Among the Iris

Tomato Results

So the tomatoes I grew this year were a mixed batch of older and newer varieties. Some more successful than others, and here's what I decided about each:

Yellow Pear Tomato: Decent tasting tomato and pretty prolific. Fun mostly because of it's colour and shape, but at end of season it drops a lot of the tomatoes and the flavor gets a bit hit or miss. It was one of the varieties that lost a plant mid-way through the season due to wilt followed by blight, and although the other Yellow Pears tried to hold on they were heavily hit and are now all pulled out. For next year, if I plant any, One should be enough and it can be ripped out when the late blight hits before it gets all messy like they did this year.

Thai Pink Egg Tomato: Fun shape and colour. That's it. It was an average producer until it was wiped out with blight and some sort of tiny dark tomato eating worm that obviously found it way better tasting than I did. Should have ripped out all the vines when I had to rip one out mid-season from the bight. Didn't really get much more after that from the other vines and it attracted the worms which spread to the rest of the tomato patch then. Will not be growing again.

Sunrise Bumblebee Tomato: This year's Taste Winner. Fun striped cherry tomatoes that pretty much always got eaten straight from the vine, never making it into the house. Did have problems with it initially as it was VERY attractive to the slugs and I lost all but one of the plants I set out. That one plant, once protected with diatomaceous earth, produced heavily though to make up for it. Ironically, I had started too many plants and given several away (before I realized they were such slug candy) so I have report from my sister that in her garden Sunrise Bumblebee was a winner for them also. Her boys loved the taste and the fact that they were striped, and kept the plant picked clean. One of the little ones very cutely thought there might be "bumblebees inside, but there weren't." Will definitely grow again. And next year I'm going to try the Pink Bumblebee and Purple Bumblebee tomatoes also.

Oregon Spring Tomato: This small beefsteak type tomato was just not brilliant. It wasn't a bad tomato, but it wasn't anything special either. The pronounced ridging did make it easier to chop into sauces but that's hardly a reason to grow it again. Especially since in my garden, my mom's garden and my sister's gardens it seemed to be a bit of a poor performer. For me, it just didn't set very much fruit. The plants succumbed the blight and have been pulled from my garden already. My sister, I think got more fruit set but it was plagued with assorted rots and wilt and blight. Will not grow again.

Money Maker Tomato: Mistakenly thinking it was the same as Mortgage Lifter, I bought this tomato variety. This is a salad size tomato, not beefsteak. I think if it was not named Money Maker I would not have expected it to be better tasting than it was, or a more prolific bearer than it was. So although this is a good little tomato, really, and held on fairly well through the blight... I'm just not into it. It didn't live up to its billing so I won't be growing it again next year.

Mountain Princess Tomato: Heirloom variety that is supposed to be blight resistant. Good flavor, good size. Not really blight resistant, but held on pretty well and kept producing tomatoes -- which is pretty decent. I will grow a few of these again next year.

Iron Lady Tomato: F1 Hybrid developed specifically to resist blight... and the first to get it out of all the plants. Though I am forced to add, it has yet to succumb to blight and the plants are still holding on in the garden even now.  It was also one of the first to set fruit, but then it was the last to ripen. Seriously, tomatoes that hadn't even flowered yet when Iron Lady was sporting green golf balls, still were ripe sooner. In theory they should have a good shelf life. Which brings me to the major problem, Iron Lady Tomatoes taste like supermarket tomatoes. Exactly like supermarket tomatoes. That's a major fail. Will not grow these again.

Indigo Apple Tomatoes: Happy. Happy. Prolific, yummy, still going strong despite some blight damage. These were the best performers in the garden this year, and second runner-up for best flavor. Will definitely be growing these again next year.

I have a few Silver Fir Tree Bush Tomatoes in pots planted for the fall garden which have already set fruit but are not ripe yet, and (garden trialing is addictive) I have about 20 more new-to-me varieties in seed packages ready to try in next year's garden... including one that is supposed to get over 15 foot long/tall. I'm thinking I want to build a tomato arbor to train it over. Won't that be fun?

Photographs From Our Garden

Black Eyed Susan

Blue Corn

Globe Thistle and Hydrangeas

Tropical Sunrise Roses

Tomatoes

Where the Green Things Are

Baby Green Gage Plums

The Green Gage Plum put on fruit for the first time this year.  These plums are supposed to be the best ever of the British/European plums but are rarely grown in the US, because of their unreliability.  Some years they fruit, sometimes they don't. Some trees never fruit. The internet is filled with dire predictions which, of course, I read right after I had ordered the trees.

I planted them in a sunny spot downhill from the compost pile, stacking the deck in their favor, I hoped. But a spot where they could be shade trees, privacy trees, if they never produced fruit.  And then I pruned out the central leader, opened them up (which is supposed to put energy into fruiting). Still, if they never fruited that was okay, I told them.  And I waited.  Five years. Then, this spring they were covered in blossoms. Sweet, white, clusters of flowers with long showy stamens. They were beautiful. And promising.  But every orchardist knows that blossoms do not always mean fruit. And I waited again.

The frost dates passed safely. The blossoms dropped as they should, and tiny little fruits began to form. And tiny little fruits began to drop off, coating the ground beneath the trees with undeveloped plums.  This happens.  It is supposed to happen.  The tree cannot bear the weight of too many fruit, it can't feed and ripen every blossom that was pollinated.  The weak ones are sacrificed, thinned, so that the tree can be healthy.

It's still okay, I told them, if you never produce ripe fruit. I would like to taste one, though. If you could make at least one for me. So I am waiting.

Squash Blossoms

Ronde de Nice Zucchini after blossoming

Buttercup Winter Squash ready to bloom

The Front Garden in June

front steps

foxglove

yellow roses

What I Did This Summer

Off and on all summer I have been working on this pair of box-weave knit socks in a soft alpaca yarn.  Somehow the first one was so much fun to knit but the second one took FOREVER to finish.  They are finally done now and just in time for the toasting of toes in these cooler nights.

These apples are from a pick your own orchard I found a few hours drive from me.  Why are they not my own apples?  Well, remember that groundhog?  She turned into three groundhogs.

I set the trap and caught one; it now lives in a nice meadow in the uninhabited realms of national forest.  Then I set the trap again. 

The trap caught another animal almost right away.  Thing is, groundhogs aren't black and white striped!  I had caught a skunk.  I dressed in my oldest grubbies, covered myself with a trash bag, tied my hair inside a grocery bag, and armed myself with a wire coat hanger so I could hook the latch open without getting too close.  There will NEVER be photos of that moment. 

I managed to release the skunk without getting sprayed but I haven't dared to set the trap again.  Thus the groundhogs have had free reign in the garden and orchard this summer.  The conveniently short dwarf apple trees have been completely relieved of harvest by the giant groundhog who stands on her hind legs and bends even the higher branches down to eat the fruit.

I also made a lot of cookies over the summer for various functions.  These I took a picture of because they were bunny shaped cookies, whereas most of the cookies I make are simply that round lumpy predictable cookie shape.  Very edible and not necessarily un-photogenic, but somehow the bunnies just seemed more photo-worthy.

Hot Enough to Fry a Groundhog?

So imagine my surprise: I go out the back door, turn to go down the basement steps on my way to check my laundry -- and there he is. Chuckie. Splayed out on the cool of the basement steps my resident woodchuck refused to yield his position.
I actually had to find a long stick, go around the outside edge and poke him in the hind end before he reluctantly moved. (After I took photos, of course.)

The really disturbing part? A second groundhog was spotted munching in the orchard at the same time. One groundhog might be tolerated -- it's hot, the gardens not doing that much to worry about protecting it from a nibble here and there, and I wasn't really feeling all that up to groundhog transportation right now. But two groundhogs means a breeding pair, means baby marmota, means it's time to set the trap after all.

Summer is Upon

Showy Tickseed (It's a Flower)

Apple Blossom Time

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” -- Martin Luther

"Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings" --Psalm 17:8

Cherry Tree

Through the Garden Gate

The side gate opens on woodland ephemerals and a path of (Pennsylvania) stones in my narrow tea garden. Many of the plants that bloom in this garden I love for their names as well as their flowers and foliage.

Jacob's Ladder

Bleeding Heart

Honesty

King Solomon's Seal

The First Annual Butternut Beauty Pagent

What is the use of an Aunt growing butternut squashes if they cannot be harvested, decorated with markers, and judged in a butternut beauty pagent? The winner, in a blind judging (Mommy closed her eyes and picked), was taken home to be baked and the loosers took a nap in Aunt's bed.

Matt's Wild Cherry Tomatoes

So far this year the best producing tomato vine in my garden has been the Matt's Wild Cherry.

Roughly the size of a dime, or smaller, they are prolific. The plant is a bit all over -- I'm harvesting these little wild ones off towers that were supposed to be supporting other tomatoes. The vine bends over, grows sideways, stretches out into the yard... and makes more tomatoes. More and more tiny tomatoes.

Aren't they adorable?

Today's wild tomato dish is a simple fresh pasta sauce for angle hair. Olive oil, basil, black pepper, whole wild cherry tomatoes, and pine nuts went into the skillet.

When the tomatoes started to want to split that was the signal to add the cooked (al dente) angle hair pasta. Mixing the pasta in the skillet gives the noodles a chance to absorb the sauce. They turn a little pink.

Fast, simple, delicious. Life is good.