Tomato review!

Since I yanked the tomato plants this week, I'll give a rundown of how they did this year.

Overall, it was a less then ideal year for tomatoes: cold and gray early in the season, cold and gray through a lot of the summer, and finally warmer and sunny when it was almost too late. Seattle tilth actually canceled their annual tomato taste-off usually held in September cause nobody had tomatoes!

Cold early summer and lots of gray days limited the amount of fruit set dramatically, and I really only got one good flush out of each plant, if that.

All the tomatoes were planted out in mid-may. About 50 days later the first ripe tomatoes were ready. They produced slowly for a month until they really started rolling in (as many as we could eat) from late August to early September.

Stupice tomatoes (8/30) were the first ready, the strongest producer, and the most vigorous grower, just like they were last year. A nice, not too sweet and not too juicy slicing tomato. I'll be growing this again next year.

I tried some grape tomatoes this year, these are called Cabernet (8/30). These took longer to ripen up than the stupice, and were easiest to pick from the back of the truss as they ripened. They were slightly meatier than cherry tomatoes and lean towards acid rather than sweet.


Early Girl II (9/10) is larger than stupice, with more juice and more tomato acid. It wasn't as vigorous as others, and despite it's name, ripened later than others. These were my "nicest looking" tomatoes, if that counts for anything.

Marzano tomatoes (9/16) are a big, fat, Roma-type italian sauce variety. These were slow to mature, these were the first ready to pick, and many ahd to be picked unripened a the end of season. They are very meaty and have a mild flavor.

First frost

Bellingham's average first frost the the 1st of October. It held off for a few weeks but we got our first frost last night. It wasn't a hard freeze, but it did kill everything that is considered tender or a hot weather veggie.

The last of the basil was killed off. Despite our chillier than normal summer, it did great this year.


Dahlia foliage and blooms were killed off as well. The plants were then cut off about 6" from the ground, which will promote the growth of new "eyes", which will be next years' growth. After two weeks, they'll be dug up, cured for a few days, and stored through the winter to be planted out next spring.

I took out the last of the tomatoes, amended with some compost, and sowed crimson clover.

The hardier vegetables took the frost with no problem. I hope we have enough remaining days of decent weather and enough light to push them to maturity before real winter sets in.

Chinese cabbage, leeks, and carrots.

Kohlrabi and a few broccoli plants.

Dahlias

Had good dahlias this year. I started a lot of annual dahlias from seed this year. Those first:


I also planted a bunch of dahlia corms, some I saved from last year and some we got from a friend.

These are much bigger than the annual dahlias - 3 or 4 feet tall and bigger blooms.

Fall peas!

I wasn't sure if they would have enough time to mature enough to produce anything, but looks like the snap peas sown just over 2 months ago had just enough. The first flowers showed 3 weeks ago and they have kept growing and flowering, setting fruit since.

Cascadia Snap Pea, developed by a horticultural professor in Oregon, is resistant to powdery mildew, a common fall fungus in our climate.

The crimson clover cover crop, here in the perennial herb bed, has filled in amazingly fast. We picked off these herbs (thyme, 3 kinds of sage, 2 kinds of oregano, and rosemary) all year long. Today I cut them all back pretty good and will dry all the cuttings to use through winter. Rosemary can be thrown right into the freezer without drying and used as if fresh.


Red leaf lettuce is coming along, slowly. Everything is growing much slower in the cool weather and weaker sunlight of fall. Hopefully the cabbage, broccoli, radishes and peas will be able to grow large enough for eating in late fall and through winter.

Hot weather veggies

Finally getting good production out of tomatoes and peppers now that we've had some consistently warm weather. I'll go over the tomatoes later as a vegetable review of each variety.

California Wonder 300 at about 60 days after transplanting. These are off one plant and that's really all the plant produced.


Basil sown June 8 is growing great. 3 plants for each 4" pot gave them enough room after transplanting.
Basil from a few weeks ago big enough to start picking. Instead of pulling individual leaves as we need them, I find it easier to just cut one or two full plants at a time.

Here's the garden plots today....