Tomatorama

A Yellow Pear Tomato Seedling

Today we put in our main tomato crop-240 seedlings transplanted in about 3 hours. this finishes 4 days of work getting the area ready for the transplants. Before planting we had to till the beds, put down compost, lay out the drip tape, put down the landscape fabric mulch (which we had burned holes in for both the plants and the stakes we use to support the plants when they are 6' tall and heavy with fruit) and pound in the stakes.

We planted the following tomatoes-Big Beef, a big red hybrid, Opalka, a red sauce heirloom shaped like an Italian pepper, GL-18 (aka Glick's pride) a red heirloom, Dr Wyche's Yellow, a huge yellow heirloom, yellow Taxi, a yellow heirloom that is extremely early, Yellow Pear, a small pear shaped yellow heirloom, Red pear, like yellow pear but red, Sungold, a divine orange cherry tomato green grape, a small green heirloom Pink Brandywine and maybe Mortgage Lifter, Both ML & PB are big pink heirlooms.

We still have to get another 150 or so pepper seedlings in the ground and after that the melons and than we are done with our big planting duties for a few months. We will still be direct seeding crops such as beets, carrots, cilantro, etc.

Small green yellow taxi tomatoes at the beginning of June

The tomatoes we put in today are not the first tomatoes we have planted this season. We have a 100' x 24' hoophouse full of maters and those tomatoes are beginning to put on fruit! the means that we should have ripe sungold tomatoes in about 12 to 15 days and the Yellow Taxi's should be ready in about 20 to 24 days. We never know if the early tomatoes in the hoophouse will work out but it looks like this year we will have early maters-yay!