Shule's 2024 grow log

[JayneR13]

We're under a heat dome here too. Heat indices are supposed to be in the low 100s here on Sunday. Not good gardening weather! Not good for tomatoes trying to set fruit either.

[Shule]

On Thursday we had a bunch more ripe Galapagos Island tomatoes already (on the same two plants, with a few other on others). [We got 19 ripe fruits a day or two before that, if I didn't mention it already.]

On Friday, I realized that my volunteer with striped fruit must be either my bicolor Cherokee Lime offtype, or else a tomato that had crossed with it.

The moon was this color a few minutes ago (I would have gotten a clearer picture for you but every time I got a clear one, it stripped all the red out of it so it looked white instead of the color it really is):

moon.jpg

[Shule]

I harvested a bowl of wonderberries this morning. I figured I'd try it when it was cool. Usually I harvest them between 6 to 9 PM or so. There are a lot of berries already, and more out there.

morning wonderberries.jpg

I think the birds are finally eating them, because I saw a bird feather on the plants, and I saw a bird fly down to the other side of a plant I was working on for a while (I'm not sure what it was doing, though). I know stink bugs eat wonderberries, but I didn't see any stink bugs today (although I did see many partially eaten wonderberries). Anyway, I've been hoping the birds would start eating them.

I'm thinking about making wonderberry juice, to see what that's like.

[Shule]

One of the Caya tomatoes (on the largest of the Caya plants) is starting to get ripe—but it's not the fruit I expected to get ripe first.

I harvested the Galapagos Island tomatoes. I counted 115. That's a lot more than I realized we had when I said I thought maybe I had enough for two BLTs in the BLT thread; also, when I said there were more wonderberries by volume by a long shot (there are more wonderberries, but I wouldn't call it by a long shot). Although these are from a number of plants, most of them came from two plants.

115 Galapagos Island sideview.jpg

115 Galapagos Island topview.jpg

[Shule]

Apparently, wonderberries taste even better refrigerated. It enhances the taste. Even a relative who previously said they didn't have much taste (to her tongue) admitted that refrigeration increased the flavor.

To me, they taste even more like watermelon refrigerated, but the berry-type taste and the acidity (the flavor, I mean) is also enhanced (I didn't notice much acidity at all before trying them refrigerated). The bowl I took a picture of up there has been in the refrigerator (covered with plastic wrap) ever since, and I've been eating from it periodically. I put some in my pasta sauce, today, too.

[JayneR13]

Wow! 115 is a LOT of cherry tomatoes! I'd call that a few BLTs worth, no doubt about it!

[Shule]

Wow! 115 is a LOT of cherry tomatoes! I'd call that a few BLTs worth, no doubt about it!

How's your heat wave coming? Ours has been pretty hot! I like the heat, but it was pretty hot last night, and smoky from wildfires (smoky enough that I could smell it pretty strongly). It was cloudy, today, though; so, it was nice, even though it was still super hot.

I've been watering the plants plenty; so, they're doing fine, for the most part.

[JayneR13]

No heat wave here! Lots of rain and cool temperatures, perfect for powdery mildew and other garden unwelcomes. I laid 200' of hose at the pantry garden and have had to use it exactly once LOL

[Shule]

The more I grow Galapagos Island, the more convinced I get that my initial seed source actually was the full-on Solanum cheesmaniae it was supposed to be. No, it's not because it obviously looks like the wild plant. It's because it doesn't seem to cross with other tomatoes very often at all. I think it's happened maybe once or twice (not sure, though), but out of so many times growing it (since 2015), that's got to be a record low.

Anyway, if my plant has such a hard time crossing, I don't envision it would have easily crossed before I got it either. So, keeping the variety pure probably would have been reasonably easy.

I'm growing a lot of plants this year, though; so, that's a lot of opportunities for it to cross-pollinate other tomatoes.

[Shule]

I get the feeling one of my other volunteers is Cherokee Purple, and that the other is Carolina Yellow.

The one that seems to be Carolina Yellow is behaving like that plant did two years ago (not like it did last year). I mean, it's getting a lot of leaves with one to a few big fruits growing earlier, and mounting for future production. Last year it was pretty different. It's a good thing it has a cage, this year.

[JayneR13]

Indeed, if it's Cherokee purple it'll need that cage! That's a very prolific variety, nice to have a volunteer if it produces.

[Shule]

Well, I thought it was just soil that drained too well at first, but it eventually became clear that one of my Galapagos Island tomatoes had Verticillium wilt (granted, a gradual onset rather than the sudden onset I'm used to). So, before it got worse, I pulled the plant up. It was wilting but hadn't discolored much, yet. However, interestingly, it gave me 87 ripe (or mostly ripe) tomatoes today, and the fruits seem to be fine.

While the other 20-something Galapagos Island tomatoes will probably fill in its space very quickly (and there's actually another volunteer in the same growing hole that I noticed today), it's still sad to see a plant die/dying.

All the other plants look great.

[Shule]

Indeed, if it's Cherokee purple it'll need that cage! That's a very prolific variety, nice to have a volunteer if it produces.

The plant that is likely Cherokee Purple is starting to set fruit in earnest. It set the first ones before today, but I'm optimistic that it'll be prolific.

[Shule]

I harvested most of the Galapagos Island tomatoes that were ripe (some riper than others), today. My finger's/hands were green after picking them; so, it's that time of year again. I counted 679 that were in the steamer insert for our pasta pot in this picture:

679 Galapagos Island tomatoes 2 Aug 2024.jpg

[Shule]

We had some thunder and it rained a little today.

It looks like the Galapagos Island tomatoes have a bunch to harvest already. I'm behind on the wonderberry harvest (I need to harvest a bunch of those).

I harvested the Caya tomatoes. Some weren't fully ripe that I thought were ripe, but they can ripen the rest of the way indoors.

There are 48 tomatoes from about four plants in this steamer insert (FYI, these fruits are maybe about five times as large as the Galapagos Island tomatoes in the previous pictures):

48 Caya tomatoes.jpg

Two of them split post-harvest. Here's another picture that features the split:

48 Caya tomatoes with two split.jpg

FYI: I'm not sure why the steamer insert looks like it has a rounded bottom in the pictures like a colander, but it actually doesn't. It's very flat. It's the same one used in the previous picture with the Galapagos Island tomatoes.

[Shule]

I harvested the Galapagos Island tomatoes again, this evening. This time, I picked those that were even slightly ripe, since they ripen the rest of the way very fast indoors (normally within a day or two, it seems). Plus, I figured the less ripe ones would be less likely to split during harvesting/washing/handling.

This colander (not the steamer insert) has 437 Galapagos Island tomatoes in it. About 3 to 5 of them are completely unripe (picked by accident).

If you're wondering why there were more last time, it's because I waited a lot longer between harvests last time.

437 Galapagos Island tomatoes.jpg

Well, my experiment growing them Galapagos Island tomatoes cages (as opposed to sprawling as I usually do) seems to be a success. They're actually a little bit easier to harvest this way (as opposed to harder; I tried growing Coyote and Matt's Wild Cherry in a tomato cage before, but they were very leafy and it was hard to find the fruit, even though it was there; so, I'm really glad Galapagos Island works well in cages). [FYI: Galapagos Island has larger fruit than Matt's Wild Cherry and Coyote. I'd say they're about marble-sized on average. This strain of Galapagos Island is descended from the fruits that resisted freezing well (wherein @Nan6b and I talked about it on TV); it has variable-sized fruit, which is not how the original kind is (I still have plenty of seeds for that). The original is very uniform in its fruit size. I don't know why it changed. I would have stuck with the original on account of the size variability, but this one kept volunteering in very large numbers. I did some selective breeding for fruits that don't split on the ancestors of this tomato, before it started volunteering; that seemed to help, actually.]

The reason I grew them in cages this year, though, was to save space (the plants get huge, when grown with black plastic).

[Shule]

I found an especially large Galapagos Island tomato and an especially large Caya tomato. The Caya one is kind of a beefsteak shape (not beefsteak size). I plan to save seeds from them. Also, some Galapagos Islands and plenty of wonderberries (for the same purpose).

[Shule]

At least a couple of the Brandywine Pink tomatoes are pink (on two different plants).

I harvested 4 Caya tomatoes from a new plant; they were pretty tasty.

[Shule]

I thought three fruits from the volunteer that seems to be from the striped bicolor Cherokee Lime offtype were ripe (because they were quite soft), but they just taste like they starting to ripen. Anyway, they're a light yellowish orange-ish pink-ish color, with stripes. They're much smaller than last year; they're bigger than an Early Girl F1 tomato, though. The unripe flavor is a lot like Sweet Ozark Orange, but less sweet. I wasn't expecting them to ripen for a while.

[Shule]

More Caya tomatoes were picked (to fill about half of a 64oz yogurt container)—just enough for frittatas, or so.