They're BACK!!!!



First Stupice ripening, July 08, 2012.

This week the Stupices (say "stoo-peech-ka" - it's a Czechoslovakian variety!) are ripening. It's been a horrid, horrid, record-breaking year, but we all know that tomatoes usually do really well in a drought if they can get any little bit of water consistently.

This particular Stupice was planted on May 24 - making the first ripe fruit 49 days from transplant. While this variety is an early tomato, however, these plants had been seeded in early February, and so they were a little larger than some of the other plants that went in on May 23 and 24.

Stupice is a truly amazing variety, not unlike Jaune Flammee; it has an uncanny ability to survive the crowded conditions of the seedling tray without suffering from nutrient deficiencies, wilting, bolting, or many other problems caused by overcrowding. Both varieties hold well without stunting, which is another reason I like to use them as transplant varieties for the AppalSeeds workshops.

Both Stupice and Jaune Flammee have high-quality flesh and taste; the only so-called flaw I can find in either tomato is that the fruit itself is not large. This aspect of these varieties can be disappointing for workshop attendees, but this is one of those years we'll be happy to get anything out of the garden regardless of size, color, or shape.



Jaune Flammee in the front bed with real, live rainwater dripping from the leaves last week.

That's a hint: don't wait two weeks and dump three gallons of water on a stressed plant. Either give them a couple of cups of water daily, or use drip irrigation or a soaker hose.  If you inundate a dry, stressed tomato plant that's flowering with a bucket of water, you'll end up with blossom end rot about 60% of the time....more than than for elongated paste tomatoes and some oxhearts.

The Jaune Flammee pictured above is unlikely to show any signs of blossom end rot, blossom drop, early blight, or many of the other issues that plague tomatoes in Kentucky. It's relatively early in mid-season (70 days), so there should be a ripe tomato in the back bed by August 1. Maybe sooner the way things are going.

And the front bed may actually beat the back bed this year. The back bed is showing an unsettling pattern; the last three rows of tomatoes are in a newer part of that bed. They are planted in soil that was lawn rather than chicken run; there is also less windbreak and shading in that part of the garden. And so I'm afraid that Lusignan's Special, Verna Orange, Polish Linguisa, Hartford, and Jaune Flammee have suffered from less nutrition, less water, and more searing dry heat than the other nine varieties represented in the big tomato bed.

More real, live rain, dripping from the gutters and the bird feeders onto the Big Fig Newton at the kitchen door.

The"Big Fig Newton" (a 3-year-old Chicago Hardy aka Bensonhurst Purple) has taken over the little flower bed next to the kitchen door. This particular plant was pruned this winter to 3 feet tall, and has already reached the monstrous dimension of 12 feet tall, 6 feet deep and 8 feet wide. I hope the new Celeste figs do as well, but I don't see how they can top the Newton. Figs, people, are drought-proof. If we have another year like this one, I'll be planting Arbequina olive trees in the front yard to go with our figs.