Applestar's 2014 Tomato Gardens

[applestar]

Thank you!

[applestar]

Yesterday, I meant to harvest ALL fully blushed fruits. I saw that Faelan's First Snow (grown from seeds from variegated plant found in a flat of Cherokee Purple and generously shared) had a fruit that was ready to be harvested... I was at a location that required that I go all the way around to reach it, and I got distracted.

So here it is! This one was from last year's best variegated out of four plants and largest fruit though they were only saladette to salad size but only growing in a 3.5 gal container. It had a haphazard start this spring, but it has grown well. This time around, the fruit is continuing to retain the Cherokee Purple characteristics and attained a respectable size. As you can see, its variegtion is excellent though not as strong as the Variegated PL x Striped Big Cheef.

This is thought to be an accidental cross of Cherokee Purple because Gixxerific is getting some fruits that are completely different on a non-variegated plant.

[applestar]

Apparently, Faelan's First Snow wasn't the only fruit I missed.
I didn't get out in the garden yesterday, and today, I found an Ananas Noire, dated and labeled 8/1 with a nasty water rot on it. Luckily, it was salvageable.

Today's harvest. Beans are in an 11 inch colander.

(In rows from L to R)

BACK ROW
Ananas Noire - Neves Azorian Red (2) - Captain Lucky
Liz Birt Purple - Green Gail (2) - hose end size ref
Royal Hillbillie - Grandma Oliver's Chocolate - Royal Hillbillie (2)
Primrose Gage - Not Purple Strawberry - Scarlet Knight (2)
FRONT ROW

I've been commenting about my cukes in the Spiral Garden thread and the beans in the... Oh! In the Tomato Garden thread -- that's HERE

So.... I can't believe those giant beans I found. WHERE HAD THEY BEEN HIDING?
...and I harvested this large colander full even AFTER giving my neighbor enough to serve four adults for dinner (a big double handful).

The cucumbers -- I found an overgrown Japanese Shintokiwa variety that is longer than my forearm.

Those eggplants were pitiful BUT I had to harvest them since the calyces were drying and the blossom end were starting to show corky marks indicating fruits that were entering the mature phase (eggplants are harvested immature) -- they ARE Japanese variety which tends to be narrow and small, but not this small. They are NOT liking the cool nights we've been having, though WE have been enjoying them.

[digitS']

AppleStar,

You have reached my favorite time for the gardening year. Literally, everything is becoming available!

I'm not quite there yet. The cucumbers and beans coming in a rush. The tomatoes are still at the onesies and twosies but the earliest varieties are just now coming in for the final day or two of ripening in a basket. Sweet peppers are coming off the plants, hots are ripening. The silk is drying on the earliest sowing of sweet corn ... And yet again, I have fresh leaf lettuce! The Asian greens that I had so much of a month ago, well there were a half-dozen plants in the shade and tiny seedlings are growing fast! I'm right in the middle of potato harvest. It's all good!

Steve

[applestar]

Enjoy your harvest, Steve!
You are right. It's really fun to find the new ready to harvest treasures in the garden.

Yesterday and Today, there were more big tomatoes that I hadn't expected would be ready:

UPPER PHOTO
(Left side of cukes in a U)

Not Purple Strawberry (2)
Wes
Cherokee Tiger Large Red in 3 gal (2)
Mystery antho variety (was not Brazillian Beauty)
Amethyst Cream
Scarlet Knight or 42 Days
Terhune (2)

LOWER PHOTO
(Counter clockwise from top)

Ananas Noire
Faelan's First Snow
Tidwell German
Scarlet Knight
42 Days (2)
Runty Malakhitovaya Shkatulka
PL Variegated x Big Cheef Stripes
Flathead Monster Orange
Mystery antho variety (was not Brazillian Beauty)
Cherokee Tiger Large Red in 3 gal

[applestar]

Took this picture at the last minute so please excuse the sloppy presentation.
We ate the First Faelan's First Snow

About 3-1/2" diameter Sweet and rich lingering flavor without being overly acid.

[applestar]

FINALLY! I was starting to think I wasn't going to see any at all this year. But here is my first sighting of a Garden Patrol incubator

image.jpg (50.69 KiB) Viewed 20208 times

Ha! This creature has no chance at all -- when I posted the photo, I noticed it has EGGS on its head IN ADDITION to the Braconid wasp pupae already on it's back. I think those are Tachinid fly eggs.
Here -- I zoomed in:

(Oh... actually I did find one other hornworm. That one appeared not to have been parasitized... But I guess they are working double-shifts now )

[applestar]

I took some pictures of the VGA bed:

Gixx's Missouri Rose

Granny's Heart from Materman

Finally getting to try the Jersey Devil to
add to my NJ Heirloom Collection

(You can see the russet mites at work here )

...the jungle...

[Lindsaylew82]

MWAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Death to the hornworm!

.....it's personal this year. Pardon my enthusiasm!

[applestar]

Yeah, I think you are hogging them all....

[Lindsaylew82]

WAS hogging them all, they've moved on for the most part.

[applestar]

Sunflower fence row -- I can't take a comparison picture from the same point of view as the earlier photos -- all you'll see would be sunflower stems

[applestar]

I thought I posted about this before, but maybe I didn't.

I had a bunch of short dwarf and micro varieties in 3 gallon square containers and a few others in smaller containers that had been waiting to be planted in 5 gallon buckets. But they started getting overwhelmed by russet mites and I was desperately putting them in wildflower beds, clover lawn, and under 2nd year flowering parsley, trying find the Garden Patrol members that could take care of them. But all of them got russeted all the way to the growing tip and it looked like they were goners. In fact some of them died.

...then I started to see fresh new side shoots and amazingly these were free of any sign of russet mite infestation and damage. No russetting, no slowly dying leaflets.

late July showing signs of recovery

I took some update photos today, and you you can see, although they are late to the party, they are starting to flower and set fruits.

Latest progress

[applestar]

I posted this collage of the Sunflower House Tomato Garden on July 10 a few pages ago:


Here is more-or-less same view collage as of yesterday:

[applestar]

I forgot to add to the above post about the amazing recovery of the russet mite infested plants, though these plants deserve their own story.

I grew a cross in F4 generation called Pit Viper last winter. I really wanted to try them so I started the seeds on October 7, 2013. But the seedlings stalled out in their growth and in January when
I uppotted them because they were showing signs of nutrient deficiency and compacted soil, they still only looked this big:


In fact I didn't start any new seeds because these looked like they were just starting out.
They were growing well until February and were uppotted again, but they got caught up in the aphid and russet mite infestation, and weird thing was the ladybugs I released in the plants refused to stay and tend to the Pit Vipers (they did a wonderful job clearing up the hot peppers). I could deal with the spuds myself but the russet mites were another story. I started taking them outside when warm, and as do on as I possibly could, I put them out among the blooming wildflowers and herbs in hopes that the Garden Patrol would pay attention. But they slowly russeted all the way to the top and
I really thought they died, so I never uppotted them or planted them in the ground. Just left the pots there and forgot about them.

Then the one in the Kitchen Garden grew a new fresh side shoot and started to grow.

...and I recently noticed the one in the wildflower bed had also somehow recovered

Notice this one's fruit shape is different from the other
one -- a fun aspect of growing still unstable segregates.

We ate one of the fruits from the Kitchen Garden plant:

It had all the requisite flavors, sweet, tangy, tomato-y, and
lingering acid. A very good, full flavored fruit.

[applestar]

Some of the other varieties, planted in the ground, that looked like they had gone down due to russet mites are making a come-back, too. One of them that I'm particularly happy about is Cherokee Lime Stripes. It's blooming and setting fruits.

[applestar]

Here are a couple of varieties I'm growing this year.

One is a cross from an F3 seed Variegated PL x Striped Big Cheef F3#3
I posted some photos of the fabulous variegated foliage earlier.
I asked to try this one because the fruits were larger than it's siblings.

As you can see, the first fruit was smallish, but subsequent fruits have been getting bigger. There are at least three more that are close to harvest in the SFH Tomato. Garden

Variegated PL x Striped Big Cheef F3#3

This first fruit had a sweetness followed by tangy acid bite that lingered. It had rather thick skin which is not my favorite but the skin did peel off in single pull, which compensates. I'll have to see if the breeder wants the saved seeds back.

Another one that I harvested today is Missouri Rose (WMD Pink PL). The fruits all have some nice size to them. I can't wait to try tasting the first one in a couple of days

Missouri Rose

[applestar]

Another sunflower opened
...but the first one is already bowing down so we can't see it now.

...also... I think I have to do something about the beans. They are swallowing the tomato garden whole. they also brought down 3 of the popcorn, though the husks are starting to dry and I have been harvesting them one by one.

Look at this pile of beans! I'm running out of room in the freezer....

...maybe I'll stop harvesting and let the rest of them mature for shelled fresh beans. I'm growing other beans specifically for dry beans so I really don't need to dry and save any more than for next year's crop.

[Lindsaylew82]

Do all your beans have strings? I need to go back and see your varieties.

I definitely see purple pod pole. Are any of these runner beans, Kentuckys?

[applestar]

All of the above

They are mostly Purple Podded Pole, Sunset and. Scarlet Runner, and Kentucky Wonder Pole beans. I also have Mounteneer White Half Runners and a few Roma II.

PPP won't get strings until they are HUGE and even then maybe only on the ends. I think the runners and Kentucky Wonder develop full length strings when they get too big, and MWHR seems to always have strings.

I planted Roma II I along the base of the corn in the Spiral Garden and I keep forgetting to look, so I'm constantly coming up with overgrown beans. in fact, I forgot to look yesterday!

... I really prefer pole beans for picking ...

[Lindsaylew82]

I am definitely planting pole beans next year. I may have time to plant some this year!

You know of any cold hearty pole beans?

Are the roma II a flat bean bean?

[applestar]

I know purple podded and runner beans will keep going until frost kills them.
Roma II is flatter and broader than purple podded but shorter.

BTW Runner beans are fun because their fuzz makes the pods stick to you. I stuck the fresh pods all over my daughters' T shirts one morning after they came down.

[Lindsaylew82]

Haha! My kid would find that hilarious!

My blue lake bush beans are pretty fuzzy like that! They really like to keep hold if their rotton, dried blooms, old bean leaves, and dirt... Makes them difficult to prepare for cooking, canning and freezing. I would imagine pole beans aren't as bad.

[applestar]

Tomatoes we ate today

Faelan's First Snow (Variegated Cherokee Purple)
on dinner plate

Terhune on dinner plate

...soooo sleepy I jeep nodding off while trying to type!
Will add comments here and will also post in the tasting/compare thread in the morning.

[Juliuskitty]

I know purple podded and runner beans will keep going until frost kills them.
Roma II is flatter and broader than purple podded but shorter.

BTW Runner beans are fun because their fuzz makes the pods stick to you. I stuck the fresh pods all over my daughters' T shirts one morning after they came down.

I'd actually pay money to see that.

[lakngulf]

Tomatoes we ate today
...soooo sleepy I jeep nodding off while trying to type!
Will add comments here and will also post in the tasting/compare thread in the morning.

Beautiful tomatoes. Will look for more comments.

I jeep sleepy too

[applestar]

More photos. Quick captions. More later....

Another Braconid parasitized small (3rd instar?) hornworm
on russet mite infested leaf branch.

Leaf branch belongs to this McKinley -- I thought
the plant died from TRM

VGA - Missouri Rose, Jersey Devil and still green
Granny's Heart. DET Brian Boru (front center) is
mostly done

...but this is another instance of TRM (Tomato Russet Mite) infesting all the way up the plant until one of the last Brian Boru fruits was completely russeted while 1/2 sized and never managed to blush or ripen... Yet you can see a fresh green un-infested new shoot with fruit trusses growing up from near the base (and leaning up agains the TRM infested Jersey Devil).

TRM infestation in this bed started with Rose which is in the far right corner. That one lost to the TRM all the way up before being able to bloom or fruit, but is not completely dead yet. I'm watching it to see if it's going to try to recover with uninfested new shoots, but if this is a late maturing variety, I'm not sure if it has time to bloom/fruit/ripen before the average first frost in mid-October. I would note that *as soon as I ran support strings from the bamboo stakes in each corner*, the mites spread to the other plants along the strings with signs if infestation appearing where the plant touched the string.

Japanese beetles are all over the pole and runner beans,
but they do keep the beans from completely shading the
tomatoes....

Harvesting plenty of beans despite the Jb damage:

More stalk-dried popcorn. Small volunteer pumpkins.
Keeping ahead of catbirds to harvest Elderberries --
hoping to make some jelly.

Harvested a bunch of peppers to make ABT

[applestar]

[Lindsaylew82]

Look how pretty!

What's ABT?

[applestar]

Not sure if I can use the word here. Use your favorite internet search for "ABT jalapeño" and see what you get.

[Lindsaylew82]

BAAAAHAHA. My sweet precious little girl was taught that word by her DADDY! I don't think it's a bad word, just doesn't sound right coming out of my sweet pretty little girl's mouth!

Btw, I'm off dairy right now, and I have ripe jalapeños coming out my ears! I may make an exception and make these! That looks so YUMMY!

[Juliuskitty]

Not sure if I can use the word here. Use your favorite internet search for "ABT jalapeño" and see what you get.

Terrible name for something that looks absolutely delicious.

[applestar]

Sunflower Row at "best"


Catching up on the tomato harvests as they wind down....

[applestar]

All I have left in the kitchen except for three berry baskets of cherry tomatoes:

Today's harvest:

[applestar]

...and here's an update window view of the SFH Tomato Garden, etc.

...less tomatoes, mostly beans now -- Good Mother Stallard,
Purple Podded Pole bean, Kentucky Wonder, and Scarlet Runner.

[Juliuskitty]

It is a beautiful view. It looks almost pristeen. It is always a sad time for me when the garden winds down for the season. But you have your indoor one, so all is good.

[applestar]

Thanks! I think as succession of seasons and crops, not focus on a singular crop in the bed, it's all good and working out.

At this point, I had a good tomato harvest through the summer season, and I have more than enough fresh snap beans in the freezer, so I'm letting the rest of the beans all grow into mature pods for fresh and dried shelled beans. And after the pods are harvested, all those bean vines will be used to mulch the bed and/or build a compost pile in the middle of the bed to break down for the fall/winter-spring.

And as you mentioned, my "tomato garden" is moving indoors with a new group of babies already growing.

[applestar]

At this point, all the front runners have shut down beyond any hope of recovery, but there were a several that have resurged since the arrival of late summer/early fall cooler weather. Out of those, many went down to septoria that accompanies the fall cool and excess moisture due to heavy condensation.

But there is a last full sized Captain Lucky ripening out there, and a half-sized Wes. We just had the one and only large beefsteak sized Prudens Purple on our hamburgers tonight even though we had completely given up on any more big tomatoes this season, and the volunteer Matt's Wild Cherry in the watermelon patch are pumping them out. And the Coyote on the house wall trellis has completely recovered from the tomato leafminer attack that forced me to drastically prune off any and all affected leaves and are starting to ripen the new fruits.

Then there are these:

This is another volunteer. It's potato leaved and I was hoping for a Yellow Brandywine, but in these latest photos, you can clearly see developing green shoulders and faint striping on the four fruits, and I don't think YBW has those, so it's still a mystery.

This one I'm pretty sure is Cherokee Lime, but it could be Cherokee Lime Stripes. I thought it had been overwhelmed by tomato russet mites, but after the infestation spread and killed the vine all the way to the growing tip, it, like many others, grew fresh new side shoot that somehow was immune to the TRM. I had been keeping an eye on the large fruit on the vine at my eye height, but then I noticed that the vines had reached all the way to the eaves and the rain gutter of the one story roof... And there are more green fruits up there!