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.

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Niko checked out one of the multiple baskets full of tomatoes this afternoon. With snow in the forecast, it’s time to get these guys off the vines. Surprisingly, there were a lot more than I expected!

I made a green tomato and apple chutney earlier this year, which turned out really good! The next few days are going to be spent dealing with this lot. We have about a half paper grocery bag full of cherry and smaller-sized green tomatoes – I think I’ll try slicing them in half and pickling them. Should be interesting!

My guess would be somewhere around 60 pounds, but we didn’t actually weigh them. The basket handles started to break off on the last load, though!

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Here’s a mini photo-tribute to our many kinds of heirloom tomatoes, which are finally starting to ripen.

Marvel Striped Tomato These are pretty delicious, but there are very few of them and their shape renders them useless as a slicing tomato. The few that we’ve picked also had some black infected areas around the top. They take a long time to ripen – from green to yellow to red.

Oaxacan Pink Tomato Definitely a keeper for next year. Heirloom tomatoes produce an incredible variety of different sized and shaped tomatoes on the same vine. Here you can see a crazy lumpy tomato (I read that this is caused by a defect in the flower) growing right next to a nice round tomato. These two are fairly large – we’ve been pulling the Oxacan Pink tomatoes from the vines in the front yard for a month now. The pink tomatoes in the front have, for the most part, been small (nearly cherry-sized) and round.

Amana Orange Tomato Again, a definite keeper for next year! These ones are finally starting to ripen, and we have 6 or 8 of them waiting to be picked. They’re rather large, and not too juicy – a perfect slicing tomato for a veggie burger or sandwich! (Again, another funky-looking one above!)

Prize of the Trails Cherry Tomato These dark orange cherries are delicious… but they’re really too big to just pop into your mouth!

We also have Early Red Tomatoes (which, by the way, were not “early” at all) and Roma Tomatoes – they’re both starting to produce a lot, but the pictures aren’t as exciting as these ones.

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Finally, the tomatoes are starting to ripen! Above: four Oxacan Pink tomatoes, one Amana Orange tomato, one Early Red tomato, and 11 Roma tomatoes.

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This is exciting: we started ALL of our vegetable plants from seeds this year. This is the lot of the starters: tons of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, a couple okra, and a few broccoli. There are also some grapefruit trees, papaya trees, and medjool date trees mixed into the lot.

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I haven’t taken pictures for a while… mostly, things have just been slowly growing. I bought some Kelp Meal and PlanTea for the seedlings, and we have been adding them to the water about once a week for the past month. Most things are still slow-growing, but these Romas, Cherry Tomatoes, and Early Reds are nearly out of control!

I had to get gallon-sized pots for them, and we transplanted the huge tomatoes in mid-April. My hopes are that they will hold off flowering until we set them out in early June!

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As you can see, the tomatoes are growing nicely! The ones that we repotted have really taken off, while the tomatoes we left in the original peat pots are quite a bit smaller. My guess is that the soil was just much better – we used a mixture of peat moss/planting mix, potting soil, and perlite for the big guys.

You can just barely see the Waltham Broccoli in this picture. I tried planting broccoli last year, but never had any luck.

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The tomatoes are still growing. The Roma, Early Red, and Cherry are growing fairly quickly. Right now, we are watering just about every two days. We have the pots in trays so we can water from the bottom.

The chile peppers have grown enough to be transplanted into their own pots. We still haven’t had any luck with eggplant or okra germination. We replanted both, and are going to set them close to the space heater, hoping for the best.

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