Tomatoes! And Peppers

The height of the summer garden is here and that can only mean one thing, at least one thing for me, TOMATOES!


Luscious Mouth Watering Heirloom Tomatoes at Various Stages of Ripening

You can see several things in this picture besides the tomatoes. Notice the curling of the leaves; a sign that the tomato is conserving water since it's dry and thirsty. Also notice the strips of cloth I use to secure the tomato plants to the stakes. Every year I struggle with how to hold up tomato plants. I've tried staking and no staking. I definitely like staking better than not but still have not figured out the best way to do this. The plants are so big this year and so full of large tomatoes that each plant has 3 -4 stakes supporting it. And I like using cloth to tie the stems to the stake as they seem to be a bit gentler on the plants than twine or string. Next year I'm going to try using hardware cloth. I think that's what it's called. It's metal and it's stronger than chicken wire. I saw this at the Belfast Middle School's garden last year. They took hardware cloth and made a 4' diameter circle out of it. They planted their tomato plant and put this "stake" around each plant. I thought that was a great idea!

Last year many of us in the northeast lost our entire tomato crop to Late Blight. This year there was a Late Blight scare earlier in the season over by the coast but the dry, hot weather took care of that threat. And do we have tomatoes! As I was picking tomatoes and bending suckers off the plants I had a wonderful experience. The heirloom tomatoes are growing near the 3 Sisters bed (corn, beans, squash). The beans I planted there have beautiful red flowers and the hummingbirds were there and so beautiful. There were six of them flying around, chasing each other, eating from the red flowers and they didn't even seem to care that I was there. I was able to enjoy their show for almost 20 minutes before they took off. I love that about gardening! You go out with one thing in mind and you get a totally unexpected show.

This year I planted a variety of types of tomatoes, some heirloom and some hybrid. I did that hoping to ensure some tomato harvest this year. I figured if something got to the heirloom I'd still have the hybrids to fall back on. Well, they are all doing magnificently!

Here's how my tomato growing has gone so far. I bought all my tomato as seedlings from FEDCO tree sale and a local greenhouse. I don't know if you remember but the Late Blight last year originated in tomato plants bought from the big box department stores. Another reason to shop locally. I like the variety available from the local growers. And I like to support them so they can make a living providing our area with local, delicious, organic produce and plants. The plants may have cost a little more but to me it's worth it. They are usually much healthier than those bought from big stores too. One thing I didn't do and wish I did was to label my seedlings better than I did. So now I have about 7 or 8 varieties out there and don't know which ones are which. I know which are the paste tomatoes by what they look like. And I know the hybrid's by what they look like (picture perfect looking). I obviously know the cherry tomatoes although I planted a few different varieties of them too and didn't label them. I know which are heirloom but don't have any idea what heirloom they are. I know Brandywine because I grow them a lot. But I have some small ones that are just luscious and I have no idea what variety they are! Ugh! So lesson learned - get better plant labels for next year and label the tomatoes and peppers better. I mention peppers because I bought 6 different types of pepper plants too and don't know which is which. But they are turning red right now and are beautiful! But I'm only getting 1 large pepper per sweet pepper plant. I wonder what that's about. I've been fertilizing them all season with great goat manure, compost, compost tea. So not sure what's up with that. Lots on the hot pepper plants though and they've been red for a while. Sweet Pepper Plant with Ripening Pepper
Did you know that green peppers are unripe peppers? The longer you leave them on the plant they will change color. Most of mine are turning red. Some are turning yellow. I've seen orange ones at the store but haven't grown any. I like ripe peppers better than green ones. They taste, well better! And our hot summer this year is perfect for ripening peppers on the plants.

So now that tomatoes are coming in what the heck do we do with them all!? Eat them, cook with them, can them, dry them, freeze them, and share them. I have had a tomato sandwich everyday for the past week or so. I've had Bruchetta on Thursdays for dinner the past two weeks. Thursdays because I can get a great loaf of fresh baguette bread from the farmers' market on Thursdays. Today I canned my first batch of tomatoes and made my first batch of salsa.

To make my salsa -
I cut up my most ripe tomatoes, ones I've had on the counter for a few days, real red, about 8 or 9 of them. I started simmering them while I cut up 2 sweet peppers, one was red and one was yellow. I also cut up a long red hot pepper. I left the seeds and all in and boy did it give the salsa a kick! I cut up about 10 scallions since I've got a ton of them in the garden and about 6 tiny cloves of garlic. I sauteed the peppers, scallions, garlic in a little bit of live oil in which I diced up some cilantro. After the pepper mixture looked fairly cooked I added it to the tomatoes. I minced some cilantro, parsley, basil, and oregano and added them to the tomatoes. I added a tiny bit of salt and pepper and a good slice of lime. I let it simmer for a few hours and it came out great!

Something I want to try is Roasted Tomatoes in Oil - Here's two websites that explain how to do that. It sounds great! http://www.chezpim.com/blogs/2006/10/tomato_confit_o.html if you want to can a substantial amount of this and http://www.passionateaboutbaking.com/2010/08/bakingpreserving-slow-roasted-tomatoes.html if you just want to try a small batch. Here's a picture from the Passionate About Baking website: Roasted Tomatoes in Oil
NOTE: read the safety tips at both these websites as a reminder to use caution when preserving anything in oil!

But all is not bliss in the kingdom of tomatoes. The otherworldly Tomato Hornworm has shown it's presence. The green Tomato Hornworm is the larvae of the Hawk Moth and these large caterpillars can do a lot of damage to tomato plants. As my husband says, the Tomato Hornworm looks like something out of the movie, Men in Black. Since they can do an amazing amount of destruction to tomato plants in a short amount of time you want to get rid of them. But they are huge and can be somewhat intimidating. And since they are so green they blend in well with the tomato plants making them easy to miss. It may be their waste or frass, blackish to brownish pellets that you'll notice first. Or it might be the fact that the tomato plants look like deer have been eating them because leaves are missing and all you see are stems. That's what I first noticed today. The top of 2 plants looked like deer had been eating them. Upon closer inspection I found the dreaded frass and knew to keep looking. Sure enough there the bugger was! I am a whimp so I put on a garden glove and pulled it off. And did it take quite the tug! Wow, it was really holding on. I put it in a jar to show my family, one member was not impressed they other very impressed. Then I threw it outside for the birds to eat. I was going to give it to my neighbor's chickens but thought they might think it weird that I arrived with a lone caterpillar for them. I will look around the plants again each evening and morning to see if I find more. Something tells me that if I found one, I'll find more. I just couldn't see anymore this morning. Here's a few pictures of the dreaded darling -

Can you see the Tomato Hornworm? And it's waste pellets to the left of it?


A close up of the Tomato Hornworm

The first thing I noticed - stems minus the leaves


A Close Up of the Tomato Hornworm in a Jar

And leave it to Johnny's Selected Seeds here in Maine to have a video on how to control Tomato Hornworm! You can view it here: http://www.johnnyseeds.com/t-videoTomatoHornWorm.aspx?source=facebook_hornworm_81910 Be sure to watch the whole thing so you can see if you have the beneficial parasitic wasps laying eggs on the hornworm! If so then you are in luck. If considering using Bt here's what Wikipedia says about it:

"Spores and crystalline insecticidal proteins produced by B. thuringiensis have been used to control insect pests since the 1920s.[10] They are now used as specific insecticides under trade names such as Dipel and Thuricide. Because of their specificity, these pesticides are regarded as environmentally friendly, with little or no effect on humans, wildlife, pollinators, and most other beneficial insects. The Belgian company Plant Genetic Systems was the first company (in 1985) to develop genetically engineered (tobacco) plants with insect tolerance by expressing cry genes from B. thuringiensis.
Bacillus thuringiensis serovar israelensis, a strain of B. thuringiensis is widely used as a larvicide against mosquito larvae, where it is also considered an environmentally friendly method of mosquito control."

Finally...remember learning about density? Well check this picture out and see if you can figure out why the layering in these, just out of the canner, jars of tomatoes look the way they do!

So get your magnifying glasses out and check your tomato plants. Then eat your tomatoes any way you can!
Hope you are enjoying your garden and remember that gardens make the world clean and fresh,
Mary
PS - Great site...100 ways to use your tomatoes! http://www.endlesssimmer.com/2010/08/09/100-ways-to-use-a-tomato/