One day a few weeks back, all the tomato vines BOWED the same night and the fruit on them has raced to ripen ever since. I have four pounds semi drying in the food dehydrator right now. When they get leathery, but not dry, they'll go into
baglets inside of a vacuum bag wtih other baglets and be sucked down to a pliant pile, now weighing a pound intead of 4 pounds, and into the freezer they'll go, and they'll get
added to chili to stews, to veg soup to some chicken dishes during winter until they're used up.
Even with dying plants from too early and too cold I figured out that the six or seven plants which DID put out fruit and vine out INSANELY into a tangle I couldn't even get through, and due to all the eager usual garden spiders which had parked around the jungle to dine on tomato predators... I had to kill those who didn't take the water jet relocation order and rebuilt every night. ONE bite on one arm festered for almost 90 days. Those fanged bitches have to park elsewhere dammit.
So, I have Amish Paste, similar to romas but a bit of blue in their skin and damned near no seeds, maybe 10 per fruit, and hardly any juicy seed mucus in them. They are PASTE tomatoes. They also need about 3 feet CIRCLE plus 7 feet upward movement space, PLUS STRONG BRACING.. or they'll move into other vines and lean on them... that was the start of the tomato jungle tangle. Kids used to stand on each others' shoulders and look over my fence and FREAK. the jungle was about 8 feet by 6 feet, and I watered the tubs sitting on their doubled up Rion greenhouse shelves sitting on my granite chip back "yard"... and wonder if it was going to "go mobile" and go after them. No, it's about to get cut into pieces, loaded into my little rubbermade green wheelbarrow and get rolled out to the front and emptied by kindly YOUNGER STRONG male neighbors into the yard waste container we all chip in on during Spring though Fall.
I have GRAPE tomatoes, like little porterhouse, but growihg in compact, teardrop bunches on every bit of every frond on every arm of every part of the vine.. and it crawled into the strawberries and into the Amish Paste and into the heirlooms.... ONE plant and it made SURE the tangle could not be separated or the tubs and shelving couldn't be pulled apart to give each plant a bit more room. It needs 4 to 6 feet upward and outward space, and it got a lot less....so it tangled.
I have an HEIRLOOM monster.. it grew into ALL my other tomatoes except the 100s and ALL of its fruit decided to get ripe.... at once... and each tomato is from 1/5 lb to ONE
FULL POUND.. and they have these brown leafy support growth lines in them.. and heavy brown stemlets and often they're multiple tomato fruits all grown smooshy together like some Japanese nuclear mutant into each other.. ... and they're firm meaty, juicy and seedy, also, but HOOBOY are they good sammich or stacked
salad base slicers. However, hit 'em with salt or vinegar and they begin almost immediately to mush down. I love them. I pick 'em when the first color shows or in the middle of the might they drop off the vine and SPLIT when they hit the ground after leaving the plant/vine and the CONTAINER...so you pick 'em and in as little as one day or as much as three days, they're firm ripe and ready to slice,,, next day, they're soup ready....
I also have the weirdies of the year.. CHEROKEE PURPLE.. and they're fat heavy heirlooms but not as big as the red ones, the biggest of these being about half a pound... and ripe they are WINE PURPLE. Oh, yummer, delicious....
And I have one organic that is often found as GMO, but this came off an organic farm, as did all the other plants... looks like Sweet 100 and gives up chains of baby tomatoes
like sweet 100 but it isn't a GMO.. it's an organic.
I am convinced that the root crowding makes each tomato plant (one to a tub, except two to the oval 27 gallon tub), though I used 15 and 25 gallon galvanized steel tubs *with holes drilled in the bottmo for drainage, chock FULL of potting soil amended with garden mulch from the compost barrell I bought 5 years ago. It intimidated me even before Erek died.. the ends are BOTH removable and you add water, CRAM in the garden and kitchen waste, add a bag or two of starter every Spring and keep adding to it all summer and next year you have a 30 gallon drum with sludge in it.. You dump that into a tub, screening it as you go along, let it air dry a bit and use that lovely new stuff to amend your potting soil so it never gets devoid of wonderful things to help plants grow and thrive in your container garden.
Mix in a little Osmacoat or a local natural garden center's homemade knockoff for your region, and you too can create a tomato jungle.
I had an entire bunch of plants die this year due to cold. GLOBAL WARMING SHIFTS WEATHER AND SEASONS, DAMMIT.
I'm putting plants in the soil later next year but starting them indoors with the LED lights I bought to set up a pot grow-op for myself.... I'll grow fewer vines but, start 'em earlier, put em in the containers on 15 inch shelving and steel tubs and they'll start their outdoor life MUCH BIGGER.. and lower to the ground and further apart from one another next year...
Okay, now about that soup..... ::grin:: Look below the fold.
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