The Prize of the Trials Cherry Tomato is probably my favorite tomato to grow… and to eat. Even our terribly blighted tomato plants have been producing these like crazy this summer. They are perfect little sweet orange tomatoes, and we’ve never had a problem with blossom end rot or cracks. They are quite a bit larger than a standard cherry tomato. Wonderful halved or quartered in a salad, or – my favorite – two of them sliced on a sandwich.

We had so many of them this year, and so I cut a bunch in half and threw them in the dehydrator overnight. We are just now finishing our sundried tomatoes from last summer, so it’s time to stock up again.

You can pick up Prize of the Trials tomato seeds at Seeds of Change.

If you’ve ever tried your hand at growing heirloom tomatoes … then chances are you’ve run across Early Tomato Blight.

Early tomato blight is an infection (caused by the fungus Alternaria solani) that starts out as dark brown spots, yellowing leaves, and eventually spreads quite rapidly through the crop killing the leaves and fruits if it has a chance. The fungus spores form in hot, humid weather and then wait for a nice, cool, wet evening to start destroying the plants. We’ve definitely had more than ideal weather for blight this summer. It shows up just as the plants are starting to set fruit – and once the infection starts, it is nearly impossible to stop from spreading. If you’re growing organically and aren’t planning on dousing them with fungicide, that is.

Unfortunately, we didn’t move the old bean and cucumber trellises with us, and I didn’t have the scrap wood (or the ambition) this year to build something new.

Menard’s sells 10′ PVC Pipes for 97¢. Five of those, plus a bit of hemp twine, makes a really nice bean teepee. I dug each pole 1 foot into the ground to make sure the winds wouldn’t take them down this summer.

Yesterday Jessi and I weeded around the tomatoes. The ground is quite dry and compacted. We added some compost on all the tomatoes and brassicas, but I am not too optimistic. A few rows still need some straw. Things haven’t gone how I imagined they would in my head, but I still think we will get some tomatoes out of the deal if little else. A lot of our tomatoes look really small while others are bearing fruit.

When we got out to the garden this morning, the guy who had plowed was out there with his tractor tilling for us. The ground is much more workable than it was before, and we’re lucky to have him helping us out a bit.

Unfortunately, someone came by and ate a lot of the corn and squash seeds we had planted… and we can’t really tell what got eaten – there are just empty shells where pumpkin seeds once were, or pieces of corn with the germ eaten laying all around. SO… I think we’re going to have to add some more seeds back in, and maybe add more rows to the three sisters.

Our transplants are sick of their small homes and are more than ready to go in the ground. The tomatoes are starting to yellow – I’m thinking they may have gotten sunburned. But they seem really healthy, so hopefully they’ll come around.

Today we planted 200 more brassicas and the 20 Great White tomatoes. It’s a long weekend, so we’ll be out there Sunday and Monday – hopefully spending long days out there and getting the rest of our transplants in. We had a new friend helping us today – it was a pretty good time for all!

We haven’t gotten any rain for two weeks, which is really frustrating. We have been watering the transplants, but we can’t stretch the hose any farther into the garden. MAYBE it will rain Tuesay… we’ll see.

Seed Source: Ace Hardware (American Seed Company)

Date Planted: April 7, 2007

Marmande is a commune in southwestern France, a known producer of tomatoes. They hold a festival every July to celebrate their tomatoes.

One week into April, we realized that we had not bought and red tomato seeds! We were too busy focusing on fancy colored heirlooms, and completely forgot to plant one or two “standards.” I picked up some packets of Marmande and Delicious tomato seeds at a local hardware store and quickly planted them. It was very much an impulse buy, but I discovered later that the Marmande tomato is indeed an heirloom. Plus, Marmande is supposed to make an excellent market variety.

We were a bit late on transplanting these, but we have about 36 plants. I am not expecting them all to survive – a couple are starting to wilt pretty badly.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 23, 2007

Amish Land Seeds claims to be the only US Source for this paste tomato! The Sabre Ukrainian tomatoes are very large paste tomatoes with few seeds. They get their name from the shape (think, sword). They are very similar to the World’s Miracle Tomatoes we have this year, but are said to ripen late in the season.

We have 27 Sabre Ukrainian seedlings.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 23, 2007

Yes, another white tomato variety… three white tomato varieties, about 58 plants. But we are planting nearly 300 tomatoes, and these are bound to be a hit at Farmers Markets!

The White Tomesol tomato is relatively new German heirloom that was recently introduced to the United States. According to seed sellers, the Tomesol tomato is just about the truest “white” variety of tomato there is. Many white tomatoes are more of a pale yellow, and often have pink spots on the blossom end. We’ll see how these ones grow up!

We currently have 20 Tomesol seedlings.

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Seed Source: Amish Land Seeds

Date Planted: March 23, 2007

We chose two paste tomatoes from Amish Land Seeds this year: Sabre Ukrainian and World’s Miracle. Both are from the Ukraine, and the grower says they look almost alike but that the World’s Miracle tomatoes are about half the size of the Sabre Ukrainian tomatoes. They are suppoed to be quite a bit earlier though.

We ended up planting a standard roma variety just to boost our paste tomato yield a bit. We have 26 of these plants.

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Here’s a fairly good picture of the garden. It’s hard to get a sense of the size from a picture, especially at this point. It’s been mowed, and the Tractor Guy dragged a tiller through it once to break up the sod (though you can’t really tell).

We’ve missed the planting date for peas, and hope that it stays cool enough for some lettuces. It’s difficult working at the mercy of someone else’s schedule and equipment. But as long as it is tilled and workable by May 15th (our average last frost date), we’ll be fine. Chris graduates in two weeks, and I’m really busy with my business so we don’t have too much time to put into it at this point anyway!

We have been busy transplanting and moving plants from the Morning Sky Greenery greenhouse back home (for transplanting), and then moving plants back out there. Until today, our plants were in their heated greenhouse. We moved about 100 plants into the unheated greenhouse this afternoon. The weather has been so nice, and unless we get a hard freeze they should be okay in there. Of course, we’ll be monitoring the weather forecast! It clears up a lot of space in our little dining room that has been transformed into a seed room.