2009 Tomato Season History

OK, so here are the promised 2009 tomato pictures. Here they are in the new tomato cages we built on June 6th, a few weeks after I first planted them. In the front, on the left is a yellow grape variety, and a red grape on the right. In the back on the left is Roma, and Rutgers on the right.


The grape tomatoes finally started getting ripe on July 17th. I think these two were the 1st ones we picked this year. Ever since then, we've had a constant supply of grape tomatoes, around 1 - 3 bowls per week.


Below you can see the first four good Romas I harvested on July 30th, but there certainly wasn't a constant supply all season. Maybe a few batches of 8 or so each during August.

Unfortunately they appeared to have a mild case of blossom end rot. Many of them ended up a little rotted on one end, with black on the inside. So I'd say maybe as much as half of the Romas ended up in the compost. I figure it was probably caused by a combination of the poor weather and that my soil needs more compost/organic matter added to it. The good news is, as the season progressed it got better. I also think my compost pile will be ready by next spring, and I am going to mulch all the beds with straw over the winter. That should add a decent amount of nutrients to the soil as it breaks down.










Then on the above right, the first, and one of the only Rutgers we got this year, picked on July 25th. We picked a couple more in August, but hardly any at all, maybe a dozen.

This plant did terrible this year, which is so strange because the same variety did fantastic last year in a spot just a few feet behind where it is now. You can see on the left on August 29th, very small and not looking so good.

I'm sure at least part of it was from the terrible weather we had - I think it just got off to a very slow start and never really fully recuperated. I think it also may have been shaded a bit too much from the grape tomato in front of it. We actually picked our biggest haul from it that same day, pictured below. I guess I should just be happy it didn't die from this year's plague of blight!
Only now are we getting some from this plant - just picked 6 nice ripe red ones today. However, all that's left is maybe 5 green ones, so I don't think we'll get much more. I am going to make a separate post for the tomatoes today, since there are already so many pictures in this one.

You can see many of the things I made with all these tomatoes back in this older post.