TOMATO HARVEST JULY 5, 2010

I should have washed these tomatoes, but it's late & I want to go to bed, so here they are.  There are 21 lbs of tomatoes in the second set of photos. For some reason they have started splitting, even though the soil moisture has been even.  Maybe they just grew too fast?   Regardless, I've separated out the ones with split skins & we will eat those first & I'll be saving lots of seeds to share with the folks at Square Foot Gardening forum.


The first set of pictures features my grandkids.  (Can you tell I love to show them off?)  They are very special to me.  These were taken this morning before they went back home.  One tomato was a dab less than 2 lbs, the other one just a bit over 2 lbs.

These next pictures are what I harvested tonight.  In the picture are our family heirlooms (the yellow/red ones), German pink & the small ones are Early Girl.  DH fixed a big salad for each of us tonight, mine with lettuce, cucumbers, Vidalia onions, tomatoes & homemade Bleu Cheese dressing.  The only thing that could have made it better would have been some home-grown romaine & red lettuce blend. 

An update on the orange banana tomato:  It has a really good flavor & fruit size is decent, but probably 1/4 of the tomatoes had blossom end rot.  None of my other tomato varieties had  a problem with this, so it may be a trait common to this particular one.  I don't plan on growing it again next year.

We pulled the rest of the corn in the second section tonight & tomorrow I will pull up the stalks & wait another week or two to start my cole crop seeds.  I still have one small section of corn that's only about waist high, but I noticed what I call corn worms, I think they are Army worms,  on some tomatoes today, so this last batch of corn might not make it. 

Also for the first time EVER I have cantaloupes and watermelons!  I planted Burrell's Jumbo cantaloupe, watermelons are Sugar Baby, Royal Golden, Dixie Lee, & Kolb's Gem.  I've planted melons several times before, but the weeds always grew faster than they did & the would get lost & I never harvested anything.  With the wire trellis they are up off the ground & growing like crazy & there are lots of babies.  Now, if I can just keep the squash vine borers off of them, I'll be doing good.

I planted a large rectangular planter with Giant Musselburgh Leek seeds today (From Baker Creek Heirlooms). The catalog description says:  An heirloom that was introduced in 1834, near Edinburgh, Scotland. Large, very thick stems, tasty mild flavor. Grows well in most locations, perfect for home or market, this old favorite has huge size, and is very winter hardy.  I've never grown Leeks before & hope I have success with them.

I hope everyone else's garden is doing well & producing lots of yummy veggies for you.

Thursday is expected hatch day for my other batch of eggs & I'll update you then.