Late July 'Mater Update

Maruskin's Andes in the Front Farm beds. The two in the front beds are setting fruit faster and more furiously than their elder sister back in the 'Mater Patch, who was heeled in three weeks earlier. All three plants are from the same initial sowing and were transplanted at the same time into larger seedling containers. The only difference besides location is the three-week difference in planting times.

 Maruskin's Andes in the 'Mater Patch. This plant was heeled in about three weeks before the two Andes in the Front Farm beds, and she's slow, slow, slow setting fruit this year, unlike her sisters in the Front Farm.

The Andes  in the 'Mater Patch again. Plenty of flowers - she's just not interested in setting any fruit. The 'Mater Patch plants were almost all planted in 2nd quarter Sagittarius.

Livingston's Beauty doing her beautiful thing - being a short indeterminate vine and setting fruit at the core of the vine like crazy. Great plant. Not completely resistant to blight, but very resistant to seedling stressing, drought, and can set fruit at temperatures about 90 degrees F.

Two of the four monster plants in the 'Mater Patch: on the right is Black Cherry. Costoluto Genovese is on the left. These things are HUGE. The runners-up for huge plants are Rose Beauty and Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag. Costoluto Genovese is massively productive, so if the fruits are good-tasting, this will be one of the essential tomatoes in any bed from now on.

Black Cherry. Seriously, this plant is a monster, and very productive. The last time I grew this variety I was growing it in the now defunct Hackberry Beds, where its performance was lackluster at best. I am convinced that hackberries have allelopathic tendencies simply because nearly everything was stunted in those beds regardless of new soil, annual compost, fertilizers and mulch - and the beds actually weren't shaded by the gigantic and beautiful tree itself.

Yes. It is a gigantic plant - and it wants to send vines everywhere. Rebecca Sebastian's Bull Bag is another surprise this year, but the last year I grew it out - maybe in 2008 -  it was situated  in a somewhat depleted part of the 'Mater Patch, and planted way too close to its neighbors. I used to plant tomatoes 18" apart in rows, sandwiched between layers of cattle panel. It's a testament to the weedlike perseverance of Lycopersicon esculentum that they produced enough tomatoes to can - but they did!

Bull Bags on the vine. I believe these will top out between one and two pounds apiece this year due to all the rain.

Butler finally looking like a proper tomato plant and thinking about producing fruit. Bless Butler Skinner's little heart, he's slow but worth the wait.

Chapman with fruit - seems to be a really productive variety. Big sturdy plants - not quite as monstrous as the four giants in the 'Mater Patch, but very robust. Seems to be pretty prolific for a big tomato. Hope it's a good one! (I grew it mainly because our sweet Bubby-dog's real name is Chapman.)

Chapman looking just pretty and problem free.

Costoluto Genovese being huge and productive. There are easily twenty fruit already on this one plant, and they will all probably top 8 ounces from the look of it.

Cuneo Giant Pear - which may be the same tomato, according to Dr. Carolyn Male, as Coeur d'Albenga, Piriform, and possibly Liguria. From Tatiana Kouchnareva in British Columbia.

DePinto paste is reportedly from the DePinto family in Long Island. Brook Elliott has nothing but praise for this small tomato - apparently about the heft of the average Roma but shaped very differently. I have yet to taste one, so I'm looking forward to the experience. From Marianne Jones, I believe - or Bill Minkey. Honestly, I can't remember, and I don't think I wrote it down!

Depp's Pink Firefly. There it is. It makes wonderful tomatoes, and its performance can vary from year to year - typically does best in a drier year. However, I don't think Depp has done well outside the Southern Appalachian states, and it has fallen off the commercial seed lists this year. So even if I hated the taste of the tomatoes I'd have to grow it every year, just to ensure that the variety sticks around.

Doing very well - took a while to set fruit, but Emerald Evergreen is throwing them right and left now that she's decided to do it.

Two Ernie's Plump (from Marianne Jones this year.Marianne  was my original source back in 2001 or 2002. I realized I had no fresh seed for this variety.  I stopped growing this tomato because I ran out of room AND because I'm an idiot.) The Ernies are growing side by side in the Back Door Beds. Both plants looked identical as seedlings, although fuzzier and more blue-silver than I remembered the plants from ten years ago. Now, however, there is more of a difference in the foliage than there was originally. The proof of the pudding is in the fruit - and the smaller plant is the one producing the most fruit - nearly three times the production of the other.

Just letting Granny Carville's Yellow Roma sprawl this year, I guess. I should just get straw and put underneath her. She's having a little trouble with all the rain, but I think she's going to be quite productive. This is a variety that I got originally from Bill Minkey, but there's no one listed growing it in Seed Saver's Yearbook this year, 2013. I reckon this is going to be another one of my lost tomato children, and I will have to buy another acre to serve as the Maruskin Memorial Home for Orphaned Tomatoes. Granny is very productive, and makes trusses of fat and slightly pear-shaped paste tomatoes. A little mild for my usual taste, but they have a very fresh and subtle flavor fresh that is really lovely in a summer pasta dish with thyme and tarragon.

Jaune Flammee isn't a tomato orphan, but she is a mainstay of our garden - every year without fail.

Kenosha Paste is showing a little BER on the fruit on the left. I've just fertilized with a combination crushed eggshell, kelp, and magnesium sulfate (Epsom salts) last week, so this week I'll add some seabird guano and, if I can get them, llama droppings - or just a plain 4-3-3 organic from Espoma.

Kenosha Paste is another plant like Prue that has the sparsely-foliaged, morose appearance of a tomato grown by Morticia Addams - common in lots of pastes and oxhearts, but these two varieties seem to be especially stringy. Kenosha comes from Bill Minkey. I'm guessing that Bill got the seed from Curzio Caravati, a market grower from Kenosha, WI, who states on his website that the Italian families in Kenosha have collectively grown this variety for many years.

Love Lena Mae Nolt's Holy Land. Got it last year at Homestead Gardens Nursery in Casey Co. (Liberty), Kentucky. Talked to Lena Mae when I bought the tomato, who said she got it from a customer who said  - same story about all the Holy Land varieties - the customer got it from someone who had been on a trip to Jerusalem / Palestine / Hebron, was served the tomato at a meal, and then saved the seeds in his/her napkin. This Holy Land is a productive, beautiful oxheart - wispy leaved, but vigorous. Taste is everything a ripe red homegrown tomato should be - and I wish I could grow at least a dozen of these every year!

Martino's Roma is rather obviously a determinate and a real shortie, at that.  Martino is not quite as fat and bushy and short as the Cross-Hemisphere varieties Tasmanian Chocolate and Rosella Purple, but he's a nice little chunky guy all the same. He really didn't need that cage after all.

Peacevine Cherry taking up a lot of space, which is okay, since she's also busy making a lot of tomatoes. One of the most flavorful cherry varieties I've ever tasted - and a beautiful roasting tomato, especially as a bed under chicken thighs, tossed with good olive oil, whole garlic cloves, lemon juice, kalamata olive slivers, and a few twigs of fresh rosemary and thyme.

Prue, still looking like Carrie's "Before" picture at the Thomas Ewen Memorial High School prom. The tomatoes are worth having people raise their eyebrows at your apparent inability to raise a healthy tomato plant. Prue is named after the man who grew this variety for many years - and I seem to remember that it was another Dr. Carolyn Male introduction, but I could be wrong about that.

Rose Beauty is just that. Beauty by name and Beauty by nature - but she's NOT rose-colored..she throws big creamy-yellow beefsteaks with a pink heart and a pink thumbprint on her little blossom-butt. She hails from the Rose family in Estill County, KY, out on Happy Top Road.

Rosella Purple in the Front Farm beds. She's cute - and there are some tomatoes buried down in all that foliage somewhere. Rosella is one of the products of Craig LeHoullier's Cross-Hemisphere Breeding project.

Tasmanian Chocolate is another Cross-Hemisphere Breeding Project variety - there are two of these next to the lone Rosella Purple in the front farm beds. So far the plants seem to be happy and productive, but they're not much taller than the French marigolds planted in their beds.

Thessaloniki is a Greek introduction from the 1950s. Supposedly heat and drought tolerant, but this year I think it's been a little too moist and a little too shady for this variety. It's supposed to be an extraordinarily productive variety, which is not how I would describe the variety so far.

Thessaloniki is the east corner plant of the new row in the 'Mater Patch. This is a shot of the new row looking west. I didn't get all the clods picked out of the new bed, and have not put down ample mulch, so we have a row of wild sunflowers running down the back of this row. 

Yellow Cookie is a bit puny this year; a beautiful-tasting orange-yellow oxheart, but I think I'm going to miss my Verna Orange. The latter can be very difficult to grow out, but the fruit is one of my very favorites, and well worth growing for even two or three fruits per plant (and some years that's what you get). Yellow Cookie is another wispy-foliaged oxheart plant that doesn't look like much even in a good year, and it's another that I'm afraid will not be listed in Seed Savers' Exchange Yearbook if I don't keep growing it.