Shule's 2021 garden grow log

[Shule]

Yesterday: 86/57
Today: 85/60; UVI 7.5
Tomorrow: 80/53; UVI 6

So, I harvested a bunch of BSX and Amana Orange tomatoes to seed and dry. Amana Orange (B1) had about 12 ripe fruits (with plenty more in the works); I'm amazed at its productivity; thanks, [mention]Ginger2778[/mention] for the parent seed that I grew last year! Amana Orange (B0) had one large fruit that was starting to rot. Amana Orange (B) had one smaller fruit.

A lot of the BSX cross fruits split or started to go bad with the cooler weather (and with me waiting too long to harvest them). I need to stay on top of that. My tomato jungles are more resistant to human entry than ever (probably because of the fertilization). I should probably grow fewer tomato plants, next year!

[Shule]

Lots of tomatoes. Plenty of salad-sized ones outside. These are the big ones and the cherries, mostly. More cherries outside. Church is a cross (pink, striped, medium large beefsteak).

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[zendog]

Hi [mention]Shule[/mention] . Are the church tomatoes from seeds I sent you? Do you think they are crossed and not true to type? Sorry if that is the case. If they aren't right I'll toss the rest of the seeds.

[bower]

"Church is a cross". Good thing there's no robot here looking for religious remarks.

[Shule]

Hi @Shule . Are the church tomatoes from seeds I sent you? Do you think they are crossed and not true to type? Sorry if that is the case. If they aren't right I'll toss the rest of the seeds.

Yes, I think the plant I grew from your seeds is a cross (but I only have one plant; so, it's entirely possible that most of your seeds aren't crossed--but you never know until you grow more; I think stripes are dominant, anyway--if they're not, it might be an F2+ and then all the seeds would be a cross). The reason I think my plant is a cross is because they're striped like Green Zebra (although they seem otherwise like Church's description, except maybe somewhat smaller: pink beefsteaks; RL plant). It's a great tomato, though, and it looks nice. It held up nicely and set plenty of fruit in the heat.

What striped tomatoes did you grow?

[Shule]

Saturday: 82/60
Sunday: 85/51
Monday: 85/55
Tuesday: 86/53
Wednesday (yesterday): 87/50
Thursday (today): 87/59; UVI 7 or 6.8, depending on who you ask
Friday (tomorrow): 83/53; UVI 7
Saturday: 84/48; UVI 6

I think I ate too many tomatoes, on Tuesday, if that's possible. Either that or I was dehydrated and hot. I'm not sure. Being too hot would be strange, since it's been a lot cooler, actually.

A few days ago, I learned that due to the price of canning lids, we're probably not going to be canning very many of them, this year. So, now I have to figure out what to do with them beyond dehydrating (and be diligent about dehydrating them).

I noticed on Tuesday that Aunt Ginny's Purple had two fruits blushing.

[Rockoe10]

....

A few days ago, I learned that due to the price of canning lids, we're probably not going to be canning very many of them, this year. So, now I have to figure out what to do with them beyond dehydrating (and be diligent about dehydrating them).

.....

Have you thought about lacto- fermenting? It won't keep as long, but you can have tomatoes till the end of the year with no problem.

[Julianna]

I freeze the ones I have too many of and use them in soups later. It works out for me.

[Shule]

27 Aug: 86/63
28 Aug: 87/54
29 Aug: 92/46
30 Aug: 91/50
1 Sep: 85/55
2 Sep: 85/56
3 Sep: 85/50
4 Sep: 87/42
5 Sep: 92/47
6 Sep: 92/47
7 Sep: 93/52
8 Sep: 90/50
Today (9 Sep): 95/62; UVI 5
10 Sep: 78/54; UVI 5

Looks like I haven't posted in a while!

Anyway, I've had some Aunt Ginny's Purple tomatoes, since I last wrote. They're pretty good. They have a very nice astringent taste on top of the normal balance you'd find in pinks. Decently sweet, but not as sweet as Carbon or anything. Great on sandwiches. All of my ripe AGP fruits have had dried, short vertical cracks by the stem end. The plant is doing well. No disease problems. I've only seen two plants with the disease issues that I was worried AGP might get, due to where it was. One was Matt's Hornet (on a few fruits only), and the other was a Mexican Yellow cross F3. If it's a virus, it doesn't seem to be one that monopolizes the garden, fortunately. AGP's production is looking decent to good. The fruit-size is medium to medium-large.

The tomatoes seem to have a mild to moderate laxative effect, this year, if we eat very many. I think that's because of the Epsom salt!

[Shule]

I should note that my Medovaya Kaplya cross volunteers, and my most-recently discovered Napoli cross are some of my favorites, this year. I also really like the taste of some beefsteak volunteers; nice and tangy.

[Labradors]

How odd about your Aunt Ginny's Purple (or maybe it was the ones that I grew). I found it too sweet and lacking in complexity. There was nothing astringent about it.

Linda

[Shule]

10 Sep: 83/55
11 Sep: 80/49
12 Sep: 83/49
13 Sep: 83/56
14 Sep: 84/50
15 Sep: 87/46
16 Sep: 76/47
17 Sep: 82/36
18 Sep: 82/44
19 Sep: 72/49
20 Sep: 71/40
21 Sep: 78/37
22 Sep: 80/41
23 Sep: 82/45; UVI 4.5
24 Sep: 81/44; UVI 4
-----

The garden's looking good. I've been programming and stuff. There's plenty to harvest. Lots of a lot of things (the Mucher cucumbers didn't produce much, and the Sprite tomato has been looking sick for much of the season).

I ate most of a watermelon (the largest one in the front yard, TMK), today. It was good (round, pink flesh, black seeds; not entirely solid, as in a few hollow parts). Like the tomatoes (much more so, actually), It must have absorbed a lot of that Epsom salt. . . .

Most of the watermelon plants are pretty much (not quite) dead, now (due to spider mites). So, I'll probably be eating a lot of watermelon for a while, or else give some away (since it needs to be harvested).

The late watermelon planting worked great for the front yard, but the ones in the backyard didn't fare as well in the given time before the spider mites took over. They didn't get pollinated as well, either. I think the issue might be that they didn't get as much sun, though.

I've decided I really like bigger tomatoes and large cherries, this year, and that they're a good combination.

We probably have about 5lbs of grapes in the freezer; there are probably at least 10lbs more on the vines. Frozen grapes are delicious in smoothies, by the way. The variegated grape leafhoppers decimated our vines more than usual, this year.

The sunroot x sunflower F1 hybrids are beautiful, and huge, this year. They have a *lot* of flowers, especially compared to regular sunroots. The flowers are fresh, and the regular sunflowers are about done. They're worth growing as an ornamental, if you've got the space (even in the shade). They sprawl like indeterminate tomatoes, though! I just have two holes in the black plastic where they're growing, and they're covering so much area.

The asters are coming out, and the bees are on them. We have a lot of Russian sage, and the bees like it again, this year.

I ordered new seeds, and paid my tax on them--from four different vendors.

I cut back the chives maybe two weeks ago (they had gone to seed and basically dried out from the summer), and they started growing back immediately. They're pretty tasty.

See these posts, if you haven't already:
* https://www.tomatojunction.com/viewtopi ... 441#p54441 (about climbing tomatoes)
* https://www.tomatojunction.com/viewtopic.php?p=54533 (about Lemon cucumbers)
* https://www.tomatojunction.com/viewtopi ... =12&t=2832 (a recent 2022 tomato growlist post)
* https://www.tomatojunction.com/viewtopi ... =13&t=2831 (a recent 2022 pepper growlist post)

[Shule]

I've decided to name my Napoli cross F1--the fourth cross; formerly called Napoli (C4)--Morsel_A. It's red, and the size of a large plum/grape cherry with good standard salad cherry taste, a little sweet (the first ones I had were possibly moderately sweet); firm (not crunchy) and seemingly durable (they can split if you drop them, though). They're about 1.5" to almost 2" long.

[Shule]

I'm going to name the Medovaya Kaplya cross F2 from last year Snacker_A. So, I've named the ones this year Snacker_B (was v21_A3), Snacker_B0 (was v21_A6), and Snacker_B1 (was v21_A18).

[Shule]

Okay, so Snacker_A is excellent. Snacker_A0 is great. My relative prefers Snacker_A0 (which she thinks is obviously the sweetest) and I prefer Snacker_A (which I think is obviously the sweetest).

I tried Snacker_A1 for the first time (that's the one I yanked out, changed my mind and transplanted in the shade of a currant bush; so, it was set back considerably). The ripest fruits (notwithstanding they didn't look that ripe) were fermented, or something, and didn't taste so good! They were also mealy, and you couldn't take the calyces off without pulling out a core-like part from the tomato. The least ripe fruits were sweet, decent-tasting and mealy. So, yeah, I'm planning to discontinue Snacker_A1, and focus on other Snacker_ plants. Even if they didn't ferment when ripe, the mealiness and the calyx-core-thing are not what I'm going for with this project. Snacker_A1 had paler fruits than Snacker_A and Snacker_A0.

Now I'm even more bewildered about what the father of the F1 was.

[Shule]

Here's yesterday's tomato harvest (not counting the punctured fruits which we ate). The twenty orange ones in the first picture are all from the Amana Orange (B1) plant. It's been super prolific, this year; way more tomatoes than I've ever had from Amana Orange before. I wonder if it likes the zinc/copper/iron combination that I put in its soil a few years ago, or if that's all been used up by now. I have plenty of cherry and probably paste tomatoes to harvest. We could have had a lot more (including from that Amana Orange plant) if it weren't for some things I'll refrain from going in to.





I tried a Purple Russian tomato yesterday. It was very delicious, and also mealy. It tasted like fruity bacon mixed with tomato.

[Shule]

A relative canned 18 quarts of tomatoes from those pictured.

[Shule]

We got 12 more quarts today, from unpictured tomatoes.

[Shule]

Here's my end-of-season sweet pepper harvest.

And the winner for the most big orange bell peppers goes to … Purple Beauty? Yes. I'm amazed by this plant, but it apparently wasn't Purple Beauty. It was covered by a tomato, but it got about 14 peppers (on one plant), and they're nice! A few were still green, but most had ripened. One softened and rotted because it was overripe. This plant could be a stray Canary Bell seed. The fruits look similar.

The fruits outside the bowl (and some of them in the bowl) were supposed to be Purple Beauty.

[Shule]

Yep, it's the last day of the frost-free growing season, according to the weather. I plan to dehydrate these and harvest the hot peppers and the tomatoes (mostly green ones, but also lots of Galapagos Island cherry tomatoes). A third Orange Jazz tomato is ripe (lots of green ones).