Nov 2nd and Picking Tomatoes

Latest harvest since I've been gardening in West Boise. Our average last frost date is the first week in October.

Caprese Salad Planter

Patio tomatoes and basil - half of what I need to make a caprese salad. Hopefully by the end of June?

Finally. Tomatoes.

Latest tomato season I can remember. And it will be short. The first hard frost is traditionally during the first week of October.

Cherry Tomatoes

Chocolate cherry tomatoes on the left, and Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes on the right. They're both good, but definitely different. Less tang in the chocolate version and just like it looks, there are some grape overtones.

Welcome to the Garden Little Green One

A tiny "celebrity" tomato is growing up in the garden. I hope we are eating a few tomatoes in about a month.

Prepared for Frost

The first hard frost is expected tonight or Thursday night. Let me say for the record: This was not a good summer for tomatoes.

Mutant Tomato

Oh dear. Well, since most of it was ripe, I plucked it off the vine. It's destined for the tomato sauce batch, where looks don't matter.

Weird-looking, Yet Yummy

"Mortgage lifter" tomatoes. They're huge. These came from a packet of seeds handed out by Edwards Greenhouse about 15 years ago. Germination rate for the two seeds I planted: 100 percent. Very tasty fruits with lots of meat. More sweet than tang.

Tomato Variety

Some of the tomatoes picked this morning. There are some orange ones in the stack - not many because I snacked on them. They might be something like a sungold. I didn't plant them. They volunteered in a garden bed of tomatoes from last year that's resting this year. The sweet 100s are still extra large, for some reason. And finally, a big one ripened: better boy.

Finally!

First tomato harvest date 2012: August 15th. That's the latest tomato harvest since I've been gardening at this location (10 years). These are also the largest 'sweet 100' cherry tomatoes I've ever seen in my garden. And there are a lot more just this big waiting to turn red.

Tomato Terror in the Kitchen

At first, I thought these were worms! These are tomato seedlings growing inside the mothership. The condition is called vivipary - Latin for "live birth." Seeds contain hormones that control their dormancy. This is likely a tomato that was picked weeks ago, and then it sat on the counter in the kitchen. The warmth of the kitchen and moisture inside the tomato caused the seeds to use up all the hormone that controls growth and boom! Babies arrive. 

These new plants would eventually poke through the skin of the tomato and keep on growing. You could plant these sprouts and eventually get new tomatoes. They likely would not be just like the tomato they came from, since the seeds were the result of pollination that included another tomato flower and genes from a different plant. I'm not sure if you want to eat these sprouts. In my research, there was conflicting information about whether or not they can cause tummy trouble and I'm not up for that gamble.

By the way, although this commonly happens in tomatoes, it can also happen in an ear of corn, peppers, apples, pears, oranges, lemons, limes, tangerines and avocados. 

Tomato Cages and a Cucumber Ladder

The garden beds are all ready. I have room for 10 tomato plants in the cages. The last photo is a new structure - made from old pieces of metal, spray-painted pink. I'm going to try cucumbers on that one.

Frozen Garden: White Tomato

One of those strange "white tomatoes" we tried this year. This one I wouldn't have saved had we been home before the big freeze. They weren't very tasty.

Frozen Garden: Tomatoes

They look so bruised. These I would have saved, had we been in town for the first hard freeze.

White Tomato

 I was wondering why this huge tomato wasn't turning red...the tag says it is a Great Northern White tomato. Well, actually light yellow. Very sweet with melon overtones. Hardly any seeds.

Over the Top

First tomato plant to reach the top of a cage.

Hopeful

Normally, we'd already be eating tomatoes from the garden. Can't be done yet this year, unless we opt for green tomato recipes.

The New Tomato Cages

The new "crop" of tomato cages built by my husband. I'll paint them this fall. You can see a blue one at the end of the line that received a color treatment last year.

Ugliest Tomato

Looks can be deceiving....this not-so-pretty tomato is the best-tasting full-sized tomato in the garden this year. I have no idea what it is. It could be a Cherokee purple?

Green Tomatoes

These look like they'll be yummy, but they're certainly a surprise. I grew cherry tomato plants from seed and wound up with at least two obviously-not cherry tomato plants.