Well, I have been neglecting my blog for a long time and decided to change that today, so I took over a hundred photos. Needless to say, it will be a long time, if ever, before I post them all. We are leaving a for a local festival soon, so I must resort to triage, and, of course, tomatoes take priority! We planted 49 tomato plants (started from seed) this morning, and 3 more in pots. We managed to give away about 20 before and have 12 left over as "spares."
Here are the mini tomatoes:
Varieties include: Sweet Orange II, Golden Currant, Jelly Bean Yellow, Jelly Bean Red, Reisentraube, Black Plum, Sugarlump, and most of all, "Dad's" which are seeds saved from absolutely delicious grape tomatoes my father-in-law grew last year but can't remember what variety. My husband saved seeds, and we raised about 25 seedlings, 8 of which we gave to his dad to raise again this year, since he had so much success last year. He was picking them into December.A side view:
And the planting begins...
We did 8 minis ("Dad's", Jelly Bean Yellow, and Sweet Orange II) in our yard, for easy picking by little fingers.
This is a view of the 8 yard minis from the west plot (where the rest of the tomatoes are).
And here are the big ones:
Varieties include: Money Maker, Mortgage Lifter (one has to think about the economic climate when choosing tomato varieties, you know), Cherokee Purple, Big Rainbow, Brandywine (just one), maybe a Black Krim (but it might be a CP), Evergreen, some sort of sauce tomato that I am forgetting the name of, but labelled in CG. I think it was something Genovese.
And the planting begins...
We did 8 minis ("Dad's", Jelly Bean Yellow, and Sweet Orange II) in our yard, for easy picking by little fingers.
This is a view of the 8 yard minis from the west plot (where the rest of the tomatoes are).
And here are the big ones:
Varieties include: Money Maker, Mortgage Lifter (one has to think about the economic climate when choosing tomato varieties, you know), Cherokee Purple, Big Rainbow, Brandywine (just one), maybe a Black Krim (but it might be a CP), Evergreen, some sort of sauce tomato that I am forgetting the name of, but labelled in CG. I think it was something Genovese. A side view:
Money Maker on the left is my favorite for taste. Only got two tomatoes last year before the plant died, so I am hoping for more this year.
Money Maker on the left is my favorite for taste. Only got two tomatoes last year before the plant died, so I am hoping for more this year.And here is the tomato patch, ready to go in the newly prepared west plot (the lady who owns it agreed to let us use it, in exchange for my husband keeping her weeds cut).
And here are the seedlings in their pots, contemplating their new home-to-be:
On the right, you can see some seedlings my husband bought at the store. Why, you may ask, would you buy seedlings when you have 70 of your own??? Well, truth be told, I asked him the same thing. But my big tomato seedlings are all heritage seeds and not necessarily suited to the Japanese climate. He bought some standard Mamotaro and such. But he didn't label them and doesn't remember what he got. Sigh.
And here are the seedlings in their pots, contemplating their new home-to-be:
On the right, you can see some seedlings my husband bought at the store. Why, you may ask, would you buy seedlings when you have 70 of your own??? Well, truth be told, I asked him the same thing. But my big tomato seedlings are all heritage seeds and not necessarily suited to the Japanese climate. He bought some standard Mamotaro and such. But he didn't label them and doesn't remember what he got. Sigh.I, on the other hand, am a planner. I took about 45 minutes deciding which tomatoes to plant where and even talked the girls into having popsicles rather than a cucumber for a snack because I was two sticks short for labeling (it wasn't hard to convince them, and I was pretty impressed that they suggested cucumbers as a snack). Here are all the tomatoes in position, waiting to be planted.
And here is my husband, planting the last tomato! Hurrah! I did plant them, too, but nobody took photos of me doing it, so it looks like he did it all. Anyway, that last short row he is working on is mini-tomatoes and the rest are all big.
And here is my husband, planting the last tomato! Hurrah! I did plant them, too, but nobody took photos of me doing it, so it looks like he did it all. Anyway, that last short row he is working on is mini-tomatoes and the rest are all big.
2 comments:
wow. just wow. What a day! And you don't need houses over them? We are nowhere near tomato planting yet and still have our little igloos over everything. I love having a variety of tomatoes for taste test purposes. I have to say that our experience has been that the Japanese varieties produce the most fruit though, too. But with both you end up with quality AND quantity, right? ;P
I thought you just helped replant 800 tomatoes. All in houses? Yes, well here in balmy Gifu it is warm enough to plant them out in the open. We didn't do any Japanese varieties last year and ended up with hardly any tomatoes after July. The Gifu summers are brutal. I barely survived the one time I was here all summer! Never again! So we are hedging our bets this time. But not ready to give up.
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