Tangled Branches: Cultivated
happenings in and around my zone 6b gardens in northern Virginia and in central Virginia
Saturday, February 27, 2010
GWR
...means Green When Ripe, when referring to tomatoes.
I can't make up my mind what I think of them. Last year I grew two kinds - one intentionally and one unintentionally. The intentional GWR was 'Green Zebra', which seems to be one of the better-known ones. It's a "modern heirloom" variety, by which I mean that it wasn't passed down from generation to generation, but bred in the current generation by a current plant breeder - Tom Wagner. I got off to a bad start with 'Green Zebra'. Out of 14 tomato plants, it was the only one attacked by a cutworm. Luckily I found it before it was too wilted, so I just stuck the cut-off stem in the ground and it formed roots and grew. But it was a bit behind the other plants in setting fruit.
I should back up at this point and say that 2009 was not a easy year to grow tomatoes. The weather was cold and rainy until about July (as I remember it), and I had B trouble in the garden all season - Bugs, Blights, and Beasts. I think the tomato leaf spot disease was Bacterial Spot. All 14 plants were affected to some degree. I didn't notice any spots on the fruit, but lost most of the foliage on many plants. I picked off and burned the spotted leaves, but the problem persisted all season, even after the weather turned warmer and drier. Then the Beasts began to nibble on the tomatoes just as they started to ripen, so I resorted to picking them early and leaving them to ripen in a protected spot. I know a lot of gardeners do this routinely, but I don't. Or didn't.
You can see the tomato diversity of my garden pretty well, but the photo also illustrates another of my problems. All the variously-shaped pink, black, yellow, bicolor, and even green tomatoes have crowded the basic round red tomato right off my planting list. I tried to remedy that last year but was frustrated by the performance of my selections. 'Lida Ukrainian' bore a small number of unremarkable fruit. 'Bloody Butcher' also produced sparsely - I did admire the color, flavor and size, but there were darned few of them to admire. 'Break O'Day' made a huge healthy plant, not too badly damaged by the leaf spot disease, and laden with large numbers of perfect round fruit. I thought Wow, this is going to be the one. I waited for them to ripen. And waited and waited and waited....Gee, this is taking a long time to ripen....eventually, they looked like this:
The skin turned yellow, but the inside stayed green.
It tasted though, exactly like a ripe red tomato. And a pretty good one too. So. Was this a case of stay pollen? A mutation? A stray seed? But this kind of thing happens when you only grow one plant of each variety. In 2008, my favorite 'Black Russian' tomato produced pink fruit. The plant was from the same batch of seed I'd been using for several years. In 2005, I bought a plant of 'Green Zebra' which turned out to be a red cherry tomato. And last year I gave a 'Break O'Day' seedling to my parents and that plant produced the expected round red fruit.
But back to GWR tomatoes. After you've layered multicolored slices for a fancy-looking plate of tomatoes, or made a reverse salsa (green tomatoes, red chiles), what do you do with the rest of them? I chopped some up and put them in the freezer. They're still there. Green spaghetti sauce? Green chili? I did toss a few in some Indian dish where the color didn't matter, and that's probably how I'll use the remainder, but more from a frugal sense of duty than any real enthusiasm.
Any suggestions? If I can't think of more ways to use the GWRs they probably won't be invited back.
Labels: tomatoes
Thursday, December 10, 2009
December Tomatoes
Did she say December tomatoes? Yes! But it isn't like they came fresh from the vine today. This one has been "ripening" since mid-October when we frantically picked all we could before the frost. I think it may be the variety 'Persimmon', but in our haste we didn't bother to sort the tomatoes by variety - just dumped everything into any container we could find. We'll call it Persimmon. Or maybe Kellogg's Breakfast. Or maybe even a Virginia Sweets. One of the big yellow ones anyway. But I think it's Persimmon.
A good many of those hastily harvested tomatoes never "ripened" but this one did and we ate it for lunch today. It wasn't the same as a mid-August tomato, but it wasn't bad either. I scrounged a small amount of coriander/cilantro from the garden this morning, but unless we get a heat wave, that will be all until spring.
Earlier in the week I made a sort of pasta all'Amatriciana with some other varieties of tomatoes that had "ripened" off the vine but those weren't as good as today's.
With all the precipitation of the last few weeks the garden is sloshy soggy. The deer have been making their presence known by eating almost every green thing left in the garden, and now they're wading ankle-deep in mud to do it. Well maybe I exaggerate a bit, but the hoofprints are quite deep. And they've been eating things they are reputed not to like. Onions for example. So it's just as well that I didn't get my fall onions planted. The ones the deer are eating were the perennial types that I left in.
I'm content to just let the garden go for a few months. I like vegetable gardening, but it's very time-consuming. So time-consuming that I didn't write half the blog posts I had planned. Maybe I can make the clock run backwards, writing up the garden events in reverse chronological order. By the time I get caught up, we'll be back to spring and time to begin again.
Labels: coriander, deer, tomatoes, weather
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Tomato Tasting: Virginia Sweets
OK, this won't be a detailed review like the last one, but we really liked the large 'Virginia Sweets' tomato which was the subject of the previous post.
Without doing a direct comparison, I'd say the flavor is similar to 'Kellogg's Breakfast', but with this one you get all the pretty yellow/red variegation to look at too. I cut a slice off the blossom end and took a bite. Wow, you have to taste this, I said to the spouse. He agreed it was good, but then he never gets as excited about these things as I do.
For lunch, we had Indian Railways Omelet Sandwiches with one slice apiece from this tomato on no-knead sourdough bread. Those two slices were plenty; I had to cut each in half to get them to fit on the bread. In fact, the tomato was too big for my Warther Tomato Knife to slice through it in one go.
Virginia Sweets will definitely be invited back next year.
Labels: tomatoes
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
An Even Bigger Tomato
Forget about the One Ton Tomato. This one outweighs it. 
2 pounds and 3.6 ounces.
The variety is 'Virginia Sweets' and it's new to the garden this year. It looks yellow here, but is really streaked through with red when ripe. There's a little cat-facing on the other side, but I think the whole tomato is sound. I'm gonna give it another day or so before I cut into it, because I've been picking the tomatoes before they're really ripe and before the critters take an interest in them. This is the second or third one I've picked; the first was very cat-faced, but worked out OK when cut up for fresh salsa. I mixed it with many other types of tomato in that salsa, but my first impression was that it was tasty (Virginia Sweets, I mean, although the salsa was tasty too). Further tasting is planned - there are lots of green fruit on this huge plant.
Labels: tomatoes
Tomato Tasting: Persimmon vs. Kellogg's Breakfast
I've been growing 'Kellogg's Breakfast' for several years and think it's one of the best tasting tomatoes there is. Until I tasted it, I believed that all yellow tomatoes were insipid compared to red. But I'd read glowing reviews of another large yellow tomato called 'Persimmon', most notably from MSS at Zanthan Gardens (1, 2, 3, 4), and last year decided to compare it to 'Kellogg's Breakfast'. As it turns out there are at least two different tomatoes called Persimmon and the one I grew last year may in fact have been 'Russian Persimmon'. I thought it was just OK in the flavor department, but the fruits were gorgeous to look at.
So this year I bought seeds of 'Persimmon' from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. The plants grew well at the beginning of the season, but during the cool, rainy early summer they started to develop some type of leaf spot disease. All 14 of my tomato varieties show the disease to some degree. I haven't tried very hard to diagnose the problem, but it may be bacterial speck. It begins as small brown spots and eventually kills the entire leaf. 'Persimmon' was one of the worst-affected plants and is now almost completely defoliated with just a few green leaves at the top. 'Kellogg's Breakfast' was infected later and has lost much foliage, but is still growing vigorously.
'Persimmon' set only 5 tomatoes, all approximately the same size. Of these, I picked three while semi-ripe and left two on the plant. Those two were chewed in half by some critter just as they were beginning to color up. So I've only got three to taste.
'Kellogg's Breakfast' has yielded 6 or 7 tomatoes so far, including one very large one, with more green fruit on the plant. Some of those are showing sunscald, however, due to the loss of the lower foliage from the leaf spot disease.
For the direct taste-off, I selected one fruit of each variety as nearly the same size and degree of ripeness as I could. 'Persimmon' is on the lower left and 'Kellogg's Breakfast' on the upper right.
You can see they are quite similar in appearance. 'Persimmon' is somewhat more ridged or scalloped. 'Kellogg's Breakfast' is rounder and a slightly deeper orange. I should note that it was also slightly less ripe than the 'Persimmon'. On the top side, both have cracks. 'Persimmon' (upper left) shows concentric cracking and 'Kellogg's Breakfast' radial cracking.
With the top sliced off, neither one of these particular specimens displays the irregular arrangement of seed chambers commonly seen in beefsteak tomatoes. It was more evident at the blossom end, but I didn't take a picture.
I wanted to be as fair as possible when comparing, and arranged a blind taste test with my spouse and myself as judges. In everyday life this is the only audience I have to please in the kitchen. I cut up the tomatoes into similar size pieces and placed them into identical bowls with a label on the bottom. It was easy to disguise the identities of the tomatoes from my spouse. He didn't see which tomato went into which bowl. The plan was for him to rearrange the bowls after I filled them, so that I wouldn't know which was which. No good. Having done the growing, the picking, and the processing, I could see the difference even though I tried to make the bowls appear the same. So, I put both bowls on a plate and rotated it round and round and round with my eyes closed.
With eyes still closed, I tasted the first one. Oh, that's 'Kellogg's Breakfast'. To my mind, it has a great balance of sweetness and tanginess delivered in a very meaty, mouth-filling bite. I tasted the next one. Similar in some ways, but much more tart. I perceived the taste as more "thin".
Well, that was Judge 1. What did Judge 2 think? He preferred 'Persimmon', saying it had a little more flavor. I couldn't get any greater specificity from him.
So, it looks like I'll be growing them both for some years to come. I'll be very interested to see how they compare in a year with more-typical weather. I feel that any judgments of any plants this year are bound to be distorted by the very unusually cool and wet early summer. It's lately turned warmer and drier, by the way.
And what became of the rest of those tomatoes? A delicious salad for dinner. Sliced tomatoes topped with 'Mexican Cinnamon Spice' and 'Sweet Petra Dark' basils, sea salt, fresh ground black pepper, and a drizzle of good olive oil.
Labels: tomatoes
Monday, August 03, 2009
One Ton Tomato
Are we having a big-tomato contest this year? 'Cuz I think this could be a contender.
That's almost 2 pounds of 'Kellogg's Breakfast', or 1 pound and 15.4 ounces for you precise types. A mere factor of 1000 away from a One Ton Tomato.
I know that at least one other garden blogger has heard the Michael Nesmith version of Guantanamera aka One Ton Tomato. The video below doesn't have the original video footage, but the audio sounds like I remember it when I saw it on Television Parts.
How do I know that at least one other garden blogger knows of this song? Because, while searching for original video footage, I found a comment by Annie in Austin on Chigy's Gardener's Anonymous blog about it.
If they had the internet back in the dark days of 1985 Michael could have looked up the lyrics in seconds, or even watched a video with subtitled lyrics.
But back to my tomato. The B side, as usual, isn't as popular. More than a little cat-facing here, but it looked callused and dry, so I think the inside is going to be just fine.
If you're wondering what I did to get such a large tomato, the answer is Nothing. Well, not much of anything. I did prune off some of the lowest side branches so it wouldn't get too unruly for the tomato ladder that's supporting it, but that's about all. Last year, I tried tomato pruning (to 3 stems) for the first time, and concluded that it wasn't worth the effort. I thought pruning might produce fewer and larger tomatoes, but I don't think I got any this large last year from this variety - Kellogg's Breakfast. One of my favorite varieties for flavor, by the way.
And I've been singing One Ton Tomato all morning...
Labels: tomatoes
Sunday, July 26, 2009
First Real Tomato of the Year
...and what became of it...
The variety was 'Bloody Butcher'(the smaller ones on the plate are 'Matt's Wild Cherry'). I should have waited a few more days - the tennis-ball-size tomato was not quite fully ripe, but it was still tasty. We were just over-eager for the first fresh salsa of the year. Lots more to come, I hope.
But while we're talking about salsa, I want to put in a good word for the 'Bulgarian Carrot' pepper. I'm growing it for the first time this year and I'm so impressed with it. The plant is loaded with peppers and they are hot. It's hard to get a good hot pepper this early, even in a normal year, and worse this year when it's been so cold. When we get some really ripe tomatoes, they'll make a great combination.
Labels: chiles, peppers, tomatoes
Monday, July 20, 2009
Harvest, July 19: Tomatoes! and Melrose Peppers!
We have cherry tomatoes!
Nine days later than last year, and the same variety - 'Matt's Wild Cherry'. And just like last year, the 'Fish' peppers are ready too, but I didn't pick any yesterday.
The reason I didn't pick any 'Fish' was because I've been watching 'Melrose' for a few days and yesterday decided the time was right to sample some.
I cut them up and cooked them with onions for topping for bratwurst. I know, completely the wrong way to eat them, but we had already planned to cook the bratwurst...
If you haven't heard of 'Melrose' peppers, they're one of the "Italian Frying Peppers". Throw them in a frying pan with olive oil, sauté to your liking. This particular variety is said to have originated in Melrose Park, Illinois, but prior to that did some Italian family carry the seeds over the Atlantic in their pockets? I like to think so.
Of all the 17 varieties of peppers I planted, 'Melrose' and 'Fish' are doing the best in this unusually cool and rainy summer we're having. All the plants are small and some just starting to flower. We had one and a half days of hot weather last week, and during that time the pepper plants grew about 4-6" taller. Imagine what a week of hot weather would do.
If you'd like to read more about Melrose peppers, click away:
Proud Italian Cook: Melrose Peppers
Mario Quagliata's Peppers. That one is a particularly good story, and I'd love to try growing Mario's hybrid.
The rest of my harvest list is posted at myfolia.com.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
The Tomato List
Taking advantage of this rainy Sunday morning to catch up on some recordkeeping. I began this post on May 31, so you can see that my recordkeeping is badly in need of updating. To that end, I'm trying out yet another system - myfolia.com. I'm impressed so far, but it does involve a lot of data entry. This morning, I entered all the tomatoes.
However, I had already compiled this list of tomatoes and their catalog descriptions, so I'm going to go ahead and publish this post. But I have a feeling that this may be the last blog post of its type that I ever write because Folia does a much better job at this sort of thing.
I sowed all the tomato seeds on April 4, but didn't get the plants in the ground until May 31. The weather has been OK, not great. Not much heat so far this summer. Lots of rain after planting, then a short dry spell. Last week we got about .5" of rain all at once and we're getting a good soaking rain this morning. Most of the plants have small fruit by now, but I don't see much of anything on Persimmon, Virginia Sweets, and Green Zebra. Poor Green Zebra was cut down by a cutworm 10 days after planting. I stuck the cut stem in the ground and it rooted and grew, but obviously has been set back by the experience.
The Returning Veterans. These are all plants I've grown before and liked enough to plant again. The descriptions are from various catalogs, not necessarily the source of my seeds. Photos of the green fruit were taken yesterday in my garden.
Black Prince: Deep garnet round fruits really load up on these plants that stay fairly small. Tomatoes are medium-sized and full of juice and good, rich flavor. Originally from Siberia. This variety should be a favorite in most gardens. Indeterminate. 70 days.
Kellogg's Breakfast: HEIRLOOM Indeterminate An heirloom from West Virginia preserved by Darrell Kellogg, a railroad supervisor, in Redford, MI after receiving seed from a friend. An extremely large, sunny orange beefsteak with an outstanding flavor that is just unforgettable. (79 days)
 |
| Kellogg's Breakfast produces some cat-faced tomatoes, but the taste is fabulous. |
Black Russian: Cordon (Indeterminate). These medium sized black tomatoes grow on compact plants bearing plenty of dark mahogany-brown fruits, with a delicious blend of sugar and acid. Tomato Black Russian has a distinctive, complex flavour that has to be tasted to be believed.
 |
| Black Russian. I agree about the flavor of this one, but I get very few unblemished tomatoes from it I keep growing it because I love the flavor of the few good tomatoes I get. |
Matt's Wild Cherry: The wild tomato with luscious taste.
These small cherry tomatoes are packed with more taste than you can believe. 5/8- 3/4", deep red, round fruits have a tender, smooth texture, and loads of sweet, full flavor. High sugar content (118 Brix). Though the taste is superior, it doesn’t yield well and the fruits are soft, so grow on a trial scale at first. Teresa Arellanos de Mena, a friend of former Univ. of Maine AG faculty members Drs. Laura Merrick and Matt Liebman, brought seeds to Maine from her family’s home state of Hidalgo in Eastern Mexico. It’s the region of domestication of tomatoes, and where these grow wild. Matt gave us the seeds. Indeterminate. Days to Maturity or Bloom: 60
 |
| Matt's Wild Cherry |
Striped/Speckled Roman: (81 days) Indeterminate Developed by John Swenson, this tomato is a cross between Antique Roman and Banana Legs. The fruit are quite uniform and we noticed few disease problems. The are about 3 X 5" and quite heavy. The red color is flecked with short attractive orange stripes. The dense tomatoes are great for paste or processing, but flavor is so good you'll also want to eat them fresh.
German Johnson: 76 days. (Indeterminate) [Popular heirloom tomato from Virginia and North Carolina.] This is one of the four parent lines of the 'Mortgage Lifter' tomato. It is very similar in flavor. Pink-red fruits average 3/4 to 1-1/2 lbs. with generally smooth tops. Good for slicing or canning. Fruits have few seeds. Plants are very productive and fairly resistant to disease.
Rookies. New to the garden this year. I chose them for various reasons. Recommendations from fellow gardeners always have great influence. In general, I like strongly flavored tomatoes which are not too sweet. While reading catalogs over the winter, I often found myself noting which tomatoes were said to have "great taste", "assertive flavor" and the like.
Copia: These very beautiful tomatoes are a stunning combination of fine-lined golden yellow and red stripes. While visually exciting, the real treat comes when you cut them open. Their gold flesh is streaked with red and is very juicy, flavorful, and sweet. A stabilized cross between Green Zebra and Marvel Stripe, these tomatoes weigh about one pound each, They were named in honor of Copia, the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts, in Napa California. Indeterminate. 85 days.
 |
| Copia. It appears this one is going to be a "cracker". |
Virginia Sweets: NEW FOR 2009. This heirloom variety is simply one of the best tasting, best producing gold-red bicolors we have ever grown. On top of that, the tomatoes are stunningly beautiful and enormous, weighing at least 1 pound each. Golden yellow beefsteaks are colored with red stripes that turn into a ruby blush on top of the golden fruit. Flavor is sweet and rich, and harvests are abundant. Indeterminate. 80 days.
Green Zebra: A unique and delicious salad tomato. 3 oz. green fruits ripen to amber-green with darker green stripes. The light green flesh is very flavorful, sweet yet zingy. This one is a real taste treat. Indeterminate. 75 days.
Lida Ukrainian: mid, SD, RL, prolific set of globe shaped 4 to 6 oz. fruits, very meaty, very good taste on the assertive side, meaning not mild.
Bloody Butcher: early, Ind, PL, deep red salad tomato, 1 to 3 oz. fruits, good taste, high yields. Resembles Stupice in both plant habit and fruit size, but fruits are a darker shade of red. Fruits start early and bear until frost.
Break O'Day: early, Ind to SD, RL, very good yields and excl taste, globe fruits of about 8 oz. Originally from a cross between Marglobe and Marvel in 1923 and introduced in 1931.
Noire des Cosebeuf: mid, Ind, RL, high yield of 6 to 8 oz. dark pink/purplish oblate fruits, scalloped shoulders, assertive taste.
 |
| Noire des Cosebeuf. This one will have an interesting shape, if nothing else. So far no cracking, catfacing or other uglies. |
(The Other) Persimmon: 88 days. (Indeterminate) [Introduced about 1982.] Beautiful persimmon colored, rose-orange fruits range between 12 and 16 oz., though early fruits can weigh up to 2 lbs. Ripens from the blossom end to the softly dented light green shoulders, gradually acquiring a rose orange hue. Vines are vigorous, well branched and produce 1 to 2 fruits per flower cluster. 'Persimmon' is one of our personal favorites for inviting color and rewarding flavor.
Lastly, I'd like to recommend a couple of my favorite sources of information about tomatoes and other plants.
Tatiana's TomatoBase. A wiki about hundreds of heirloom tomato varieties. Also, peppers, garlic and other vegetables, but the tomatoes are the main thing.
Tomatoville. A forum for tomato growers. Some of the big name heirloom tomato growers participate.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Persimmon or Not Persimmon
I need to amend my 2008 Tomato Review. It's come to my attention that there are at least two tomatoes calling themselves 'Persimmon'. MSS at Zanthan Gardens is trying to decide which tomatoes to grow this spring. She grew 'Persimmon' in the past and loved it. I grew it and thought it was OK. But now I think we're comparing two different tomatoes.
First clue: photographic evidence. I've shown the same photo of my 'Persimmon' twice already, so here's a different one.
This is a medium-large tomato with fairly symmetrical seed chambers. MSS's 'Persimmon' is much larger with a beefsteak-type arrangement of seed chambers.
Well, let's just Google it and then have a cup of tea. I think I found the answer at idigmygarden.com forums (sponsored by Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds).
mrtomatoexpres has the beefsteak-type 'Persimmon'; blu bastian has the kind I grew.
blu bastian wondered what was up with that. Nobody answered that I could see.
Looking at the Seed Savers Exchange 2009 Yearbook, searchable online, the growers' descriptions of 'Persimmon' are quite varied.
Tatiana's TomatoBase and Hanna of This Garden is Illegal both say that 'Persimmon' is a beefsteak tomato.
But Tatiana's TomatoBase shows 'Russian Persimmon' very similar to what I grew and does not categorize it as a beefsteak tomato. Almost all the Seed Savers Exchange Yearbook growers say that 'Russian Persimmon' is high-yielding, but the plant I grew was not.
For the record, I grew one plant of 'Persimmon' from seed purchased in 2008 from Territorial Seed Company, and the fruit I got looks like the photo on their web site. The text, however, describes it as a beefsteak tomato.
So there you have it. I don't really know what I grew. Where's the teapot?
Labels: tomatoes
Thursday, January 22, 2009
2008 Tomato Review
Better late than never. I planned to post this a few months ago, when the tomato season of 2008 was fresh in my mind but stuff happened. I didn't get it done. Now I'm making out my seed orders for 2009 and thought a review might be helpful. In 2008, I grew one plant each of 10 tomato varieties - some of them old favorites and some newcomers.
First the old favorites:
Striped Roman (aka Speckled Roman) - A long, paste-type tomato. Red skin with yellow streaks. Deep pink-red flesh, very solid, with wonderful flavor. Even though the fruit is susceptible to blossom-end rot, I'll always grow this. (Unless I discover something with better flavor, which is hard to imagine.)
Kellogg's Breakfast - Very large yellow-orange beefsteak-type tomato. You often see it written that this variety has great flavor for a yellow tomato. I would change that to "this variety has great flavor".
 |
| Striped Roman, Kellogg's Breakfast, Matt's Wild Cherry, Principe Borghese |
Black Russian - A medium-size tomato of the black/brown/purple color family. I love this one for it's deep rich essence-of-tomato flavor. And I hate it because I lose so many fruits to cracking and rotting. I'd love to have this flavor in a tomato that doesn't crack. I'm still searching. Anyway, 2008's crop disappointed me in two ways. First, the tomatoes turned out pink, not black. The seeds were from the same packet I've been using for several years, so I assume this particular plant was an oddball. Second, the yield was very low, even without the cracking and rotting. Still, I plan to grow this again in 2009, for reference if nothing else.
The newcomers:
Mortgage Lifter Improved - This is supposedly Mortgage Lifter with improved disease resistance. I didn't have any particular problems with disease in this tomato, so maybe that's true. It produced a nice yield of large beefsteak-type tomatoes. I thought it was just OK, flavor-wise, but with a persistent tobacco aftertaste to it. I don't plant to grow this again.
German Johnson - A very large pink-red beefsteak type on a potato leaf plant. Wonderful flavor, but I had a lot of cat-facing and sunscald on this. I can grow it unstaked and unpruned to help prevent sunscald, and I can ignore the cat-facing (and just not show it to anybody else). I loved the flavor, so German Johnson will be back for 2009.
 |
| German Johnson (front) and Mortgage Lifter (back) |
Black Prince - Another of the black/brown/purple ones. This one was maybe a little sweeter than Black Russian, but I couldn't compare directly in 2008 because of my oddball Black Russian plant. It's smaller than Black Russian and I didn't have too much trouble with cracking and rotting. I'll probably grow this again in 2009.
Piriform - I wish I had taken a picture of some of these before slicing. A medium-size red tomato of strange shape; almost looks like a tomato that's sagged - heavy and rounded at the bottom and ridged at the top. Piriform means pear-shaped, in case you didn't know. This one had green shoulders when ripe, and the green shoulders were sugar-sweet. I liked it well enough and will probably grow it again unless I'm short on space.
 |
| Piriform |
Persimmon - The beauty contest winner for the year. I didn't get many tomatoes from this one, but the few I got were just beautiful. The flavor was average; we liked them in BLTs and this is one of the best slicing tomatoes (great for sandwiches) I've ever grown. It's probably going to be crowded off the list for 2009, just because there are so many others I'd like to try.
Update 27 February 2009: I have reason to believe that the tomato I grew may not be the same 'Persimmon' offered elsewhere. Explanation here.
 |
| Persimmon |
Principe Borghese - Small egg-shaped red tomatoes. Supposed to be THE tomato for sun-dried tomatoes. I dried most of the yield from last year, but haven't tried cooking with them yet because I keep eating them as snacks. Makes me wonder if I really need to have any dried tomatoes on hand. I did get a lot of tomatoes from one plant, and 2008 was a difficult, droughty year. Still thinking about whether to plant this one in 2009.
Matt's Wild Cherry - I'm wild about Matt's Wild Cherry! This is the only cherry tomato I've willingly eaten after the big tomatoes have started to ripen. Usually I lose interest in the cherry tomatoes as soon as I can have the big ones, but not last year. The tomatoes were tiny bursts of tangy flavor with just a hint of sugar. Smaller than most cherry tomatoes these days, but larger than a currant tomato. Will definitely grow this again and again.
So there it is. Looking over my list, I only see about 3 open slots, and I've already ordered seeds for 4 new varieties. Maybe I'll squeeze in a couple extra plants this year...
PS. I just looked at my 2007 tomato review and found that I wrote almost the same thing about Black Russian then as now - "essence of tomato". I need a thesaurus.
Labels: tomatoes
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Plant Tip from Tropical Storm Hanna
Don't leave your biggest best green tomatoes on the vine when over 2 inches of rain is predicted.
To be fair, some of these cracks are from the previous rain. But now that the rain is over I think I could stand in the garden and watch these cracks develop (if I had enough patience).
Fried green tomatoes for lunch tomorrow!
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Tomato 'Persimmon'
I've been spending a lot of time with cookbooks lately, trying to find new ways to use up the tomato harvest. When it's lunch time though, well, we've been eating a lot of BLTs. I try to vary the ingredients to keep it interesting and having a choice of tomatoes helps here.
'Persimmon' is new to the garden this year. I'd have to characterize the flavor as average. It tastes like I think a tomato should, not too tart, not too sweet - but nothing you could really single out as interesting. Nevertheless, it has some qualities that may earn it a spot in the garden next year.
- Very little cracking
- Even ripening (no green shoulders)
- Remains firm when fully ripe
- Makes picture perfect slices
Labels: tomatoes
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
B-I-G Ugly Tomatoes
Last year I thought I grew too many varieties of small tomatoes and not enough big slicing tomatoes. This year I think I overcompensated.
Now I grant you that these are ugly tomatoes, but there is still plenty to eat after you cut away the ugly parts. Look at the weight on these things!
This is the biggest one - a 'German Johnson' - and it weighs in at 1 lb. 8.8 oz.
The second biggest one is 'Mortgage Lifter VFN' at 1 lb. 4.2 oz.
The total weight of the 5 tomatoes in the top photo is over 6 pounds.
But how do they taste, you ask? I thought 'Mortgage Lifter VFN' was pretty good until I tasted 'German Johnson'. Thanks to Carol for pointing out what a good tomato this is.
Labels: tomatoes
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Ugly Tomatoes
You turn your back on the garden for one minute and everything changes. We spent a good part of the weekend weeding, trimming, deadheading, and generally prettying-up the vegetable garden. I picked a semi-ripe tomato before I left for Illinois. The spouse picked a couple of almost-ripe tomatoes while I was gone, and we picked a few more last weekend. The reason I didn't blog about them was that they weren't very pretty - some cracked, some with green shoulders (some varieties are supposed to be that way, but still), some catfaced - and all delicious I might add. But this morning, I read Carol's post asking us to show off our UGLY tomatoes. Hey - I can do that!
I accidentally picked the greenish-yellow one. I was trying to snip off the yellow one, but couldn't quite see where I had the pruners and ... oops. This variety is 'Kellogg's Breakfast', and it seems especially prone to catfacing. There was a pretty one (but green) I also snipped off by accident. It turned into some very tasty fried green tomatoes - perfect meaty slices, just starting to ripen inside. 'Kellogg's Breakfast' has great flavor, very surprising for a yellow tomato (sort of an orangey-yellow), and it has a strong tendency to cling to the vine. If you don't clip off the fruit with pruners, you'll probably end up bruising it.
Some of the other varieties we've had so far are Striped Roman (slightly cracked, some blossom end rot), Piriform (cracked and green shoulders), Black Prince (green shoulders), Black Russian (cracked), and Matt's Wild Cherry (perfect, but cherry tomatoes don't count).
But if you want to see some pretty fruit, look at the peppers. I like tomatoes, but I love chile peppers. These are just a few of the 16? varieties I'm growing this year (most are hot, some not). Look for more posts about chile peppers in the next few weeks.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Tomatoes and Fish
First tomato!
A little bigger than a marble, but it's still a tomato. The variety is 'Matt's Wild Cherry'. I cut it down the middle and shared it with the spouse, and we both agreed that it was a bit tart. It will be a while until we have enough tomatoes for fresh salsa, but until then we'll eat the peppers. This one would be quite good for salsa, I think. It's hot enough that you know you're eating a hot pepper, but not overwhelming. A bonus here is that the plants are very decorative.
The leaves are variegated and the variegation extends into the fruit. Notice the light-colored stripe on the pepper above (kind of looks like a reflection, but isn't). It's called 'Fish' Pepper and is supposedly a Mid-Atlantic heirloom, popular in Philadelphia and Baltimore and used to season...(guess what?)...fish. So, I used it to spice up some restaurant leftovers - Goan Shrimp Curry. The verdict? It tastes great with seafood.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tasting Notes: Tomatoes
Tomatoes kill brain cells. How else to explain the fact that I started this post at the end of August, and now can't remember most of what I intended to write? We've been eating a lot of tomatoes - that must be it.
So then, this is an abbreviated summary of the tomatoes I grew this year, in order of size:
Ildi - A yellow pear tomato. It was definitely the most prolific tomato I grew. That's probably the nicest thing I can say about it - the skin was unpleasantly tough and the flavor was average. While I was cleaning up the garden, I tossed some of these on the ground and left them there for a few days and they were untouched by any wild critters. What does that tell you? I won't grow this one again.
Black Cherry - A round cherry tomato of middling size, it ripens to those green/red/purple colors that usually mean good flavor (see Black Russian below). That flavor was was I was after when I bought the seeds. Unfortunately, I didn't find that flavor, and I wouldn't grow this one again.
Thai Pink - A small plum tomato, rather firm when ripe, but juicy rather than meaty. I wasn't all that keen on this one until I found a recipe that suited it exactly - Tomatoes in Spicy Yogurt Sauce - which calls for whole peeled tomatoes. I'm not sure what else 'Thai Pink' is good for, but the taste and size are just perfect in that dish. I may grow it again just for that - we really liked the recipe. On the other hand, I think a tomato like 'Juliet' would work just as well. And I've never grown 'Juliet', so I may rotate that one in and 'Thai Pink' out.
Bonito Ojo - A small round tomato (> golf ball, < tennis ball). A huge quantity of fruit ripened simultaneously early in the season. The flavor was very tart, good for salsa, but I don't need/want that many small tomatoes all at once. It was also prone to cracking. I probably won't grow it again.
Eva Purple Ball - Eva is the beauty contest winner - almost no cracking or blemishes; nice sized (> baseball, < softball) with pink skin over red flesh. The flavor is only OK. If you must have perfect-looking tomatoes, this is a good choice. If you want perfect-tasting tomatoes...well, I think there are better ones.
Striped Roman - A long, thick 'Roma' type; very meaty. It has a marvelous sweet-tart flavor tending toward the tart side. This has been a favorite for several years now, and I expect I'll be growing it as long as I'm gardening.
Black Russian - A large green/purple/brown/dark red tomato. This is my favorite for flavor - a deep, dark, almost smoky, essence of tomato flavor. The downside is the disappointment at how many I lost to cracking and rotting. I'll grow this again next year, but if I could find a variety with the same flavor and less cracking, I'd evict 'Black Russian'.
Cherokee Purple - A large pink/purple beefsteak type tomato. The flavor is notably sweet; I was expecting something more like Black Russian, but it's not at all like that - much sweeter. This will probably be invited back next year, but if I end up with too long a list of new ones to try, then maybe not.
Kellogg's Breakfast - This wins the prize for size; the yellow-orange tomatoes are very large, and incidentally, this was the first of the large ones to ripen. The flavor is surprising for a yellow tomato - quite flavorful and sweet; I'm wondering how similar this is to Persimmon, which some other bloggers have written about this year. I'll grow this one again next year.
Updated 5:15 pm with link to recipe for Tomatoes in Spicy Yogurt Sauce.
Labels: potager, tomatoes, vegetables
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Enjoying the Harvest
I have an old cookbook entitled Too Many Tomatoes - a Cookbook for When Your Garden Explodes, and that about sums up what I've been doing lately. One of these days, I'm going to write up my thoughts on the tomato and pepper varieties I grew this year (so I don't forget by next January), but until then I'll be writing up what I'm cooking with them. The Striped Romans yielded a great fresh tomato puree for Gazpacho last night, and some fresh red mildly hot chile peppers provided a little kick and depth of flavor that made it really outstanding. Some of the same peppers went into a gussied-up version of pepper and egg sandwiches, but I haven't written that recipe up yet. Soon.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Tomato Triage
...Rain. Rai-ai-ai-ain...
-Bonnie Bramlett/Eric Clapton, Let It Rain.
We're catching a break from the heat and drought here, and now I don't have to fret about watering (or not watering). That frees me up to fret about tomatoes cracking and rotting instead. I just picked a small basketful, and picked out the ones that I had to use or lose. Those are cooking on the stove right now, destined for the freezer. The next ones - the ones that have some problems, but not too bad for fresh use - are going into salsa for tonight's dinner. Lunch was tomato sandwiches with fresh mozzarella and basil. Last night I didn't cook, but yesterday's lunch was chicken fajitas with, um, salsa. We like salsa.
A couple of weeks ago I started a post over on my food blog about all the ways we were using the tomatoes, but I never finished it. It was too long and I decided to break it up, but didn't get around to it. But I mentioned in a comment to Blackswamp Girl that I was going to make our favorite potato and tomato dish as soon as the weather was cool enough to turn on the oven, and last weekend I did just that. The recipe is now posted on my food blog.
What's your favorite tomato recipe? Maybe we could start a Garden Bloggers' Cookbook.
Labels: tomatoes
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Tomatoes!
Need I say more?
Labels: potager, tomatoes, vegetables
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
More Things to Do While the Tomatoes Ripen
Eat potatoes.
They're a variety called Cranberry Red, or at least that's what they are called by Territorial Seed. There is some controversy. Oh, and I also dug up a couple of the russet ones (forgot the name), but I was more interested in the pink ones. We've been buying the pink ones or similar for several years at the Arlington Farmer's Market, and we liked them to the point of being disappointed when they weren't available. So they were one of the first things on my list when deciding what to grow in the new central Virginia vegetable garden.
I harvested just a few last weekend, and you wouldn't believe the fluorescent highlighter pink color of the skin. The picture doesn't quite capture the luminescent quality. Since these were the first ones, I cooked them very simply to see if they were any good. They were, but maybe not as good as the ones we were getting from the farmer's market. Or else I've magnified the taste of those in my memory. These seem more watery, and I wonder if it's because I grew them in straw and gave them plenty of water when it didn't rain.
But if you just can't wait to see some ripe tomatoes....come to the county fair with me.
Having been disappointed by county fairs in northern Virginia, we thought we'd see what central Virginia has to offer. Last weekend we attended the Orange County Fair. Weeeeelllll.......what to say? I sure wish I was in the Midwest at fair time. My biggest disappointment was no poultry exhibit; there was a statewide ban on poultry exhibits until July 31. We may try the Albemarle County Fair this weekend. I hope I can see chickens. Tomatoes? I should have my own by this weekend.
Labels: county fair, potager, potatoes, tomatoes
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Things to Do While the Tomatoes Ripen
I really hoped we would have a ripe tomato or two last weekend, but.......not yet. In fact, we arrived to find all the tomato ladders more horizontal than vertical. There must have been a powerful storm while we were gone, because a small (dead) tree nearby was snapped off. (I was thinking of turning that tree into a bottle tree, or training vines over it, but never mind.) Last weekend we swathed the tomato plants in plastic netting, hoping to keep the tomatoes in and the critters out. The netting doesn't do a darned thing to keep out hornworms, but I still think we'll have plenty of tomatoes.
So then, while we're waiting for that day when we can get out the satin pillow, the rosewood platter, or the stylish tasting notes, what to do?
Cook with herbs. For the last couple of weekends, we switched from breakfast burritos (our usual weekend lunch) to herb omelette and toast.
Or make fried green tomatoes. I've been doing this for the last two weekends as well.
Labels: herbs, potager, tomatoes
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Potager Progress
Just for the record, I want it known that the potager did produce tomatoes this year. Now, they're not ripe yet, and that's the issue. If the deer get to them before I do, at least I'll have the pictures of what might have been. Deer damage has been light, up to this point. They nibbled on a Salvia argentea and sampled a pepper plant, but that's it. This is still a work in progress, but I'm very pleased the with progress so far. The soil there is some of the best I've ever gardened. It's sandy and deep - a welcome change from all the clay I'm used to. Lucky, lucky, lucky. So far. Keeping my fingers crossed....
