Shule's 2024 grow log

[Shule]

Here are some Brandywine Pink tomatoes that I harvested this morning, displayed on a large plate.

Brandywine Pink 13 Aug 2024.jpg

I ate the second largest one in the afternoon. It was pretty good.

Here's a picture from another angle (the one that looks huge in the first picture actually is quite large, but it's probably a mix between the sizes it appears in both pictures).

Brandywine Pink 2.jpg

We're probably going to eat another one on some hamburgers for dinner.

Edit: We did eat one on hamburgers. It was good. The second tomato tasted even better than the first one. Now we just have the biggest tomato left; I want to save seeds from that one.

[Shule]

Here are two of the tomatoes that I mentioned that I harvested a few days ago from the volunteer that was probably from the striped bicolor Cherokee Lime offtype last year. I ate one today. It tasted kind of like peachy bacon. Sweeter than before, but kind of acidic, too. It was pretty good.

Striped bicolor Cherokee Lime offtype volunteer.jpg

[Shule]

I harvested a bunch of wonderberries, today. I'm dehydrating two trays of them at 108° F. and I put the rest in the freezer, filling the gallon bag I had in there from a harvest earlier this year.

I wanted to dehydrate at a low temperature in an attempt to prevent the flavor from diluting. I plan to blend them up into powder. I expect the powder will probably look much like a bunch of wonderberry seeds, but I'm hopeful it will have taste.

This is my first time dehydrating wonderberries in the food dehydrator.

I need to pick a bunch more tomorrow.

[Shule]

The dehydrating wonderberries smell really good. I'm dehydrating them in a bedroom with the door shut (to avoid heating up the house).

[Shule]

I harvested the ripest Caya tomatoes (I counted 155 that are in that colander), and four ripe Brandywine Pink tomatoes. These Brandywine Pinks are all from the same plant. The Caya tomatoes are from all but one of the Caya plants.

These pictures are two angles of the same fruits:

155 Caya and Brandywine Pink 2.jpg

155 Caya and Brandywine Pink.jpg

[Shule]

The volunteer that might be Carolina Yellow is looking quite prolific! I'm excited to see how it turns out. It has big fruit.

[Shule]

At least one of the Celebrity F2s is setting fruit. I planted them late; so that's why they're doing it now instead of sooner.

In one of the growing holes for it, I left two plants instead of thinning it to one.

[JayneR13]

Sounds like dehydrating wonderberries is better than dehydrating onions! Even the neighbors will smell that! And they're not always amused LOL.

Yes, I'm getting a few maters for the table too. My plants are loaded! Soon it will be time to put some up. For now, I'm going to freeze some things I harvested from the farmer's market: Brussels sprouts, sugar snap peas, and corn.

[Shule]

Well, the volunteer that I thought was either Carolina Yellow or Amana Orange turned out to ripen red! Plus, the fruits are quite firm. I didn't have a quite-firm red oblate/beefsteak tomato last year; so, I think it must be a cross from one of those two varieties and maybe Cal Ace VF. Whatever the case, it didn't get BER; so, I'm happy about that. Time to taste it! I harvested 6 fruits from it, today.

[Shule]

Well, the volunteer that I thought was either Carolina Yellow or Amana Orange turned out to ripen red! Plus, the fruits are quite firm. I didn't have a quite-firm red oblate/beefsteak tomato last year; so, I think it must be a cross from one of those two varieties and maybe Cal Ace VF. Whatever the case, it didn't get BER; so, I'm happy about that. Time to taste it! I harvested 6 fruits from it, today.

Wow. It's really good. I think I'm right about Cal Ace VF being in its parentage. So, what really surprised me was that although the tomato feels firm and very durable in the hand, when I bit into it, it was a completely different story. It was quite soft and juicy (and not at all mealy). I don't know how the fruits manage to stay firm in the hand, but that's really cool.

I'd probably describe the fruits as medium to medium-large (not large as I first mentioned).

[Shule]

Sounds like dehydrating wonderberries is better than dehydrating onions! Even the neighbors will smell that! And they're not always amused LOL.

Yes, I'm getting a few maters for the table too. My plants are loaded! Soon it will be time to put some up. For now, I'm going to freeze some things I harvested from the farmer's market: Brussels sprouts, sugar snap peas, and corn.

I just noticed your comment. I haven't tried dehydrating onions, yet. So, thanks for the heads up. I think our neighbors were disturbed when we tried making comfrey tea one year (because of the smell), so that's great to know.

I imagine dehydrated onions smell better than that, though! I sure hope so, anyway . . . I love the smell of baking onions.

[Shule]

Well, dehydrating wonderberries at 108° F. is an interesting experience. In the garden, they dehydrate on the vine in no time, and they don't have much taste when they do that. However, in the dehydrator, they take a super long time (they're still dehydrating, in fact, although most of them are done; I turned the dehydrator off for a day, though). However, the wonderberries taste awesome. They taste like a mix between dried Golden Berries (which are essentially Cape Gooseberry groundcherries), raisins, and blueberries/huckleberries. They're not as sweet as raisins, though, for sure. They also have variable taste/sweetness (only some of them have the blueberry type taste, but more of them do than they do on the vine). Anyway, they taste good enough dehydrated whole that I don't plan to powder them. They feel very nutritious when they're dehydrated like this, too.

They don't lose that much size when they dry. They're maybe about half the size or less.

Next, I plan to dehydrate them at a higher temperature, because a week of dehydration is just too much. I could always try squishing them all first, though. Then they should dry in a timely fashion.

[JayneR13]

Are wonderberries similar to blueberries in that they’re covered by a waxy coating? With blueberries, I’ve had to “check” them by blanching before dehydrating, so the coat is broken and they’ll dehydrate in a sane amount of time. One week is crazy! Oy.

[Shule]

Are wonderberries similar to blueberries in that they’re covered by a waxy coating? With blueberries, I’ve had to “check” them by blanching before dehydrating, so the coat is broken and they’ll dehydrate in a sane amount of time. One week is crazy! Oy.

The skins aren't waxy like blueberries. They're more like the skins of a very soft-skinned tomato (except softer). Blueberries are a lot firmer. Wonderberries are more juicy/seedy and not at all meaty.

Although I mentioned a slight blueberry-type flavor for some of them when dehydrating them at 108° F., it should be noted that they don't really taste much like blueberries in other contexts (sometimes they taste more like a bilberry, though, but not all the time). If you eat them fresh or cooked, I recommend using them in savory dishes instead of sweet ones, unless you mix them with other kinds of berries.

[Shule]

Well, I finally stopped dehydrating those two trays of wonderberries. They were pretty sticky compared to dehydrated tomatoes. There are still some pretty soft ones, but I think I've had dried fruit at the store that soft before. Some of them are more dry than they need to be, but they're all easy to chew.

Anyway, here are some pictures of them in a bowl:. This is two trays full, sans the ones I ate while they were dehydrating (I ate quite a few). I did pack the two trays pretty full.

dehydrated wonderberries in bowl.jpg

dehydrated wonderberries.jpg

It's interesting that some of them lost their color when dehydrating and some didn't. They all had color before I dehydrated them.

[Shule]

It was a nice cloudy day, and the heat finally cooled off to the 80s or so, so I took a colander and went out to harvest enough wonderberries to fill all the trays. It looks like I've beat my previous record of harvesting about 4 pounds in one day. The colander with the wonderberries in it weighs about 9 pounds. I'm not sure how much the colander weighs without the wonderberries, yet (since it's presently full of wonderberries and all).

There are plenty more wonderberries outside, but the colander was full; so, I figured that was enough for today.

There are loads of tomatoes waiting to be harvested.

[Shule]

It was still light, so I went out and harvested a pasta pot just over half way full of Galapagos Island cherry tomatoes; it got too dark to harvest more without a flashlight at that point. With the fruit, it weighs about 7 pounds. I'm not sure how much it weighs without them, yet.

If you can't tell, I'm trying to keep track of my harvest. I'm not counting most of the stuff that other people harvest, though (I don't really know what they're harvesting, is why, but they are harvesting stuff).

[Shule]

At about 11:50 PM on Friday, I started dehydrating most of the aforementioned wonderberries (5 overfilled trays), and half of the aforementioned Galagagos Island tomatoes (1 very full tray) at 117° F. I felt good about that temperature; so, we'll see how it works out. From experience, I know whole cherry tomatoes take a really time to dehydrate, too (unless you puncture them or something). Anyway, if it's going to take a very long time, I figured I might as well stock it chalk full of fruit.

I put the remaining wonderberries in the freezer.

The reason I didn't do six trays of wonderberries is because we only have five silicon inserts, so the wonderberries would have fallen through the tray, since they're smaller than the holes in the tray.

The reason I didn't make wonderberry fruit leather is because we don't have any fruit leather inserts, but I imagine fruit leather would be a lot faster to dehydrate.

Another person tried the dried wonderberries and I was surprised to find that she liked them more than dried blueberries. I've never actually had dried blueberries; so, I don't really know what they taste like. Anyway, I was surprised because I'm used to being the one who likes wonderberries more than everyone else. So, to see that she appreciated it even more than blueberries was nice. She thought they tasted a lot better dehydrated than fresh, and was kind of confused as to why the taste improved.

Anyway, so apparently our pasta pot is big enough to stock four dehydrator trays quite full of Galapagos Island cherry tomatoes. That's good to know.

I'm planning to turn the dehydrator off for a day again during the process, but the previous wonderberries seemed to be fine with that. I suppose these wonderberries and the tomatoes should be fine, too.

[JayneR13]

I've dehydrated blueberries a few times over the years. They're very sweet although the texture is a bit papery, and keep for a looonnnnngggg time.

[Shule]

Okay, so I opened the bedroom door where the wonderberries and tomatoes are dehydrating last night. I figured maybe the reason it took so long was because the humidity from the drying fruit was locked in that small room. So, I'm hoping that combined with the somewhat higher temperature will shave off some time.

Today, when I checked on them, the tomatoes were already wrinkling. So, that's a good sign.