to toss any sort of kitchen seed or pit into the dirt in an attempt to coax germination, I am also savvy enough to buy cheap seeds when the opportunity presents itself. Really, it isn't that large a part of my gardening budget that it concerns me in the least.
I have a date palm growing...the pit came from a piece of fruit was on a breakfast plate at a hotel in Las Vegas last spring. That's my kind of fun.
Boron
How nice for you.
I presume that your unidentified "heirloom" tomato is still in production, it being only the 25th of Aug., and still full summer here in the northern hemisphere. I realize that a person of your experience doesn't require assistance, so just let me answer this question for others who may encounter this problem, but who don't have your wealth of knowledge. I have suggestions as to what you can do with your tomatoes. The most productive one would be to take a tomato and a leaf to a local nursery to try and match it, or as Susan "The Cook" would suggest, your local ag. extension office.
No anecdotes required.
OK, at ease. If you got 'em, plant 'em.
Likewise, I am sure.
The heirloom is spent and has been for almost 2 weeks. Late blight got to it early, actually, and it spread from that to other plants near by, taking out several others, but I have another patch of different varieties far from it.
Northern NJ here. Great summer for tomatoes.. Never had so many tomatoes so early in the season. Most grown from seed sewn directly in the soil. I have great luck with that. The "heirloom" and Mortgage Lifter were purchased as plants, though.
Go on with your exposition, I am sure someone is listening.
Boron
Will that please you?
hm, we had that problem last year, but not this year as much. the watering lately has been more even and we are picking more often (when they are orange they taste as good to me as a regular tomato) orange or red.
i'm splitting more by accidentally stepping on them. the plants get rather large and sprawl all over the place. still loaded with fruit.
past years we had more variety in sizes of tomatoes so we had small ones i wouldn't mind giving some away. this year they are not perfect in shape (they are often having strange holes in the ends, i suspect that being from how hot it was when the fruit first set), but they are mostly huge. we'll be picking again tomorrow.
...
oh, well, yeah, we have fences and defenses in layers. without the 7ft fence for keeping the deer out the rest of the gardening in there would be pointless. one neighbor has lost her complete pepper and tomato crop this year to the deer.
in addition to the fence i put out snap traps to reduce the chipmunk/mice/vole populations and we have large rocks in piles to encourage the snakes.
everbearing have more than one chance at getting some kind of crop even if it is a smaller one than the initial burst. i'm just finishing the third round of flowering/ fruiting and might get another in before the temperatures get too cold.
songbird
You are organised. I havent' done a thing except for garlic and spuds in situ.
The volunteers are coming up already but
I have some volunteer lettuce aroudn my rhubarb, and going gangbusters, but that's it. Must get orf me date and do something.......
Well, reading all those posts of fecundity from you notthern hemisphereans has been rather hard on poor David and I for the past 3 months............... Now it's our turn :-))
There is enough BS here to keep a large farm well-fertilized. If you want to preach, go for it. I am not particularly tolerant of lectures or finger wagging about the One True Path.
Boron
Boron Elgar wrote: ...
all gardens are well done in BS. as soon as the poop stops and nobody is about to care for them then they'll revert to the local flora in time.
at the moment, most of usenet is like this with the few odd holdouts marking the space, like the odd apple tree at the margins of a lot that has long since grown over and shows no signs of the previous homestead.
songbird
Please indicate where you find the bull shit in my posts to you, so that I may avoid similar gaffs in the future. It must be irritating to have new gardeners making suggestions to you, but that is the price you pay for posting to a mixed group of UseNet posters.
It does seem odd though, that someone who has "been growing tomatoes for over a quarter of a century and have the methodology down pat", wouldn't have tried to identify a tomato in their garden that "has produced fruit that is everything that exemplifies a home grown tomato with indescribably delicious complexity of taste", while they still had fruit. Ate all of them, did ya?
But as you know with your quarter of a century of experience, because it is an heirloom tomato, it will reproduce to type when you plant the seeds next year. It doesn't really matter what it's called, does it, because you have the seeds to re-grow it and enjoy it, again, and again, because it is an self-pollinating (heirloom) tomato. Then, if you wish to identify your mystery tomato, you can take it to someone who can identify it (nursery, ag. extention, ect). Thank heavens that a person like you with a quarter of a century of growing tomatoes behind them knew to save the seeds for this tomato with "indescribably delicious complexity of taste".
You did save the seeds , didn't you?
That's my kind of fun ;O)
We plant Romas and a variety called Scotia, allegedly one especially suited to Nova Scotia's climate. Every year numerous Scotia plants come up in the compost heap from the discarded rotters and (possibly) from the pomace left from making last year's tomato sauce.
I really should try saving some of the seeds and starting them in the micro-greenhouse [1] in March as the volunteers in the compost heap are too late to bear heavily.
[1] Bigger than a phone booth but not by much.
Did the same thing with an abundance of yellow pear tomatoes a couple of years back. Was VERY good.
I used to grow several different varieties each year and still try a couple of new ones each year, but seem to have settled on Cosmonaut Volkov and Super Marzano as my main crop varieties.
Cheers!
-Paul
What you describe doesn't sound like a mortgage lifter to me.
By "pretty", do you mean round, uniform and really red, like a grocery store tomato?
My ML are huge, non-uniform in both shape and color, prone to cracking, and generally just ugly. Definitely not pretty, but very meaty and tasty, with few seeds and not very much juice.
We've been eating on a red one for the past couple of days. I put a slice on a turkey sandwich and the slice overlapped a normal slice of white bread by a couple of inches on every side. Not even enough juice to make the bread soggy. If I were guessing, it likely weighed at least a pound and a half.
Are you sure they are true ML?
tom
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.