Photos from my neglected 2012 garden (ie., blame the baby)

[OneDahlia]

Here are few photos from my 2012 garden. I planted 21 varieties, and got probably an average of 2 tomatoes per plant. The last photo shows my excuse. It was fun anyway, and helped with narrowing my choices down for next year.

My first tomato was a Sophie's Choice -- picked July 1, which was by far the earliest I've ever picked a tomato. No photo because it got eaten as soon as I realized it was ripe three days later. It was a good-sized tomato and I really liked its sweet taste and texture.

The next one I picked was Moravsky Div the next day, followed by Ludmilla's Pink Heart, Moskvich and more Moravsky Div on July 11. They were all pretty good but suffered a bit from early-season blandness. Moravsky Div was good but I prefer a sweeter tomato. Ludmilla's was disappointingly bland -- later tomatoes from that plant were better. Moskvich tomatoes were beautiful but had tougher skin and a lot of seeds and gel. The M's were quite productive all summer.

Sometime in mid-July I got the first Kosovo. LOVED that one -- great texture and sweeter taste, with few seeds.

At the end of July, I picked my second Kosovo, Rumi Banjan and Little Lucky. I loved the light taste of Rumi Banjan, but it had a little more gel than I like. Here's what I wrote about Little Lucky: "Little Lucky may be perfect tomato! Gorgeous texture and taste."

On August 1, I picked 2 Gary'O Sena, 2 Fish Lake Oxheart, 1 Siberian Pink Husky, 4 Rumi Banjan, 5 Moskvich and some Chocolate cherry, Sungold, Isis candy and Matt's wild cherry tomatoes (the Matt's from volunteer plants that I either allowed to grow or missed noticing). None of the cherry tomatoes did much or tasted very good except Matt's, which grew from volunteers. My favorite from this bunch was Gary'O Sena -- great texture and I loved the taste. My husband preferred the two pinks from that batch.

And after that, I pretty much totally ignored the garden, being too huge and uncomfortable to wander over there and get depressed over how the weeds were strangling everything and growing taller than me. Along with the weeds, a groundhog wrought some serious damage on the garden -- he got through our new fence and enjoyed some of my large early tomatoes, including a gorgeous huge KBX. I got just one or two of the other tomatoes I planted, or none at all. Baby was born 8/28.

A note on peppers -- I grew Carmen, Melrose, Aji Crystal, Jimmy Nardello, Corbaci, Poblano, and one or two others. By far my favorites were Aji Crystal -- we loved the light, citrusy, mild heat -- and Melrose, which was extremely productive and had a nice sweet taste. The others didn't produce anywhere near as much.

I have a few more photos to illustrate my novel above, but we're off to a conference for kid #2, so that's all for now.