Tomato Ecstasy

Wow so much to talk about today and so little time. I suppose I should write it in chronological order. So last night I was hunting more slugs. I went a bit later at 8:45pm. I couldn't believe the slugs. The lower beans were covered. I knew the leaves were getting shredded by them, but they are pole beans and really who cares about the lower leaves. But I was going for all the slugs I could find to stop the damage on my Asian greens and broccoli. Then I found a slug path. There were lots of them crossing my hay mulch toward the Asian greens and beans. Huge slugs. Not the tiny little ones I used to see. Monsters in the garden. I wove a path of destruction, leaving their poor little broken bodies for the birds to eat in the morning. And indeed, in the morning there was no sign of the previous night's massacre.

After the daily harvest, I set about planting the little 12 pack of lettuce seedlings. Well it would have been a twelve pack if they had all germinated. The seed I bought on sale from the garden center at the end of the seed season didn't germinate well. This is not shocking really. They store the seed in very hot conditions. It is better to buy them early or from catalogs and store them in reasonable conditions. As you can see from above there were gaps in my lettuce bed under the bean tepee. Now most of the gaps have been filled.

My best news of the day was harvesting and eating news. I picked the first (well fourth, but first that I could eat) of the Aussie tomatoes. He was such a pretty pink tomato. He was quickly devoured with basil and cheese. The taste was fine, not quite as good as a Brandywine. But the interesting thing about it was that it was mostly solid on the inside. It made it a perfect slicing tomato. And at 13 ounces it was also a great size for a sandwich and it had none of that pesky juice that would run down your hand while trying to eat it. If only I had more.

I sat around after lunch lamenting my tomato deprived state, so I had to go get more. This is what I bought my Busa Bucks for. So it was off to Busa Farms to wander their fields picking more tomatoes. I found another batch of tomato plants that had ripe large tomatoes. Most of them were rotting on the ground, spotted with disease, but there were some gems that I could find, including a huge yellow one. Also there were a lot of green zebra tomatoes (at least I think, nothing is marked, but it looks like them) and they were the healthiest plants around. And their tomatoes were totally unblemished by the diseases going around (septoria leaf spot maybe?). Next year I have to plant one of those. These soggy years are murder on tomatoes. I also found some really pretty looking small tomatoes that look like Brandywines with their lobes, but tiny. Cute baby weird shaped tomatoes. I had to have some of those. There was only one plant putting out fruit like this, but I picked two. Then there were a plethora of what looks like some small plum tomato. I'm hoping it is. I would love to make tomato sauce. And if it is I can go back next week and pick more for more sauce.