Tomatoes! And a Taste Test.

From left to right: Miracle of the Market (large red), Early Ssubakus Aliana (yellow), Black Cherry (black, top), Black Moor (black plum, bottom), Sungold F2 (orange and red), Chocolate Cherry (black)

When I left for vacation, I had no one to take care of my garden. I have half of my tomatoes in pails and late blight had just struck. I figured at least the tomatoes in pails were goners without someone to look after them.

I did rig up a makeshift irrigation system for them. A friend of mine had some electronic timers that he no longer needed. I took one off of his hands. My problem was how to get the water to the plants. I tried several things that didn't work. Then I cut a portion out of an old hose and put holes along the bottom spaced so they would go into the pails. This seemed to work, but the hose kept coming out of the pails. The morning before I left I was still trying to arrange rocks to keep the hose down.

When I got out of the car from our trip. I dumped my load by the front door and went over to the plants. It was too dark to see them, but I could tell by feel that they were still alive - every single one of them. It worked. I was very happy, but I swear I don't want to grow things in pails any more. It is too nerve wracking if I don't have someone taking care of it and when I do I feel guilty over making someone come over every day to water.

The next morning I went out to see if the late blight had taken over. Nope. We had no rain while I was gone and the temps were about 80°F. There were a few more leaves with brown blotches, but not many. I'll remove them.

My Sungold F2s had a lot of ripe tomatoes covering the plants. I should have taken photos before I picked most of them. The above photo is after I took the ripest ones off the vines - almost four pounds of them.

I did find one bad thing. My first ripe Miracle of the Market tomatoes had fallen to the ground. One had landed on the rock in the pail, one behind the pail, and one had been caught by a branch and was precariously perched. They didn't seem to be horribly damaged. The one that fell to the ground was eaten yesterday with basil and mozzarella cheese. Yum. Sadly I didn't save some to eat without the basil and cheese so I didn't really do a taste test on it.

Of the Sungolds the best orange was from Emma. She also has the smallest of the orange tomatoes, but hey taste is the most important. The best tasting of the reds is Gabrielle. I need to save seeds from both of them. I started the process with Emma before I left for vacation, but Gabrielle deserves to live too. I'm not saving seeds from any of the others. I don't know if I should save seeds from even Emma since I don't know if late blight can be carried on the seed. The plants aren't heavily infected, but still it is there. I have a feeling though that my whole garden has spores all over it and a few spores on the seed won't mean much.

I had three small blacks to taste. The Black Cherry and the Chocolate Cherry are both good and are almost identical in taste. The latter is better by a hair, more prolific and earlier, so that is the one that I'm going to save. Black Moor is different than the other two as it is a plum tomato. It is very meaty. It isn't quite as tasty as the other two, but still has that nice black tomato flavor. It seems like a good tomato for making sauce if you want a very weird colored sauce.

Early Ssubakus Aliana is the only yellow tomato. It is a very weird size. It is too small to be a slicer, too big to be a cherry and though it is slightly longer than it is wide, it is not plum shaped. The flavor is OK, but doesn't have a very strong taste and is very sweet. I won't be growing this one again.

Of all of these seeds that I received from Wintersown.org, Chocolate Cherry is my favorite. I like Miracle of the Market too. It is the first beefsteak tomato that has grown well for me here. Usually I have all sorts of trouble from beefsteaks. I'm lucky to get a few tomatoes that needs spots cut out of them before the plants die a horrible death. I'll save seed from these too. I probably should have saved some seeds from last nights meal, but I didn't even think about it.