“Everything” – The tomato edition

As soon as I finished my original “Everything” post I realized that I’d forgotten all of the tomatoes that I’ve seeded so far. Then I went on vacation and just now got around to writing this. They are just tiny plants now but should be ready in about ten days. Here’s the list . . .

• Beefsteak
• Cherokee Purple
• Chocolate Cherry
• Costoluto Genovese
• First Light – New for me this year
• Garden Peach
• Goliath
• Japanese Trifele Black
• Jet Star
• Koralik – Didn’t germinate for no apparent reason
• Marcellino
• Omar’s Lebanese
• Opalka
• Spoon
• Sugary
• Sweet Million
• Tomande
• Viva Italia

 

Pardon me while I rant about genetics

Tomatoes are yummy and so should you

When I was in college, my favorite class, hands down, was genetics. I still spend time pondering genetics, it is utterly fascinating to me. This probably makes me a big nerd or something. I also like tomatoes. So tomatoes + genetics = An orgy of pondering. So ponder this: If you had a pocketful of tomato seed would you rather have heirloom tomato seed or hybrid tomato seed in your pocket?

Let’s see, what is good about heirloom tomato seed? Allegedly heirlooms taste better. True in some cases, not true in others. They are open-pollinated, which means the next generation will be the same as the parent plant. Caveat: This is only true if there is no cross-pollination with other cultivars.  Also, heirlooms are location specific. They survived over the years because they do very well in a certain climate, soil, type, etc. , so if you have a really awesome (for Italy) heirloom like ‘San Marzano’ but you live in, say, Kansas, where I live do you have an awesome heirloom? NO. Around here ‘San Marzano’ sucks, grow ‘Opalka’ or ‘Black Plum Paste’ instead. Not that there aren’t some heirlooms that do well in lots of places, there are. The point here is: don’t grow heirlooms that don’t grow well where you live. What would the point of that be? Unless, of course, you’re a seed collector like me, an addiction that I’m trying to overcome, then collect away! That baggie filled with seeds to give or throw away never fills up as quickly as it should for me.

And what about hybrid seed? I’m sure some would say “Nothing” and then proceed to rant about all those evil evil agriculture corporations. I disagree, though not always about agriculture corporations. There are some awesome tomato cultivars, some of my favorites, that are hybrids! Sweet Million.  Sugary. Goliath. So their chilluns won’t be the same, I’ll have to keep buying seed from some evil evil company if I want to keep growing them. But does this really matter? Hybrids’, particularly F1 hybrids’, offspring can vary wildly so I won’t end up with the same thing I had before but what if, IF, I ended up with something even better? And I keep breeding it back to itself till I end up with the coolest bestest open-pollinated tomato cultivar for NE Kansas, ever? That would be sweet!

So what do I have in my pocket? Hybrid AND heirloom tomato seed. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. These plants, they gotta be so complicated.

 

Tomatoes gone wild…

I’m not sure if my parents love me or hate me this time of year. I planted a lot of tomato plants for them and now their kitchen counter looks like this:

And a table in the garage looks like this:

And here’s a few, just a few, cherry tomatoes. I try to pick these when I’m out at their house cause they don’t like picking the little ones.

A tomato as big as a small child’s head! This variety is called ‘Opalka’. The not-quite-ripe one is how they are supposed to look. The double-sized one is just a mutant. Or maybe I pumped that one full of antibiotics and hormones. Shhhhh, don’t tell the plant-rights police or Michael Pollan. I might have even fed it CORN, the sin of all sins. Feeding a tomato CORN. What I would like know is, has anyone asked the tomatoes if they like to eat corn? Cause I’m pretty sure they do.

What was I talking about? Oh, that’s right, tomatoes.  Back to the tomatoes.

Tomato ‘Striped Stuffer’

Sucks, yes, it totally sucks. Do not grow it. It actually tasted worse than a store bought tomato which I didn’t even know was possible. It is apparently an heirloom. I don’t really buy into the hype about heirloom tomatoes, heirlooms aren’t always all they are cracked up to be, sometimes they are about 100x worse than modern F1 hybrids. Sometimes they are awesome. It does have a nice cavity for stuffing and pretty stripes. This is the first time I have every grown a stuffing tomato, are they all this bad?

They do look nice with some tuna salad in them. Yummy! The tuna salad and the pickles, I mean, not the tomatoes. I think of this variety as a pretty, disposable, biodegradable bowl. I’m not sure they’d stand up to a scoop of ice cream or hot soup. Coming to a family reunion near you, any day now!

Goodnight. This snarky gardener is going to bed. I will contemplate weeding my community garden plot and strangling any worms I find. I think I need another vacation. And it is right around the corner! Yippeeeeee!

 

New recipe of the week – Tomatoes Provencal

From Everyday Food but I couldn’t find a link to the recipe online. I should’ve made a half recipe of it cause it was too much for one person to eat in a week. Little Girl won’t eat tomatoes which I find shocking, SHOCKING! It is a good way to use up a lot of tomatoes and it turned out better than I thought that it would, even though I had to make a few changes to the recipe. I suppose I could blend up the rest of it and turn it into tomato sauce, alas, I do not have a blender.

 

New recipe of the week – Beef stuffed acorn squash

I like squash recipes that don’t contain the word “pie” to be savory, this rule is for sweet potatoes also. No marshmallows, no maple syrup, please. I have an acorn squash from my parents’ garden and I found this recipe for Beef-Stuffed Acorn Squash from taste of home. What is even better? I already have all of the ingredients for it which is awesome cause I’m trying to avoid the grocery store till payday on Friday. I don’t know about other people but walking into a grocery store for a gallon of milk always costs me ~$30. The food just cries out to me, “Buy MEEEEEEEE!” I don’t want to deprive any delicious strawberries from fulfilling their purpose in life, so, ya know, I end up $30 poorer, but strawberry rich.

This recipe took FOREVER and I didn’t like it that much. I’ve never really liked acorn squash and I thought, “If only I found the right recipe, that would change.” Wrong, still don’t like acorn squash. From now on I’m sticking to squash I DO like: Spaghetti, zucchini, pumpkins, yellow squash. The beef filling was really yummy, I ate about half of it before the squash was even done baking. Also I used about 3x as much cheese as the recipe. So not that great, on the upside . . .

The first tomato of the season

From my parents’ garden. On warm pita bread with Alouette spreadable cheese and fresh parsley. It was delicious.

 

I’ve got tomato plants and I’m taking orders

And by orders,  I don’t mean that you can boss me around. If you do that you won’t be getting any tomato plants. So here goes…

I have 172 tomato plants of which I will need only 50, tops. I have 23 cultivars which are listed below. If you live nearby and want a few, let me know what you want and how many. If you have any questions leave a comment or send me an email.

Zapotec Pleated tomatoes, Yumm-o!

“Regular” big tomatoes

• Jet Star
• Goliath
• Beefsteak
• Oregon Spring
• Tomande
• Omar’s Lebanese

Roma/paste tomatoes

• Viva Italia
• Black Plum Paste
• Beaverlodge 6806 Plum
• Opalka

Cherry tomatoes

• Marcellino
• Sugary
• Spoon
• Sweet Million
• Chocolate

Crazy tomatoes

• Striped Stuffer
• Garden Peach
• Zapotec Pleated
• Costoluto Genovese
• Cherokee Purple
• Japanese Trifele Black
• Red Lightning
• Red Star

 

Only 10 tomato plants?!!! Why that’s crazy talk!!!

I grow tomato plants for my parents’ garden every year so a couple of months ago I asked them, “How many tomatoes do you want to grow in your garden this year?” And they said, “Ten”. And I said, “ok”. What I was really thinking was: Ten?! Seriously?! Are you kidding me!? Only TEN?!!! You are so totally growing more than ten tomato plants. Because I am so totally going start at least 20 different varieties of tomatoes and you have to have AT LEAST one of each variety because tomatoes are awesome AND amazing!

Yes, not only do I love tomatoes but I love growing them. They grow like weeds around here, big tasty weeds, in shades of orange, yellow, red, green, and brown. Let’s not forget the stripey, that’s a color too. I ended up starting 24 different cultivars. I finally potted up the seedlings into bigger pots yesterday. (Yes, I know I’m a little behind, this blog ought to be called the procrastinating gardener.) They should be ready to set out in the garden in 7-10 days. I ended up with 172 plants. My parents are getting at least 24 of them and I will plant some in my garden and I guess I will give the rest away to unsuspecting people who think that tomatoes are always red and circlish.

Here’s what they looked like before I potted them up:

Does this look like only ten tomato plants? Um, no.