Best tomato season ever!

[Robin Garr]

Frost finally bit our tomato plants this morning, after a record run that lasted from late June all the way through Nov. 6. We even got another half-dozen ripe San Marzanos and another dozen green ones off the wizened remains of the plants.

I'm not sure how we did it during a hot and Sahara-dry summer that killed a lot of gardens hereabouts, but Mary gives credit to a deep bed of compost that contains the remains of most of our non-meat kitchen scraps for the last 15 years. The roots went so deep and the soil was so nutritious that the plants apparently fought off all attacks.

I wish now that I had kept count of the totals from our four San Marzano plants, four Italian heirloom oxhearts and two "brandyboy" beefsteak hybrids, but it had to be in the hundreds. We've been eating them on everything, and must have two dozen one-meal containers of fresh tomato sauce taking up a lot of space in our side-by-side freezer. I'll be very glad to have them to thaw and use on pasta in January and February, though.

[Jenise]

You're so lucky and I'm so envious! We harvested about four tomatoes before leaving for France on September 15th, and they were dead on frost-blackened vines when we returned. SAD.

What, we're just 30 miles West of you and our crop was quite paltry. The heat certainly took its toll and the drought didn't help. Of course, I haven't had 15 years to improve the soil, but we're working on it with mucho compost and adding some lime to offset the raging acidity in our soil around the homestead. Wait to next year as Da Bums were fond of saying.

[Robin Garr]

Da Bums were fond of saying.

You know this town was a hotbed of Dodgers fever back in the day? Three words: Pee Wee Reese.

Da Bums were fond of saying.

You know this town was a hotbed of Dodgers fever back in the day? Three words: Pee Wee Reese.

Didn't they even named a town after him...Pee Wee Valley?

We had two of our Brandwines with dinner tonight. The fact that there were two tells you something. We still have some rippining up in the basket; and the best I say is "Better than store bought."

[Robin Garr]

Didn't they even named a town after him...Pee Wee Valley?

You'll never pass for a local if you don't know it's spelled "Pewee Valley," after a small bird. It's sort of like Valley-Joe, California, in that regard.

I had about the same results as Jenise!! it was a very bad tomato year here in the Pacific Northwest but at least the blueberries were good.


-mike

[Jenise]

Mike, our blueberries were awesome too. I bought five year plants and planted one last summer, two more this summer. Each plant and each berry has a personality as different as my cats. It was so much fun to watch them develop and learn what they needed. Knowing a little about grape growing sure helped--I understood "hang time", or I'd have initially been very disappointed since the two later-ripening plants needed a lot of it for berries that looked ripe but hadn't developed any sugars, where the early one did not.