I've got another challenge, too: I can't dig or lift much. Three years ago I started developing very painful arthritis in my back and hips which made it impossible for me to continue my job as Payne's North Perennials Manager. It's also made it very difficult for me to garden in the ground. So I grow everything in containers now. I've found it easy to grow tomatoes and peppers in pots here (though the potting soil bill can be a groaner), particularly since I've had access to varieties pretty much guaranteed to fruit in our short season.

Currently I have 36 tomato plants, representing 36 different tomato varieties, growing in 3-5 gallon pots next to my Pecos driveway. It's all a test to see which will bear the best in containers and taste the best when fully ripe. I'm going to be very scientific about it: every time I harvest fruit from a plant, I will weigh the fruit on my little home scale and log the result. At the end of the growing season, the plants which bore the most fruit by weight will win a blue ribbon.

I say this system is scientific, but of course it isn't, very. Flavor perception is subjective: what tastes acidic to me might not taste acidic to you. In addition, the amount of fruit sugars concentrated in the fruits of a given variety can vary according to the amount and type of sunshine, water, and fertilizer the plant has received. However, the test will be scientific enough for my purpose, which is to evaluate which varieties are worth it for me to grow again in my situation and which varieties aren't.

All but one of the tomatoes I am growing are open-pollinated (an open-pollinated variety is a variety that will come true from its own seed). Some I got from Payne's . Others I raised myself under grow-lights using seed I bought from other members of Seed Savers' Exchange, an heirloom vegetable non-profit to which I belong. About a third of them are cherry tomatoes, half are salad tomatoes, and the rest are short season beefsteaks.

My one hybrid, 'Summer's Choice F1', I grew from seed bought off a Burpee seed rack in a Big Box department store. 'Summer Choice F1' is supposed to ripen fruits that are large and extra-sweet, and as I had never seen the variety listed for sale anywhere else, including the Burpee catalogue, my tomatoholic fingers could not resist. None of the tomatoes I am growing matures later than 80 days from setting out, crucial for Pecosan tomatoholics who don't have greenhouses.

I also sowed seed for an heirloom bell pepper, 'Palanacka Babura', and the 6 resulting plants I potted up into 2 gallon containers just about a week ago. They are full of flowers but rather spindly, possibly because peppers are more sensitive to cold than tomatoes are, and it's been very cool at night in Pecos this season.

All the tomato varieties I started from seed were sown in peat pots under lights over a heat-mat around April 1. I transplanted them about 2 weeks later into quart pots and again, 2 weeks after that, into 2 to 5 gallon pots, where they have been growing ever since. I filled the pots with reclaimed potting mix from last year's containers, freshened with the addition of Happy Frog™ Jump Start organic fertilizer and, in about half the cases, phosphorus rich bat poop from a crumbling bag I bought last spring and never used. I also mixed into the potting mix water-absorbing biodegradable polymer granules to act as water reservoirs for the developing roots.

Green Vegetable Note: In late March I planted in self-watering tubs edible podded peas and a  mixture of heirloom red-leaved lettuces. All the seedlings came up quickly in the cold weather, and were promptly consumed by local bunnies, who crawled into the tubs to do their snacking. Of course I ought to have covered the tubs with spun-plastic row covers to discourage these depredations.

Thumper did not bother my 8 hybrid broccoli plants, but I was disappointed in their performance in tubs. Their heads were small (though sideheads are developing nicely on most of them) and last week the floret-buds were already beginning to spread out, a signal that they were passing their optimum harvest window. Nonetheless, the other night I harvested the small heads and steamed them until they were al dente, then sauced them with a little butter (otherwise known in my house as "I Can't Believe It's Not Margarine™"), reduced chicken stock, assorted dried herbs, and a dash of soy sauce. I have never tasted such wonderful broccoli in my entire life.

As of this writing,  most of my tomato plants are standing a foot to a foot and a half tall. Almost all already have flowers and 3 ('Frühe Liebe', 'Koralik', and 'Stupice') already have set baby fruits. None are in their final pots; I will be up-potting them to tubs as soon as I can afford the potting soil, and there they will stay until the end of the season. To forestall the onset of blossom end rot, which makes the tips of the fruits sunken and yucky, I shall have to be careful to water the plants regularly and to spray the developing fruits with liquid calcium.

We tomatoholics are an indefatigable bunch. We're constantly on the lookout for ways to make our tomato plants happier, healthier, and more productive. When I was a kid growing up in rural Connecticut, my mother grew unbelievable quantities of the tomato called 'Beefsteak' — an old open-pollinated variety that has loaned its name to the common term for any tomato variety that yields large, meaty fruits. The only fertilizer Mom ever used was well-aged manure from our cow barn and horse corral. But we had four feet of deep, rich, acidic loam topsoil to work with.

At Payne's we sell a number of different fertilizers that are good for tomatoes, most of which I've used at one time or another. The main thing to remember about tomatoes is that they need a lot of phosphorus — the middle number on the fertilizer label — to bloom and set fruit. Too much nitrogen — the first number on the fertilizer label — will give you lots and lots of lush foliage but not many flowers. (For tips on how to read a fertilizer label, click here.)

Good organic sources of phosphorus are rock phosphate, bone meal, bat poop, and pureed or chopped up bananas. (We sell the first three at Payne's!) Organic phosphorus becomes slowly available to your plants over a long period of time. The most common inorganic source of phosphorus is superphosphate. It's rock phosphate that has been specially treated to super-concentrate it, so a little goes a long way. Most inorganic "bloom" fertilizers contain high levels of phosphorus derived from superphosphate: Carl Pool's BR-61™, mentioned above, is a good example.

When I initially potted up most of my tomatoes listed above, I mixed bat poop (a fine, black, odorless powder) in with the potting mix along with a handful of Happy Frog Jump Start™, an organic granular fertilizer we sell here that provides 3% available nitrogen and 6% available phosphorus, respectable percentages but not so high there was any danger of their burning the roots of the young plants. I also sprinkled some of the Michael Melendrez Soil Food™ and Protein Crumblies™ to the tops of the pots. (The Melendrez products aren't fertilizers per se, but soil life stimulants that are purported to help plants make better use of the plant foods with which they're provided.)

As my young plants grew, I added to their pots a sprinkling of Osmocote™ 14-14-14 inorganic time-release fertilizer, which releases food to my tomatoes' roots every time I water.  I also sprayed all my plants twice, early in the morning about 2 weeks apart, with BR-61™, used as a foliar feed. I added these inorganics because, being in containers, my plants' roots have limited space in which to search for food, and I figure they need extra help to boost their productivity. (The Osmocote™ I use is the one in the green labeled bottle, not the one in the pink bottle. The pink one is great for foliage plants, salad greens, and basil but — despite the posies blooming prettily on its label — is not particularly good at stimulating flowering and fruiting.)

Whether all this juggling or organic and inorganic fertilizers does any longterm good remains to be seen. Stay tuned to these pages for further reports!

I harvested my first ripe tomato on the Fourth of July! It was from 'Frühe Liebe' (see above), was bright red with greenish shoulders (like many European tomato varieties), and it weighed 55 grams (almost 2 oz). The flavor was luscious, juicy and sweet, although the poor little thing bore 3 beak-marks from some thirst-crazed magpies that have begun frequenting my yard. I am putting out water for them, hoping that will keep them off my other fruits. (I should have done it anyway a long time ago.)

Before I ate my love apple, I scooped out the seeds into a little plastic yogurt container, along with the greenish gel surrounding them, and added a teaspoon of water. I will let them sit in a coolish place for a couple more days, then put them into a fine-mesh sieve, rinse them free of gel, and put them into some paper towels (again, in a coolish place) to dry. When they're fully dry, I'll put them into a little paper coin bag labeled "Frühe Liebe '09", paperclip it shut, and place the bag in the freezer.

That's right — you heard me — the freezer. I learned recently (from a copy of The Old Farmer's Almanac that I found at Payne's) that tomato seeds can survive temperatures to 40 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. In fact, when tomato seeds that were frozen experimentally in England in the 1920's were thawed out and planted 80 years later, every single one sprouted. That's 100% germination, in contrast to the 70% average germination for seeds dry-stored in the dark at room temperature.

As more 'Frühe Liebe' fruits ripen and yield seeds, I'll repeat the above process until the 'Frühe Liebe' seed bag is full. Why am I going to all this trouble? Because 'Frühe Liebe' is an heirloom seed variety, not commercially available. And just because I got the seed from another member of Seed Savers Exchange in 2009 is no assurance that that member will be making 'Frühe Liebe' available next year. The more folks who save seeds from heirlooms that work well for them, the greater will be the chance for such noncommercial varieties to be saved for future generations of tomatoholics to enjoy.

Next tomato to ripen: probably one of the teeny tiny fruits on 'Koralik' (see above). That is, if the birds don't get it first.

Woe is I, woe is I: my first major failure. My 5' x 3' 'Sunset's Red Horizon' tomato plant just bit the dust. Problem: wilt disease. I'd thought at first that its wiltiness, which started out as tangential, was due to something called the "wilting gene."  Some tomatoes have it (it's probably inherited from some distant wild ancestor); it makes them more or less droopy much of the time, even when they are watered. Apparently it's a way of conserving water loss through leaves (correct me if I'm wrong). But it turns out its wiltiness was due to the fact that it was croaking. Yesterday I laid its once-proud corpse to rest, and now I am stuck with diseased potting soil, which I will put in the sun to bake for a year, then reuse next year when the disease organisms are dead.

Another tomato showing signs of stress is 'Sweetie' (tiny insect holes all over the leaves, possibly because of high sugar content in the plant cells). But most of the gang are growing well (no tomato hornworms yet, please God, oh please). It looks as though I'm going to get another ripe tomato from 'Frühe Liebe', and several from 'Stupice', within about a week.

Put out large pan of water for magpies, hoping this will result in fewer tomato depredations.  Today came home from work and found pan dirtied, so some birds are playing in it.

It's been so blamed hot in Pecos that I'm watering my containers every day, now, even with the water-absorbing polymer blobs in my soil mix. Got another sweet, 1 ounce fruit off of  'Frühe Liebe' yesterday; a tartish, badly deformed, 3 1/8 ounce fruit off of 'Marmande Précoce', my first; and three little fruits from 'Stupice' — all delicious, sweet, and meaty — totalling 5.5 ounces. Have run out of tomato cages, so have bought some cheap 4-foot bamboo stakes and have made "cages" out of them, putting three to a 10 gallon pot, tying them tightly at the top with stretchable green plastic ribbon, then girdling them about halfway down with more of same. Refertilized all pots with time-release plant food, equal parts nitrogen and phosphorus so my tomatoes don't go all to leaf.

July 20, 2009

Monday, and not a great day. Came home from work tonight to find more bird damage to my ripening fruits. One fruit, a large one with a very bright red end-rind, had been removed entirely from a bush and devoured, leaving only the rind behind. Went into a ridiculous stomping frenzy. To add insult to injury, I got completely soaked by cold water from my hose, which has sprung a huge spouting leak; and, when I kicked plastic pot to vent my frustration, it rebounded and struck my forehead, from which scarlet blood trickled gaily. My Siberian husky, Blessing, looked at me and thumped her tail, as though she were enjoying my little show; my black cat, Urdwill, commiserated with me. I snarled for three hours. Moral: When crossed by magpie cunning, tomatoholic pretensions to spiritual tranquillity evaporate, revealing slavering enraged monster beneath veneer of civilization. Next step: bird netting, as soon as I can afford it.

July 22, 2009

Rained all last night for first time in many weeks. Deliciously cool. Wound on forehead healing slowly.

July 28, 2009

More critter damage last night; found the devoured husk of two nearly ripe tomatoes. Probably squirrels: when I came into the driveway area in the evening, it was like a scene from Bambi, squirrels dashing merrily away in all directions, hummingbirds zizzing around, magpies squawking. Heartbreaking. Give peace a chance.

Haven't reported on the progress of my peppers, 'Palanacka Babura'. I got the variety from Seed Savers Exchange. It's billed as a sweet pepper, compact, early to mid-early, bearing "huge thick walled milky yellow" bells blushing pink then ripening to red, with a sweet flavor and high yields. I sowed the seed on 4/1, it was up about 10 days later; I planted out the plants in mid-May, and by 5/26 the first plant had its first flowers. 6/8: My five plants range from 10-12 inches tall, all flowering, with weak stems, very slow growth (it's still cold), and nascent nubs of fruits to come. 7/3: All five plants have fruits and flowers; leaves are insect chewed, and plants have stayed a foot tall or shorter. 7/19: In Pot #1, one plant has 7 fruits, the other has 4. In Pot #2: each plant has 4 fruits. In Pot #3, the one plant has 4 fruits. All are slender, 3-lobed, pointed, pale creamy yellow, with one fruit flushing orange. How much you want to bet the squirrels are going to get it before I can? 7/31: Picked one fruit that was starting to blush reddish. Bit into it. Woody texture, absolutely flavorless. Threw it away. Will let all these mature to red before trying them, but I think this one's a dud. Must be the soil mix or the heat or something. 8/10: Fruits are all turning color, now. I picked another and fried it up with some onions, and it turned soft and sweet and tasty. So I'll use this as a frying pepper, not an eating pepper. I said it might be the heat that is causing the lack of sweetness in the fresh fruits, but maybe it's the reverse: the cool nights. Peppers like it warm. I remember growing sweet peppers in Santa Fe at my old digs on Lujan Street, and they were delectable. 8/18: Picked 6 more fruits for a total of a pound. 8/24: Another 1 pound, 4 7/8 ounce harvest. I will leave the few remaining fruits on the plants to ripen fully red, so I can save their seeds to replant next year in better soil and in bigger pots!

August 2, 2009

Put deer netting over all the plants, tying up straggling legs here and there. Refertilized half the plants; will do the other half in the next few days. Very hot and humid for Pecos; my poor husky Blessing is comatose most of the day and well into the evening. All my friends in Santa Fe have been getting loads of ripe tomatoes for weeks. I am disappointed in how slowly my fruits have been ripening up here. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if, after starting this blog, I finished with a truckload of unripe fruits? Cancel, cancel!

August 3, 2009

Woke up this morning to find several reddening fruits still unmarked by beaks. Could my deer netting be working???

August 10, 2009

Deer netting is definitely working, but I'm starting to get scared, now, that few of my tomatoes (and there are hundreds on the vines) are going to ripen in time to escape our frost in late September. I'm thinking that maybe they're in too much shade, now, during the day, since shadows are lengthening earlier with the shorter daylight hours. My landlord has offered to help me move the tubs to a full sun all day spot, and I may ask him to do that, although it will mean buying a new hose to extend the watering system to the new area.

But the problem may not be with the sunlight. I spoke to a farmer at the Farmer's Market in Eldorado (held on Friday evenings between 4 and 7 in the parking lot to the right of the Eldorado Supermart). She told me that a lot of her tomatoes are just sitting there, green, too. In her opinion the problem was with the day and night temperatures.

I'm also keenly aware, rereading the above, how disappointed I've generally been in the flavor of the tomatoes I've picked so far. The problem may be not with the tomatoes, but with my palate. I've never been a smoker, so my taste buds are still healthy, but I definitely prefer my love apples sweet rather than tart, which puts me in something of a minority where heirloom tomatoholics are concerned. So far, the best-tasting tomatoes I've harvested have been those from 'Frühe Liebe', 'Isis Brandy', "Not Lotos", 'Red Boar', 'Stupice', and 'Sweet Orange II'.

P.S. You know what's funny about my mistagged 'Lotos'? In Greek mythology, the lotos (or lotus) plant (Nelumbium nelumbo), which is a kind of waterlily, was supposed to grant its eaters the gift of forgetfulness!

August 13, 2009

RAND'S HEAVENLY TOMATO SALAD: Destem, wash, and pat dry 1 pound fresh homegrown ripe tomatoes. Quarter, halve, or slice them (depending on their sizes) and place them in a coverable bowl. (Mixing colors is fun!) Add 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil; fresh snipped sweet basil, garlic chive, dill, cilantro, or chive leaves to taste; 1 minced clove fresh garlic; 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (or to taste); 1 teaspoon soy sauce (or to taste); and 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. Mix thoroughly in the bowl, cover the bowl, and chill it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours or (better yet) overnight. For a full meal, before you put it in the fridge to marinate, add to the tomato mixture cubed grilled tempeh, cubed mozarella, raw thinly sliced tuna, cooked chicken or salmon, smoked salmon strips, or thin slices of grilled rare steak. Serve the tomatoes plain with a decent spoonful of the marinade in a bowl with or without mixed salad greens, or (better yet) over a slab of lavash or pita bread.

August 17, 2009

In a desperate attempt to hasten the ripening of my tomatoes, I have dragged (insofar as my poor arthritic bod can manage it) my tubs around to give them the best light possible. Now the driveway leading up to my little rental is lined with tomato plants in black plastic tubs. I am definitely seeing a speedup of ripening. Despite my impatience, born perhaps of the American tendency to want everything yesterday, I remind myself that heirloom tomatoes traditionally don't come into their own until late August and early September.

August 19, 2009

I hate tomatoes. I am giving up on all gardening forever. I'm a total failure. Everything I love dies. There! I got that whining out of my system. Tonight I came home from work to find that my beloved child 'Red Boar' had croaked: all wilted, leaves grey and stippled black, gone, finito, dead, your basic ex-parrot (Monty Python fans will understand this reference). Why is it always your favorite tomato that croaks? I harvested over 2 pounds of hard, green, shiny, striped, egg-shaped Martian love apples from the vine, and impulsively spread them in my sunniest window (because I could not bear just to Throw Them Out), where they will, within a week or so, rot.

Going through the disease section of my favorite tomato book, I found three or four things that could have caused 'Red Boar' to collapse. The book, now long out of print, is called The Great American Tomato Book (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1977; ISBN 0-8128-6199-X) and was written by Robert Hendrickson, a New York writer, whose highly entertaining books include ones on the history of chewing gum, American department stores, and rats. It has a vivid, discouraging section on tomato pests and diseases. Reading these sections creates in me the same reaction that I get when I read health magazines: I go away thinking I have every poor health condition in the book. Well, the most likely candidate for having felled my 'Red Boar' is fusarium wilt, a soil-borne disease (soil-borne? I used bagged compost in my tub!!) which makes plants droop and, eventually, die (but only when temperatures reach 75-85ºF during the day, AHEM). Since I got the seed from a Seed Savers Exchange home gardener, the seed might have come already infected with the wilt spores. I hope so. That means it's not my fault.

Or maybe, when I finally get up the courage to dump the corpse from its tub, I will find that somehow the soil I put in the pot compacted down and suffocated the poor wretch. In any case, send flowers and condolence candy (dark Belgian chocolates only, please) to me c/o Payne's on St. Michael's Drive.

P.S. Has anybody ever tried drying supersweet cherry tomatoes, then dipping them in dark Belgian chocolate? (If you are a true tomatoholic, you will not find this question repulsive.)

August 24, 2009

I rescued the most gorgeous dragonfly from my deer netting last night. It must have had a 4-inch wingspread, with a beautiful metallic blue-black body. I never harm a dragonfly if I can help it. They don't bite humans or animals, and their favorite snack is mosquitoes. You'd think we wouldn't have mosquitoes in Pecos, but we do. The river is there, and my landlord has a septic system that diverts grey water from the toilet and sink into a grove of junipers not far from the converted trailer that I rent. Mosquitoes breed there. There are little mosquito-killing tablets you can put into such places, and I have intended to buy some from Payne's all year, but I keep forgetting.

Too Much Information Dept.: I have to forcibly restrain my Siberian husky, Blessing, from plunging her muzzle into the septic seep and lapping up the delicious brew that has collected there. (EEEEEWWWWWW!)

August 31, 2009

Uh-oh. Woke up this morning in Pecos to find dew heavy on all the weeds around my house, and the distinct smell of autumn in the air. I have a terrible feeling that the prediction of the grower I spoke to at Eldorado Farmers Market (Fridays, 4-7 pm at the Agora Marketplace) will come true: we're going to have early frost up here. A true tomatoholic ("Hi! My name is Rand, and I am powerless over tomatoes"), I am going to invest in some rolls of heavy mil plastic, the kind you tape over windows to insulate them during the winter, and drape them over my plants at night to protect the fruits. I don't know how well it will work, but I am determined to get some more ripe fruits from these plants before Old Man Winter settles in.

September 7, 2009

Yesterday it suddenly hit me, the Chief Occupational Hazard of tomatoholics everywhere: EOS-TV — End of Season Tomato Revulsion. All of a sudden, while I was watering last evening, I felt as though I didn't want to see, pluck, weigh, taste, evaluate, seed, freeze, or talk about tomatoes ever again as long as I live. "Forget the plastic season extenders!" I howled. "Freeze! I don't care, you ungrateful mutant nightshades, you!" I apologized immediately, of course.

The fact is, I am grieving the end of summer. My Siberian husky hates summer — her idea of Heaven is 32ºF noonday temps — and the temps were high for Pecos this summer, in the 90s some days, with more than usual humidity. But I'll miss the hummingbirds divebombing each other and digging their noses into my agastaches. I'll miss the clackety-clack-clack of the mynah birds, and their elegant long tails (you see? I have forgiven them for gouging my earliest love apples). I'll miss the excitement of watching the promise of young tomato plants blossom into flowers and fruit. If I had a heated greenhouse, I'd drag some of my choicest tubbed buddies inside for the winter (indoors they will keep fruiting, if you prune, feed, and watch for insect invaders and fungus diseases, through March). But I have only a miserable little sunroom with just enough shelf space for my 'Pesto Perpetuo' variegated nonflowering sweet basil plant and a lovely apple blossom pink geranium that is finally putting out blossoms now that it is indoors and safe from squirrels and rabbits. (Both I bought at Payne's.) So when the first frost hits, it will be bye-bye to my green gang.

I'll be summing up the year's triumphs, failures, and lessons learned as we get closer to the frosts. But one thing I can say here and now is that I will forever be wary of gardeners' estimates of days-till-first-ripe-fruits, fruit flavor, and fruit yields. I had read that such things can vary enormously depending upon climate, temperature variation, watering, and fertilizing, but I had not quite realized just how enormous "enormously" could be. I also underestimated how greatly growing a variety in a container, however large, can emend the plant's ultimate size.

Well, maybe it's a good idea that the frosts are coming. My little fridge's little freezer is half full of frozen tomatoes. I'd better get cracking and come up with some primo tomato sauce and soup recipes. And although I have heard from none of you regarding this column, the number of hits it gets shows me I haven't been talking solely to myself this summer. I sure would like to know if any of you had better luck this year with some of my problem cultivars.

September 14, 2009

Cold and wet in Pecos this week, so wet that my Siberian husky, who is supposed to be a macha girl but hates rain in her face, stayed indoors much of the time, terrorizing the cat and a house mouse (who so far has escaped her). Nothing much ripening, either, so I decided to free up some freezer space. I took about two-thirds of my frozen tomatoes, heated them in a big ceramic-coated blue speckled pot on my gas stove, put the defrosted pulp with its skins through the blender, then spent my next two days off simmering the liquefied tomatoes on low heat, uncovered, stirring the pot occasionally. When the liquid became slightly thick, I took it off the heat and put the pot into the fridge. There it sits, while I try to decide what to do with it.

Antique Tomato Recipes

Searching for tomato recipes, I turned to my reprint of the Farmer's & Housekeeper's Cyclopaedia, "A Complete Ready Reference Library For Farmers, Gardeners, Fruit Growers, Stockmen and Housekeepers, Containing A Large Fund of Useful Information, Facts, Hints and Suggestions, In The Various Departments of Agriculture, Horticulture, Live Stock Raising, Poultry Keeping, Bee Keeping, Dairy Farming, Fertilizers, Rural Architecture, Farm Implements, Household Management, Domestic Affairs, Cookery, Ladies' Fancy Work, Floriculture, Medical Matters, Etc., Etc." It was published in 1888 by F. M. Lupton, Publishers, of No. 63 Murray Street, New York City, and it contains about a dozen tomato recipes.

Here are a few that caught my eye. LOTS of sugar was used with tomatoes at this period, possibly because the varieties most available were highly acidic, possibly because the Victorians had major sweet tooths. (Sweet teeth?)  No recipes occur in the Cyclopaedia for "Tomato Catsup", although "Tomato Butter" (see below) is an equivalent; the two catsup recipes in the book are made with fresh, boiled, strained currants and grapes. In the following recipes, words in [brackets] are mine.

"Tomato Pie.—Peel and slice enough green tomatoes to fill one pie; to this allow four tablespoonfuls of vinegar, one of butter, and three and a half of sugar, flavor with nutmeg, bake with two crusts very slowly. If you choose you may stew the tomatoes first, and then there is no danger of the pie being too juicy."

"Excellent Way to Cook Tomatoes.—A delicious dish (especially suitable with cutlets, steaks, broiled ham, or anything served without gravy) may be made by cutting tomatoes into thin slices, and grilling them over a sharp fire for ten minutes, or thereabouts; they should then be coated with a mixture of bread crumbs, fresh butter, [powdered] mustard, salt, pepper and sugar (proportions according to taste), and returned to the gridiron, or put into a hot oven to crisp."

"Tomatoes Fried.—Do not pare [peel] them, cut in slices; dip in pounded crackers [that have been] sifted. Fry in butter."

"Preserved Tomatoes.—A pound of sugar to [each] pound of tomatoes. Take six pounds of each, the peel and juice of four lemons, and a quarter of a pound of ginger tied up in a bag. Boil very slowly for three hours."

"Tomato Butter.—Sixteen pounds nice tomatoes, one quart vinegar, eight pounds sugar. Boil all together till thick. When half done add two large spoonfuls of cinnamon, one of ground mace, and a teaspoonful of cloves or allspice." [Reduced Recipe: 2 lbs. tomatoes, 1/4 cup vinegar, 1 pound sugar, 1 teaspoonful of cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoonful ground mace, 1/8 teaspoonful ground cloves or allspice.]

"To Make Tomato Figs.—Pour boiling water over the tomatoes, in order to remove the skin; then weigh them and place them in a stone jar; with as much sugar [by weight] as you have tomatoes, and let them stand two days [at room temperature]; then pour off the syrup, and boil and skim until no scum rises. Then pour it over the tomatoes [again], and let them stand two days, as before; then boil and skim again. After the third time they [the tomatoes] are fit to dry, if the weather is good; if not, let them stand in the syrup until drying weather; then place on large earthen plates or dishes, and put them in the sun to dry, which will take them about a week; after which, pack them down in small wooden boxes, with fine white sugar between every layer."

The Cyclopaedia also contains advice for hastening the ripening of late tomatoes, which I am going to follow next year: disbudding all side shoots throughout the growing season, leaving only one stem per plant. This is supposed to concentrate the plant's energies into growing the biggest tomatoes it can and ripening them as soon as possible.

Here's another great old recipe from the long-defunct Peterson's Magazine (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) for July, 1859. (I guess Great-Grandpa convinced those Pennyslvanians!)

"Tomato Honey: To each pound of tomatoes allow the grated peel of one lemon, and six fresh peach leaves; boil them slowly till they fall to pieces; then squeeze them through a bag; to each pint of liquid allow a pound of sugar, and the juice of one lemon; boil all together half an hour until it becomes a thick jelly ... This preparation can scarcely be distinguished from real honey."

September 17, 2009

The handwriting's on the wall for my tomato garden. A brief hail last weekend, plus heavy daily rains since, have beaten up my plants so badly that they now resemble commuters that have gone through a particularly exhausting day on the Los Angeles freeway with nothing to look forward to when they get home but low-carb T.V. dinners and reruns of "Friends." All the fruits are splitting, and turning soft, despite the fact that most of them are still only partially ripe. To make matters worse, a friend of mine reports from Madrid, NM, that the tarantulas are migrating early. Apparently this means an early winter.

When I mentioned this fact in the checkout line at the Eldorado Super Mart yesterday evening, everybody within earshot nodded knowingly, as though this were an elementary bit of common wisdom that New Mexico children learn at their abuelas' knees. "Come fall, watch for the tarantulas, mijo," Grandma says. "If they start hopping south, there'll be snow on the mountains before long." Sure enough.

September 21, 2009

No frost in Pecos yet, but every one of my tomato plants is now showing infection from fungus diseases encouraged by the cold and wet. Most of the fruits are splitting, and few are ripening. So I have to make a decision. Do I continue harvesting and weighing fruits if they're not ripe, hoping they will ripen on my windowsill? Do I drape my plants with two layers of heavy mil plastic, as I vowed I would some weeks ago, to extend the harvest? Or do I just call it a day?

If you're not a tomatoholic, you will roll your eyes at my next sentence: I'm grieving the demise of my garden. My heirloom tomatoes aren't ready to die now. They're subtropical plants; their genes are keyed to long, long, warm summers and nearly frost-free winters. Some of them were just coming into their own when the cold weather hit. If only I had a greenhouse to move them into! Not all of them; just 'Amy's Sugar Gem', which has lots of green fruit still on it; and 'Cosmonaut Volkov', ditto; and maybe 'Sweet Orange II' and the Earthbox™ with "Not Detskiy Slavkiy" (which has dozens of flat, 6-lobed fruits all over it) and 'Totem' in it. Maybe that's why old people move to places like Arizona and Southern California and South Florida. Because, like tomatoes, they figure if they can keep the cold away just a few years longer, they'll have time to finally fulfill their potential. (Or if not, at the very least more time for complaining about politics, their rude grandchildren, their arthritis, and the price of heirloom tomato seeds.) At 58, severely arthritic and despairing of ever making anything important of myself, I know precisely how they feel.

THIS JUST IN: Freezing temps are on the way.

September 23, 2009

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Frost killed all my tomato plants last night, leaving blackened, withered vines and about (I estimate) 30 pounds of green fruit (I already gathered nearly 11 pounds yesterday to share with my coworkers). Give me a couple of days to adjust to my deprivation, and I will begin showing symptoms of tomato growing withdrawal (fits of sudden tears, puffy eyelids, midnight cravings for just one more 'Amy's Sugar Gem'). But I think I will make it through the next few months okay. I have about a dozen containers of saved heirloom tomato seeds in my freezer, plus a vial of my sweet pepper seeds. I have a little freezer full of frozen sliced homegrown heirloom tomatoes. I have a pot of homegrown heirloom tomato puree that I'm in the process of simmering down to freeze for winter use (it's my second batch, with at least one more to come). My windowsills are filled with ripening fruit. Pretty soon now, we'll be selecting 2010's tomato list here at Payne's, and then there's always the seed catalogues to leaf through lustfully. Thanks for bearing with me all summer. If you'd like to see me do another Tomato Diary next year, click here to let me know. •

Total yields by weight (9/23/09): Around 2252.2825 ounces, or 140 pounds, 12.2825 ounces of ripe edible fruit from 41 plants (I am including ALL varieties with which I began, including the ones that croaked, except 'Koralik' and 'Sweetie', which I didn't include in my weigh-ins). That's an average of about 54.9337 ounces or 4 pounds, 6.9337 ounces of fruit per plant. Not too bad for a first attempt.

1. 'Isis Brandy': 12 lbs, 3.125 oz (195.125 oz)
   
2. "Not Lotos": 8 lbs, 10.375 oz (138.375 oz)
3. *'Cosmonaut Volkov': 8 lbs, 5.125 oz (133.125 oz) #2 Best Flavor!
4. *'Stupice': 7 lbs, 8.625 oz (120.625 oz) #3 Best Flavor!
   
5. 'Katja': 7 lbs, 5.75 oz (117.75 oz)
6. 'Madara': 7 lbs, 7.12 oz (112.12 oz)
7. 'Zückertomate': 6 lbs., 11.75 oz (107.75 oz)
8. *'Amy's Sugar Gem': 6 lbs, 4.05 oz (100.05 oz) WINNER FOR BEST FLAVOR!
   
9. 'Mikado Scarlet': 5 lbs, 13.5 oz (93.5 oz)
10. *'Dagma's Perfection': 5 lbs, 7.375 oz (87.375 oz)
11. 'Sweet Orange II': 5 lbs, 5.7 oz (85.7 oz) #4 Best Flavor!
    
12. "Lost Tag": 5 lbs, 4 oz (84 oz)
13. 'Peramoga': 4 lbs, 13.25 oz. (77.25 oz)
14. 'Calabacito Rojo': 4 lbs, 11.125 oz (75.125 oz)
15. *'Beaverlodge Slicer': 4 lbs, 2.25 oz (66.25 oz) Honorable Mention, Best Flavor!
16. 'McClintock': 4 lbs, .25 ounces (64.25 oz)
17. *'Marmande Précoce': 3 lbs, 7.375 ounces. (55.375 oz)
18. 'Frühe Liebe': 3 lbs, 5.675 oz (53.675 oz)
19. 'Pipo': 3 lbs, 5.625 oz (53.625 oz)
20. 'Cheerio': 3 lbs, 4.75 oz (52.75 oz)
21. *'Beauty Beefsteak': 3 lbs, 2.75 oz (50.75 oz)
    
22. *'Taos': 2 lbs, 2.875 oz (34.875 oz)
23. 'Snow White Cherry': 2 lbs, 2.5 oz (34.5 oz)
24. 'Roll-A-Pea': 1 lb, 10.875 oz (26.875 oz)
25. *'Black Cherry': 1 lb, 8.875 oz (24.875 oz)
26. 'Sibirskiy Velikan Rozovyi': 1 lb, 5.875 ounces (21.875 oz)
    
27. 'New Big Dwarf': 1 lb, 5.5 oz (21.5 oz)
28. 'Detskiy Slavkiy', Potato Type: 1 lb, 5.125 oz (21.125 oz)
29. 'Étoile Blanche d'Anvers': 1 lb, .5625 oz (16.5625 oz)