Dawn's Garden 2023

[Dawn]

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Look at all them beautiful tomatoes!

Red one is early girl, yellow one is banana toes, cherries are supersweet 100 and sunsugar.

[Dawn]

Banana toes will not be back. It's adorable, and early, and has a fun name, but it's about as flavorable as a Walmart roma, maybe less. I tried waiting and letting them ripen more, but they just got mealier without getting tastier. Supersweet 100 will be back, but I don't really care for the Sun Sugar, so not that one either. Everything else is being pokey. I had a couple lemon boys get blossom end rot and ripen prematurely, I tried them anyway and I think they'll be good when ripened properly. I liked the texture.

The tomatoes crammed in the 3x6 bed (8 plants), are doing surprisingly well. The German Johnson tomatoes are growing and producing about as well as my better boys.

We're going into some hot days, this is when the garden gets neglected. I'll go pick and water, but the plants are on their own otherwise. They don't mind.

[Dawn]

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I was happy to see she color change on my Fred's Tie Dye, then found a Dwarf Mr. Snow. I haven't tried the Fred's, but I like the Mr Snow very much!

The Banana Toes continues to be terrible

Early girls are starting to ripen. They're ok, better than banana toes.

Kangaroo Paw Green almost seems like it's ripening, but it's not getting softer, so I'll wait to see if it gets more color to it.

I wasn't sure if Sweet Scarlet was going to do anything, because it started off slow, but now it has a bunch of tomatoes. I've only heard good things about it.

[Dawn]

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I found 4 on my German Johnson plants, I'm excited to try these. I was right that the kangaroo paw green was ripening. And I found one on the Saucy Mary plant, but it has BER, upon further inspection, lots of them did. There are several big tomatoes on that plant that aren't affected, just the smaller ones. Maybe I'll try getting more water to that one.

I haven't had this many tomatoes ripening all at once in 3 years. I don't think I had this many tomatoes over the whole season in 2021, that was a bad year

[Dawn]

One of my Saucy Mary plants is not getting enough water, so the plant is kinda trying to die, but put out a few tiny tomatoes. I noticed that some we're ripe, so I picked them. They're incredible! Like little sweet tart flavor bombs. I hope the big ones are the same.

I tried Fred's Tye Dye. It's ok, not my favorite. Is it considered a black/purple tomato? Because that's kinda what it tasted like, and I'm not a fan. My sister loves them, though, so I can give them to her.

[Dawn]

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It's amazing how fast you go from no tomatoes, to lots of tomatoes. Just a couple days ago, I was telling my sister which tomatoes she couldn't eat because I hadn't tried the variety yet, and today I was like, ok, nevermind, eat anything you want . My aunt has already requested pico de gallo, I'm happy to oblige.

I have a bag in the freezer for extras, the Banana Toes are in there. I have a theory that they might be like Juliet and get better with roasting. I haven't frozen one tomato since 2020, there just hasn't been extra.

[Dawn]

The boysenberry plant sure grows well! I just found a vine that grew into the rabbit pen and got itself eaten . Last year, someone I knew from the farmers market scene was selling boysenberry plants. He said they need a lot of trellising, and I can see that now, they're floppy, viney plants. That's very good for the space they're in, nothing has grown very well there. If it wants to be a boysenberry patch, I'll be happy. And if they want to grow up and over into the rabbit pen, the rabbits will be happy, too.

Look, my first blackberries are ripening!

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These are triple crown. My Ouachita blackberries are being weird. I have a single berry growing on a primocane (it's not a primocane fruiting variety). Some people have told me that blackberries can do this randomly, but if it happens regularly, that means they sold me the wrong blackberry plants. If the latter turns out to be the case, in going to be annoyed, because they'd almost have to be Prime Ark Freedom, and I just planted some of those in my front yard.

[Dawn]

Ranking my tomatoes from this year

Good: (in order, starting with the best)
Saucy Mary
Dwarf Mr Snow
Idaho Gem
Kangaroo Paw Green
Lemon Boy
Big beef
Early girl

Neutral:
Fred's tie dye
German Johnson

Bad:
Banana toes

German Johnson grows and produces very well, but the tomatoes aren't great. I'll grow Stump of the World from now on for the big pink tomatoes. Stump grows and produces about the same and tastes so much better. Surprised that the hybrids have all been pretty good.

Banana toes keeps getting worse . I found some on another plant that I didn't see, they were extra ripe, almost orange. I was hoping that meant that they were better, but they were even worse, mealy and almost bitter.

The only one I haven't tried is sweet scarlet, so I'll report back about that one.

[Dawn]

Sweet Scarlet is very good . Probably the best of my reds/pinks. It really likes catfacing, but doesn't really crack much, so I think it'll be back.

Mr Snow, Kangaroo Paw Green, and Sweet Scarlet are my best dwarfs this season. I like saucy Mary, too, for flavor, but the plants are disease magnets. Maybe I'll try some of the other kangaroo paws, it's a whole series, like the KARMAs.

So many supersweet 100s. I haven't picked since Tuesday, there's going to be a million . I put a big bag of them in the freezer yesterday after eating all I could and giving a bunch to the people I work for. I think I'll try and make a roasted pasta sauce with them tonight for dinner

[Dawn]

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From all those extra seeds I planted in the fruit yard, one pumpkin plant, and one watermelon grew. The pumpkin plant keeps dying and then regrowing , but the watermelon is very vigorous. I just found this little guy today. It's a moon and stars watermelon. Hopefully, it'll grow up and ripen for me.

[Dawn]

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I have to say, it's been so nice to get extra tomatoes again! I'll be having a tomato freezing day, today, because I have at least this many ripe. I really love having homegrown tomatoes in the winter to make sauce with.

The cherry tomatoes didn't make good sauce. Too sweet. I tried using them like I would my extra Juliets, but Juliet's aren't sweet, so they were much better for sauce. And also, I put too much basil in, but that wasn't the tomatoes' fault.

[Dawn]

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I got 5 more bags for the freezer, and still have all these left.