Best One-Day Harvest in a Long Time

Judging from the pictures that have been popping up in my in-box, I'm not the only one who's having a good year. I tell you, aside from that cold snap a few weeks ago, this season has been sprinkled with some kind of magic dust. The weather has been perfect, the pests have been well in hand, and even the diseases haven't been too bad.

Yesterday, my six-year-old and I went out after school and we had the best one-day harvest I've had in a long time. We've been getting fruit every day now for a while, and there is still tons and tons more left on the vine, but this was just yesterday:

It's hard to see, because I didn't include a ruler for scale, but those big ones are all in the 1.5 lb. range. Also, the Kellogg's Breakfast (orange) have started to come in, and the Paul Robesons (dusky, upper left corner) are beginning to bear more heavily. The star of the day, though, were the Brandyboys. This plant is a champion performer, with beautiful and huge tomatoes. True, they aren't as tasty as the Brandywine, but it's hard to argue with piles of gorgeous fruit.

Before I sign off, though, a word ... I've been a bit slower to respond to emails these last few weeks, and my posting schedule has been thrown off. I've been sitting on a tremendous guest post from a pepper-grower who has all kinds of good advice about growing peppers (something I clearly haven't mastered yet). And I've got some truly eye-popping harvest pictures from fellow growers. Also, I've been collecting questions for a Q&A post—those are always nice.

But ... these last few weeks have been a karmic disaster around here, and it's gummed up the works. I started wondering last week if we had somehow pissed off the Big Guy Upstairs. In these last few weeks, we had a new pet kitten die, our family room flooded with two inches of water thanks to a faulty washing machine, my wife got in a car wreck that caused $8,000 in damage to her car, and our house was broken into and we were relieved of most of our electronics and jewelry. They even took a jar of quarters I'd been saving for 15 years, the bastards. This helps explain in part why I stopped posting photos for a while. No camera.

I tell you, I'm thankful first of all that everyone near and dear has remained healthy throughout (except that poor week-old orphaned kitten we tried to nurse). No one was hurt in the car accident, and thankfully no one was home when they broke into our house. Our misfortunes have been of the purely material kind (again, except for the kitten, who we named Lucky but turned out not to have luck on her side after all). And I'm thankful too that these are temporary misfortunes: we are still gainfully employed, etc. I would never presume to rank this rough patch with the more serious misfortunes that lurk out there—I am lucky, and I know it.

That said, the garden has been a bright spot in my winter. It's true, what they say about the restorative effect of growing things. It's been nice to go outside and see something working right. And I confess: part of me has wondered. To get into our house, the thieves had to walk past my tomato patch. And I wonder if they noticed the vines laden with enormous, lovely fruit, and if somewhere in their fuzzy, criminal brains, they didn't stop for one second to think, "Wow. Those are nice tomatoes."

Probably not. But it's still a nice thought.

A Quick Harvest Picture

Not a bad morning ... I'm starting to harvest big tomatoes pretty much every morning now. This picture shows green zebras, two Paul Robesons (woo hoo!), and a whole lotta Brandyboys. One nice thing: the Kellogg's Breakfast are slow to ripen, so I'm not getting my whole harvest at once, which is annoying because one household can only eat so many tomatoes.

I'll post on the Brandboys later, but so far, I've been very impressed with the yield on these suckers. These are very productive plants ...

Day Two: Tomatoes and Cold Weather

There must be a better way ... I'm right now thinking of developing a way to better protect tomatoes than sheets and bags. Maybe I'll give LEDs a try. Or maybe I'll invest in a small heater of some kind to put under the sheets. Anyway, going on Day Two of this cold snap, I thought I'd update on the damage. And be prepared: today's blog is full of dead things. It's not a great day in TomatoLand.

Cold damage to tomatoes is an insidious thing. It tends to creep up on the plant, so it might take hours or even a day or two to see the full effects of the damage. It might be tempting to cut away wilted, dying or dead growth right away, but it's important to resist that urge. First, there's no sense in shocking the plant. Second, you don't yet know the true extent of the damage. So I say wait until the damage is completely revealed, then cut away the dead parts of the plant. And don't worry if you have tomatoes on the vine—they will still ripen, even on vines that are heavily damaged. Also, you might be surprised: the plants will often bounce back surprisingly well as soon as the weather warms up.

Anyway, last night I did the best job yet of covering my plants. I first covered them in giant bags, then wrapped them in sheets. The worst damage from last night appeared where the plants actually touched the insulation material, which acted as a conduit for cold temperatures. Otherwise, all of the damage in the pictures below is from the night before, when the plants blew over. The first picture shows the north exposure (direct exposure to a cold wind); the second picture shows the southern exposure on the same plant. So you see ... the damage is extensive but limited to the northern side.

And lastly, this isn't tomato related, but also kind of a bummer. I'm a pretty dedicated lover of lizards. I was the kind of kid who begged for things that slithered and caught snakes by the bagful in the forests and swamps around my house. While other kids were dressing their puppies in adorable hats, I was breeding praying mantis. So I was kind of saddened to find this knight anole dead on our porch overhang last night. Yes, I know he's an invasive species, etc., etc., etc., but still ... that's a tough way to go.