farewell to tomatoes
Last weekend I pulled up the first of this year’s tomato plants, an Early Girl that had stopped producing. I’m staring at Mister Stripey, which has just a few fruits left, and, most sad of all, my main Cherokee Purple plant, which has flowers but not remaining fruit. There’s no way the fruit would set and ripen before the weather turns even colder. It’ll be hard, but those plants will have to go soon.
Some fo this season
But now the only tomatoes on the counter are some a friend gave us at his birthday party last Friday. As I left his house with the bag, I felt like a how a hardworking laborer must feel after he’s laid off after thirty years and has to go on food stamps or some other governmental assistance. It was hard, swallowing my pride, accepting handouts. But the end of summer has lots of humbling moments when the gloriously gaudy excess of summer suddenly shuts off.
It was a good time to evaluate the three varieties I put in the ground this year. Early Girl was green and unproductive most of the year, only producing fruit late in the season and in unimpressive quantity. Their flavor was fine, certainly better than store tomatoes, but not as good as a tomato could be. I will not be growing it again.
I trashed Mister Stripey on these blog pages earlier in the season for its rambunctiousness. When it finally settled down and started to produce it ended up being the most prolific of the three varieties, giving us several-to-many smaller-sized tomatoes several times a week. The skin was thin and they didn’t keep as well as other varieties. Also the insides were very liquid, not at all meaty like beefsteak varieties; but sliced up on a tomato pizza they were stunning with their gold and rose and scarlet colors. I don’t know that I’ll grow it again next year, but I’ll save some seed from the one of the last fruits.
And as far as Cherokee Purple, yes, I’ll definitely grow it again. (I’ve already saved a small envelope of seeds to plant and share.) I’d put four plants in the ground this year. Three were in bad spots for tomatoes and barely produced. The one plant that rated a prime spot did well, producing a vigorous but not crazed green canopy, and the fruits were usually in the ten-to-fourteen ounce range. The flavor of these was classic tomato flavor, even here near the coast where the temperatures barely cracked eighty degrees this summer.
The trick for next season, of course, is to set aside some good spots for Cherokee Purple and the couple other varieties I might try. Empty space in a garden? What’s that?
As long as I’m on the subject of tomatoes, I wanted to share Reinhards Tomaten, an excellent German site with photos of dozens of varieties of tomatoes that Hans shared with me this past week. Although there were no photos of the one variety of mine that I was thinking might have come mis-identified this year (Mister Stripey), there’s a photo of Cherokee Purple, plus shots of intriguing varieties like Black Russian, Tlacolula Ribbed and the wild tomato relative Lycopersicon macrocarpum lutea. If only I had more space to grow more of them…
September 09 2008 04:05 am | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Cherokee Purple tomato • Early Girl tomato • heirloom tomatoes • Mister Stripey tomato • Mr. Stripey tomato • tomatoes
Greg on 13 Sep 2008 at 11:30 am #
It was a strange year for tomatoes hereabouts. I was listening to a gardening show on NPR the other day and had my own feelings confirmed, that the larger tomatoes just didn’t put on a good show this year, but that the cherries were prolific beyond belief.
I’ll have to give some thought this winter to what sort I’m willing to try in the new limited space. I guess that’s what those cold winter days are all about…