This year has been a very different year for our tomatoes. Most everyone’s tomatoes in the Napa Valley are behind schedule because we’ve had an unusually cool summer, alternating with occasional extreme heat – very strange.
Indigo Rose – a fully ripened tomato is all purple with a reddish bottom and soft to the touch
Vicki’s vegetable garden and tomatoes, being higher up the mountain, are farther along than mine. Her tomatoes are going crazy, augmented by her fabulous trellising giving them extra exposure to the sun.
Red Currant tomatoes
Because I’m working with Anton, our new vegetable gardener, we had the luxury of putting our tomatoes in at many different times this spring and summer, rather than the usual first week of April, which was generally necessary since I’m not regularly here.
3 different tomato plants in one of my 8×4 boxes – a jungle!
This season, I had less of a hand in choosing the varieties than I usually do, so I have some new varieties I’ve never heard of before as well as old standards. (Next year I will be more involved – in town – and definitely include Brandywine, which is a favorite of mine).
Indigo Atomic Grape
This morning, I finally went to each of the tomato plants to capture their varieties. This year we have the usual Sungold, Sweet 100s, San Marzano and Early Girl tomatoes. Our new varieties include the beautiful Indigo Rose (developed by Oregon State University – more in the next post), Indigo Atomic Grape, Red Currant, Snow White, Cherokee Purple and Big Beef. The Cherokee Purple tomatoes are to die for! My friend Kate & I discovered two huge ripe ones yesterday hidden in the middle of the mass of tomato vines pictured above. The rest of these varieties are just coming online so I need to try them.
San Marzano
I can see that we are going to have tomatoes for quite some time, owing to the fact that some of our plants were planted as early as June. I will report out after I’ve had a chance to experiment with all of them.
