First tomatoes of the season (PNW)

[Barnowl]

Wow, Tania, I just love looking at your photos… Last year I read your posts with great interest from Vancouver Island (Nanaimo) just across the Georgia Straight from your farm. All of those photos of your ripe tomatoes inspired me to really get serious about hierlooms and try growing from seed this year. I have grown a number of the varieties you sent me and will try some of the others next year…

As for me, none of my plants have done that well, most have stopped growing a while ago and many have slowly been losing leaves to early blight (kept in check check with fungonil [daconil by a different name]) Yet I have been getting some ripe fruit nevertheless, though production seems much lower than I should expect in a good growing season. The only one that has grown steadily for me and has reached over five feet is Sungold…

Here's what has ripened for me so far this year:
Black Cherry – Wonderfully delicious when left to ripen fully. Someone said that it reached a plum-like flavour and they were right!

Sungold – Is it typical for these to not be uniformly orange when ripe? Many of mine have blushes of green and slight hints of red when ripe. Also, they are not quite as sweet as I expected. Intense strong flavour but sweetness isn’t the first thing you think of.

Azoychka – Produced real early for me with a very nice flavour, light citrus?

Kimblerly – Wow! From all the talk about earlies, I wasn’t expecting much but I love the flavour that these guys have. Maybe being in the Province where they were created helps… lol

Costoluto Fiorentino – This was a nursery start fill in. Did not grow that great but has given me three ripe fruit. Not that expectional in flavour

Amazon Chocolate – The first larger black I have ever tasted. The write up at Amishland lured me to try it and I must say it is quite good, not amazing, but good.

Mini-Rose – Pebble-sized to small cherry-sized, think I will try a different red (this one is pink) next year.

Bull’s Heart – Antother nursery fill in – Incredible flavour. I think I am in love with hearts. Just absolutely blown away but the rich intense flavour. Better and more interesting to me than the Pink Brandywines I grew last year (which were very very good as well in their creamy way). I will grow many more hearts next season.

Black Prince – Only had one so far so will wait to give my verdict (My sense is that I am one that isn’t as crazy about black tomatoesas some people.

Paul Robeson and Prudens Purple are a ripe now (would benefit with another day…). Looking forward to the Prudens!!!

Still waiting on some of the ones I am growing in pots (I really messed things up with these so they are really late. Maybe I will write another post to talk about the many things I learned not to do next year with container growing. These varieties include: Demidov, New Big Dwarf, Oregon Spring (late transplant). Other varieties that I man aged to kill in the pots include Grushovka, Kalinka (sorry Tania!!), Ailsa Craig, and Moskvich (I know, I know, its not determinate, but the pot was the only place I could put it….)

To hear Tania say that this has been the worst year she can remember, at least fills me with hope that I can expect much better results if we have a warmer longer less wet summer next year…

Jamie

[akgardengirl]

Barnowl,
I would really like to hear your experiences with your container tomatoes. I grow all my toms in containers and have been thinking of some changes to make myself for next year. We too have had a very dismal summer with cooler temps and few sunny days. I still have very green tomatoes on the vines. I enjoy reading the PNW posts since many of the short season tomatoes mentioned are the same as I am growing up here. Please post your container ideas and what not to do for the 2009 season. One change I will make is to change out the white 5 gal. growbags for black pots. I love the growbags and the ease of moving them around in the greenhouse but they keep the soil much cooler than the black pots. I am also going to put some type of rack in the gh to keep the pots, especially the dwarf project plants, up off the ground.
Sue

[dice]

I started an Earl's Faux on New Year's Day and grew it in a
window during the spring. It struggled quite a bit with the early
May cold weather after transplanting, and it has had
"Earl's_Faux_itis" right along (steadily losing leaves, like some
of the pictures in an earlier thread this summer), but it managed
to stay healthy enough to produce several fruit, not huge but
bigger than a baseball, and it does have excellent flavor, a lot
more meat than core, and it is not especially seedy while still
being juicy.

Some of the first ripe fruits on other cultivars have been rather
bland this year, but Earl's Faux was still sweet and delicious.
No tendency to catfacing, either, which was a surprise. I have
had the worst of that over all that I have ever seen, even on
cultivars where you would not particularly expect it, and the
first fruits on several different cultivars have had few or no
viable seeds.

(Cold weather is the pits.)

The taste of cherries seems to be hanging in there as well,
and Aurora and Odessa have their usual eye-opening flavor,
if not a lot of production this year.

[tache]

So far Black Prince and Stupice are the only really producing ones of the salad tomatoes.One Cherokee Purple and quite a few Black Cherry, quite a few Sweet 100 and Sungold and Celebrity all pretty late but we'll see what tomorrow brings.

There is alot of grumbling here. People are saying that they haven't had any really ripe ones yet so I guess I'm lucky to have even my meagre crop.I've had worse year but I wouldn't mind having a better one.

[PNW_D]

Finally, taste test time, and I must say I'm most impressed with the first of the season.

First (from bottom up), was have the Galina x Grub's Mystery Green F1 (canary yellow) - a lovely burst of flavour with much more depth than Galina; rich, deep nice "acid"/sweet balance. Only down side - skin slightly tough and a wee bit small.

Next up is Grushovka (pink) - smooth, light, tasty, on the sweet side - yum. Plant health and production make this one a keeper.


Then we have Persey (red) - have grown this one a few times - rich (but not the depth of others tasted today), sweet, nice "acid", "crispy".


Finally, in top pic, Shtambovy Kartofelnolistny 164 (pink), wow! - a real surprise standout, nice "acid" bite, rich, deep taste and colour - with sweet notes - PL dwarf and pink (clear skin) - a rather rare combination I believe.


Lots of green tomatoes starting to lighten up - now if they all taste as good as these four I will be more than pleased - even if they are late .......

[Barnowl]

Akgardengirl, I have posted my experiences with container growing in the Growing in Containers forum... I don't know how much you will learn as I suspect most of my mistakes were classic newbie ones... Anyways, lets hope for a warm sunny September...

Oh, and here are few pictures of tomatos from the garden: Black Cherry, Sungold, Costoluto Fiorentino, Azoychka, Paul Robeson, Kimberly, Amazon Chocolate, Prudens Purple

[Barnowl]

Oooops, something glitched with the photos, I try again....

[maryinoregon]

Eaten my first Linnie's Oxheart. Did not enjoy it. Very sweet. I have another ready to eat from another location, (a neighbor's), and a Stump of the World to try. Several more Linnie's Oxheart will be ready soon.

Have eaten a couple handfuls of various cherry tomatoes, Yellow Pear and Sun Sugar. I know, why Yellow Pear? But it was a close out plant at a big box store and I needed to replace a plant that had died due to cold and flea beetles.

We are having a mid-80s day, but the nights have been so coolish, low 50s.

Been enjoying other good things from the garden though, beets and their greens, chard, scallions, summer squash, several types of beans and even some sweet peppers. Thank goodness.

I think the timing will be really close on the slicer tomatoes, even the cherries. It's been an abysmal tomato season.

[DoubleJ]

I've gotten to eat a large amount of Supersweet 100's, one Lemon Boy and one Early Girl so far this year. Deer ate ALL of my early blossoms. I have about 10 early girls on the vine that will be ripe this week, a few more lemon boys, a few Jet Stars and a few Heartlands also.

Just getting started into tomatoes and these were all store bought starts. I can't wait until next year when I can start heirlooms from seed!!!

[PNW_D]

Nice looking toms barnowl - is the black with the ridged shoulders in the first pic your Amazon Chocolate?? How was the taste? Did you start you seedlings in March?

Have to agree Mary - what a season - thank goodness for Grushovka. How was Stump of the World? That's one I've been wanting to try for some time; it always appears on my draft grow list, and because of size of plant, it is always removed...

[Barnowl]

Hi PNW_D, yeah that was the amazon chocolate. It is one that I am definitely enjoying, having a rich and (dare I say) smokey taste that I am learning to associate with black tomatoes. I have 3 other blacks (Black Prince, Paul Robeson, and a mystery one that was supposed to be Orange-1) and it is tied in flavour with the Paul Robeson. However, I expect that the flavour of all my tomatoes will improve significantly when we have a much better growing season.

As to when I started the seed for the amazon chocolate, it was part of the second batch of seedlings I started on April 15th. My first batch was on March 7 and honestly I can't really tell a difference, the second batch plants easily caught up to the older ones. This is probably due to the very cold May and June we had...

Two of my other tomatoes are finally ripening, Demidov and Oregon Spring, and another Bull's Heart (my favourite this year) is almost perfectly ripe....

Its been a nice September so far, eh? Much better than August atleast....

Here's a question for more experienced PNWers: Has there ever been the perfect growing season here in the PNW??? When May, June, July and August were the best that they can be here??? How long ago was it???

[tache]

No,Barnowl, there has never been a perfect season here and probably not any where else. But some seasons are less perfect than others and I think this one is more less perfect than others. Or put another way. The gap between what you hope for and what you get is wider this year than three years ago. This could get to be the longest thread in history.

Example: I'm strarting my list for next year in same thread that was supposed to be about the first tomatoes of the year.

[Tania]

2006 was really good for tomatoes and melons here. So were 2003 and 2004.

2005 was quite bad, 2007 was bad but slightly better than 2005, 2008 is by far the worst.

I want 2009 to be like 2006 or better, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tania

[squibT]

I tell you I am absolutely shocked. I have had only a few full sized tomatoes from about 45 plants....BSM and SFT gave me the first. The rest were cherry or grape. I have some plants loaded with tomatoes fully green. Some of the larger just starting to turn.
I wonder if a greenhouse would be a better idea for tomatoes here?

squibt

[dice]

I cannot claim to have paid close attention always, but 2006
seemed to me the sunniest summer up here in 20 years.