The tomatoes are starting to come in, big-time.
This year, I grew 4 varieties: (1) Big-better-beefy-boy something-or-other (yeah, I can't remember what I planted), (2) Early Girl, (3) San Marzano, and (4) Defiant.
My objective was to grow both determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. Determinate tomatoes produce their crop all at once and then virtually poop out, whereas indeterminate tomatoes produce fruit all season long. I wanted to have determinate tomatoes for canning purposes, hoping to have a large amount of tomatoes ready all at once so that I could can as many jars of tomatoes as I wanted and then put the equipment away, rather than dragging the canning out in small batches all season. I also wanted some indeterminate tomatoes for cooking and eating all summer long.
Early Girl and San Marzano tomatoes are labeled as "indeterminate." I'm not sure about the beefy boys. I thought the San Marzano tomatoes would be good for canning, as they are said to be "meaty and flavorful." To be 100% honest, I'm not so sure I like the San Marzanos. For one thing, the plants seem to be a little persnickety when it comes to blight resistance. They were the first plants to "fire up." Maybe it's our growing conditions this year, but the fruit seems to fall off at the drop of a hat. I find a lot of undamaged green tomatoes on the ground. The fruit that falls off will eventually ripen, but it doesn't seem to have much flavor. Also, I'm not particularly thrilled with the central core thing, which seems to reach all the way to the bottom of the fruit. This core is a bit tough, almost stringy; I've manually pulled it out of every San Marzano I've canned.
It may be that I'm picking (or picking up!) the San Marzanos too green, too un-ripe. I've picked a good many, so far, some of which have seemed ripe enough. But they haven't had that rich, dark color that store-bought canned San Marzanos have. I'm going to leave the rest of the crop on the vine a little longer to see if that improves the texture and flavor.
The Defiant tomatoes determinate and are doing a good job of supplying me with a lot of ripe tomatoes at once. These plants made clusters of smooth tennis-ball-sized fruit. They are getting ready to be picked. I'm going to re-order seeds for this variety. I'm also going to order some Ruby Monster tomato seeds. This is also a determinate variety, and based on the pictures in the seed catalog, they look like a perfect canning tomato, and not too bad for sandwiches, either.
Sunday morning, I picked a 5-gallon bucket full of tomatoes, all varieties. I got just the ripest tomatoes, and left that many more on the vines. The batch yielded 6 quarts, plus almost another quart, which wasn't full enough to preserve. I put the "almost quart" in the refrigerator and will re-heat it and can it with the next batch, if I can.
My intention was to pick tomatoes again this afternoon, but I'll have to wait until late in the day to do it. It is ridiculously hot and humid outside today, and I don't intend to go to the garden until the sun goes down. This means I won't have time (or energy) to start processing them today. Tomorrow, I'll probably only have enough time to scald, peel, and chop the tomatoes; the canning will have to wait until the next day.
I expect that a lot of things need to be picked. Our green beans are Kentucky Wonder pole beans, and I don't like for them to get very big - the pods get tough. The pepper plants are loaded, but since I don't intend to do anything with them right away, I'm going to leave them alone and let them turn red.
When I walked by the cucumber patch yesterday, it was BUZZING with bees. We have a friend who has asked for some big cucumbers, so we're going to let them grow for a few days. Then I might pull up all but one or two of the vines and plant something else in their place. While digging through our freezer, I found a freezer bag of seed packets - broccoli, carrots, brussells sprouts . . . . Around the middle of August, I'm going to see if they'll sprout for a fall garden.
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