Too Many Tomatoes

 For the first time in several years I have finally reached the too many tomatoes situation.  I had been doing so well planting three or four plants.  But I was feeling stingy.  I was not very willing to share.  So this year I planted sixteen plants and now I have the opposite problem.  We are just at the end of a weekend of cool, rainy weather.  We got an inch of rain in two days which was fine, but our highs have been in the low sixties and overnight has been low fifties.  On Friday I picked every tomato that was showing some color so the rain would not split them and I felt buried in tomatoes.  They took up a square yard on the dining room table.  The nice part about picking everything at once is that I have a good representation of all of the indeterminate varieties I am growing this year.

Top to bottom left to right:

Elsie’s Amish, Barlow, Paul Robeson, Carbon, Berkley Tie-Dye Green, Black Beauty, Lenny and Gracie’s Kentucky Heirloom, Pike County Yellow.

That Amish tomato weighed 1 pound 6 ounces!  The Carbon and Black Beauty plants have both been producing much larger fruit, just not that day.  The Paul Robeson and Carbon may appear identical in this picture, but when you pick them they are easy to distinguish.  The Robeson is very glossy and oblate while the Carbon is a dusky, almost matte finish and more rounded.

Have you ever gotten to the point with a plant where you said "I've had just about as much as I can take out of you?"  I mean, other than a zucchini plant.  That's where I am with the Early Girl.  It was sprawling all over and infected with blight.  The blight had spread to the Peppermint Stripes Dwarf next to it but I must say the Dwarf was showing an admirable degree of resistance to the blight.

I was tired of the Peppermint Stripes too.  It is thin skinned and prone to cracking.  And its hard to tell when they are ripe.  So I took that one out too.

That's better!  Why do twelve tomato plants suddenly seem so much more manageable?

The plant that has really impressed me this year is my friend Elsie's family heirloom.  I grew one out two years ago and it was a monster of a plant but not a heavy producer.  

Tomato Monster 2022

That year the fruit was late to set, slow to ripen and not very big.  But its a good tomato, very much like a Brandywine, and, being Pennsylvania Amish, probably from the same stock generations ago.  It just hasn't been commercially diluted like the Brandywine because it has been in sole possession of the Yoder family for a hundred (?) years.

So I tried the plant again.  I start a tray of four dozen plants for Elsie each spring and I always have extras.  So I stuck this one in another spot all by itself and ... Wow.  It currently has about ten fruit on it and they are all huge.  With most tomatoes you get a cluster with one large and a bunch of smaller fruit but this plant is only setting one or two fruit on each bloom cluster and they are all going to be close to a pound.

Now I rarely get excited about a plain ole red tomato but I'm pretty excited about this one.

You see that slice of bread under there?  That's one of those big Pepperidge Farm loaves.