Wisconsin Tomato Day

[Wi-sunflower]

I've been holding off announcing this event due to weather delays with planting and keeping things alive. But we finally finished planting everything last week and have been hauling water to keep it alive. Most of the plants look like they will survive.

We are going to have a Tomato Field Day at our farm on Sunday Aug 30, 09. Here is a page at my web site with more info http://knapps-fresh-vegies.netfirms.com/tomato-day.html

The page needs to be updated a bit and I will post more details as things progress and we see how things are maturing.

Hopefully we will be able to check out around 300 varieties, tho some may be a bit late due to the later than normal planting problems.

If you want any more info email me from the link on my site. Also any suggestions on things we can do during the event will be taken into consideration.

Thanks,
Carol

[Wi-sunflower]

IT'S POURING !!!!!!! YAAAH !!!!!

It has been a struggle getting things to grow here this year. We have had only 0.44" of rain for the month of July so far. And June was dry after the 10th too. Only 0.9" for the last 2/3rds of June. The only sort of save is the fact that it's been cooler than it should be too. But that also means stuff wasn't growing well either. Except the weeds of course.

We've been running sprinklers where we can reach with water. Where it's too far we've been hauling a 750 gallon tank and dumping it on the rows. Not very efficient but it's been keeping things alive so far.

I ordered some layflat and T-Tape drip line on Monday in part so maybe we would finally get some rain. In the past when I spent somewhere over $500 on irrigation supplies, by the time we get them we don't need them.

Due to watering, we've gotten way behind on the cultivating. The few times I was able to do some, I could barely get the cultivator in the ground. It's so hard, like concrete out there.

Well, hopefully now I will be able to do the cultivating. If we get some of that heat that's out west, things should still be reasonably OK in time for the Tomato Day.

I'm hoping some of you in the mid-west may be able to get here. While my first post may have sounded a bit "commercial", mainly I want this to be a tasting event. Since I don't eat much of the varieties, I would like to hear how others think some of the varieties taste. I have so many new-to-me varieties this year. This should also be a chance to see how some varieties perform under "farm" conditions rather than being babied as 1-of in a home garden.

I will try to keep things up dated as the summer progresses.

Carol

[Granite26]

Carol
Yes for the rain! I only got 31/100" but hadnt had more than a few 100ths in the last five weeks so I will take it. I hope you got more! I had been giving each plant 1 gallon water every couple days but nothing beats rain!

Your event sounds great! I would love to get there but will not know for sure until closer to time. Hopefully I can make it and will see you and your tomatoes then!

[Wi-sunflower]

Update time.

We've had a dificult no-heat summer up til this last week. On Aug 7-9 we had several rains that totaled 1.2 ". It's also finally gotten hot and somewhat humid. It's brought on the tomatoes.

Thursday the crew spent most of the day and picked 24 half pails of tomatoes of most every shape and color. "Half pails" because I don't want the tomatoes on the bottom of a 5 gal bucket to be mush by the time it gets to the barn.

I wasn't expecting them to find so many ripe and near ripe tomatoes so we didn't keep the varieties seperate this picking. This week we will be going thru the field and finding the marker stakes and weeding around them so we can label the tomatoes picked from now on.

We do have rain in the forecast for later today and tomarrow and it's been rather hot so hopefully we will have some great tomatoes for tasting in just 2 weeks when we have the Tomato Day on Sunday Aug 30.

I've been talking to people at the farmers markets about the Tasting Day and have gotten some people that seem really interested. I sure hope it turns out OK.

Carol

[Wi-sunflower]

I just finished putting my planting into a spreadsheet so there is a "map" of the varieties and rows. I made it in OpenOffice but saved it in Excel format so anyone should be able to open the file. It's rather large as it's for about 5 acres of plants in 63 rows. I have it set for printing on 8 pages right now.

This should give some of you an idea of what I MAY have available for this winter's trades. Hopefully I will be able to get seed from as many of the new-to-me varieties as possible.

Carol

[Wi-sunflower]

Only a week til the tasting at my farm.

While we are starting to get some nice tomatoes FINALLY, we haven't been able to keep up with the weeds. While we have been short of heat and rain, that doesn't seem to have hurt the weeds at all. I'm getting a few extra people in to try to get as much weeded by Sat as possible.

As this is the first time I'm trying this, I don't know if we will get 10 visitors or 200. I do hope we get enough to have people taste and evaluate the different types of tomatoes. I'm going to try to keep the evals between "like" varieties -- reds, yellows, pinks, romas, etc. It wouldn't be fair to compare a pink with an orange.

Any other suggestions on how I should do a tasting.

Thanks,
Carol

[mdvpc]

Carol-Good luck on your tasting-let us know how it goes.

[Barbee]

Carol, we never know at CHOPTAG how many will show up so what I did for my table was to cut up 2 large tomatoes or 4-5 small ones of each variety into nice sized tasting chunks. If I ran low or out of samples for a variety, it was simple to cut another tomato up real quick. I always kept an extra tomato of that variety on each plate, too, in case I wasn't around and I ran out, they could cut it up themselves.
Since you are doing this solo, can you enlist in a couple of people who would be responsible for watching and cutting the tomatoes up on an as needed basis?

[Wi-sunflower]

Thanks for the tips on how many to cut and to have a few extra.

Hubby has enlisted a fair amount of "helpers". Some are long time friends that have helped on projects before and others are some local retirees that help out at the food pantry where we take our market leftovers.

We are going to have a write-up in the local paper sometime this week. The photog was just out here to take some pics of the field and the workers getting it weeded.

So far we have about 13 of 63 rows reasonably decently weeded. I will have a few more workers in tomorrow so hopefully we will get at least 1/2 of the field done before the event.

While I was out there I had my camera and took a few shots of some that are already weeded. if I can remember the order I took the pics, they are --

a cluster of Riesentraube - no wonder it translates to big bunch of grapes

Neves Azorian Red

Cuostralee -- from Sandhill

Vjera's

There are 2 pics of 1 of them but I'm not sure which and I may have gotten the order wrong. I didn't have anything to write with when I took the pics. Mainly I was impressed with the size and cluster sets of some of these new-to-me varieties. Especially with the less than good growing conditions we've had here most of the summer.

Carol

[Wi-sunflower]

Absolutely the worst thing happened while we were at lunch today, Thursday.

Before we left I told the worker that supposedly knows the most English what I wanted them to do after they were done with lunch. They were supposed to weed row 1. It had been weeded about 2 weeks ago and you couldn't find the plants again.

Usually we pick tomatoes for market on Thurs afternoon. But I told him we wouldn't pick til tomorrow so they could keep weeding.

When I got back tho, there were 10 workers out PICKING. More than 1/2 of the varieties in the first 10 rows are lost for the tasting. They didn't mark anything and I could only figure out a few by color and shape and where they were picking.

The NAR, Cuostralee, Vjera's, Mule Team, Palmera's and several others are totally mixed up. That's the big ones. There are several varieties of small that are also mixed. I can't even find the Yellow Brandywind Platfoot that I had seen 2 hours earlier. They are probably under something else. The Vjera's should be distinctive enough shape wise, but the only bucket with that oxheart shape has both red and pink in it.

What a disaster. Those should have been some of the best.

There may be 3 days til the tasting, but the weather is supposed to be cool and cloudy with showers possible. Not too likely that anything is going to ripen by Sunday.

There should be more NAR and Cuostralee further out in the patch. But they were planted later and may not have anything close to ripe yet either.

As you can imagine I'm livid and at least 1 guy will be fired at the end of the week. This isn't the first time he has only 1/2 listened to what I told him and did exactly what I told him NOT to do.

We've been working all summer on this event and it's messed up in the last couple of days by a careless worker.

Carol

[Granite26]

WOW! Sorry to hear this. I bet you are VERY frustrated!!! I am sure you will have many god varieties to sample so dont let it get you too down. Hopefully you have a market for boxes of mixed variety heirlooms!

[Lee]

Carol,

Sorry to hear about the mix up. I know it's frustrating.

However, here's a foolproof way to sort out you Cuostralees from the others.
1. Separate all by looks. They should be somewhat distinct looking to achieve this.
2. Taste one fruit from each "pile". The best tasting one is Cuostralee!

Lee

[Wi-sunflower]

Well I calmed down over nite and didn't fire the guy. But I did talk to the whole crew at the beginning this morning and explained why I was so mad yesterday. Also that guy got told that he almost got fired and if he doesn't LISTEN in the future, he will be.

Mainly I didn't want to have to train a new crew during my busiest week of the year. Next weekend we not only have our usual markets, but we have a 2 day Labor Day event that is usually our biggest market of the year.

While it's quite cool, we are getting a bit of sun since lunch. A few things just may blush by Sunday.

Yes we do have at least 200 more varieties beyond what is in the rows that got picked, it was just that some of the BEST big varieties were there and I know I don't have more of most of them further out in the field. There were a couple of just about "pooped-out" varieties, probably determinates, that I was going to save for seeds and now I may not have much more of them coming.

At least we don't have all the diseases that are all over the east or we wouldn't even be having a tomato day at all.

The 2 "porta-johns" were just delivered, so I guess it's officialy happening.

I'll try to take pics and report back next week after I wind down.

Carol