Just a Taste

Picked another Paul Robeson that was starting to blush, though it's got something eating into it where it is blushing the most, so who knows?

All these green tomatoes are taunting me. A couple of very cracked Gigant Pelinas and a couple of half damaged Paul Robesons isn't cutting it for me. Worley's up to his eyeballs in ripe tomatoes already, judging from his Facebook comments. And besides being semi-pro, he got his plants in the ground a week ahead of me, so maybe I'm just a week from not knowing what to do with all these damned tomatoes.

I harvested a Lilac Pepper and then noticed another purple guy hiding in there and got that. Another half dozen jalapeños, I'll have to pick up some cream cheese next time I'm at the store, I'm not much for eating fresh jalapeños by themselves.



My neighbor tossed a couple of banana peppers and two ripe cherry tomatoes my way after inquiring what in the hell I was fertilizing my tomatoes with.

His plants are all of maybe three feet high, being determinate varieties. And where he planted them, I don't think they're getting full sun, though close to it I think. Not sure how much difference comes from raised beds with lots of compost versus planting it down in the ground. His plants look like the tomato plants I've grown in the past, uninspiring and docile.

But hey, he's got ripe fruit even to the point of giving it away.



I did mix that cotton burr compost in when I tilled, I guess that counts as fertilizer up to a point. And there is a bit of Tomato Tone and bone meal out there from when I tilled and transplanted, but basically the only chemical I've applied has been Ortho Max antifungal during our wet May and June, and I'm not even doing that now (though I am still trimming low and/or diseased branches, especially off my Stupice, a variety I'm particularly excited about so that one better not become whole-plant sick).

Limony, Paul Robeson and Beam's Yellow Pear are all taller than me at this point. Barely mid-July, I have to wonder how much further they might go. I read of a woman in southern California who had a cherry tomato plant overwinter successfully and grow to where she could pick fruit from a second story window.



Anyway, after bringing in my modest haul, I went to throw the day's compostables to the pile and when I came back in, Mo had just flushed one of my freshly picked jalapeños down the disposal and had the rest of them in her hand.

With her autism, there's an OCD component, and she's prone to putting all manner of things down the drain, the toilet, the air return, etc.

This wasn't as bad as when she fed a salt shaker to the disposal and cost me the replacement of that appliance. But I've put gallons of sweat and a few drops of blood, not to mention more money than I planned on this garden, and damnit, that's my food she's flushing away!

I think what caused it: I gave her a slice of banana pepper while I was eating some to see if she liked it. She ate it, but I think she didn't like it and was maybe afraid I had designs on making her eat the rest of what was on the counter.

Hey, kid, if you don't want to eat it, fine. But Daddy doesn't have a sense of humor about wasting the stuff he's busted his ass to grow. Take what you want, eat what you take. Or else.



Speaking of the peppers I ate, I was excited to try the Lilac Pepper, and it looked ripe to me and all that, but it was awfully bland. I wonder if I picked them too soon, or if the one I didn't eat will darken up a bit and develop more flavor before I eat it. They look cool, but if I'm going to the trouble of growing it again next year, it's got to have more flavor than that.

The Beam's Yellow Pears in the box are green, I know. I was pruning spotty leaves and came away with a string of tomatoes. They're a paler green but I wouldn't necessarily attest to them 'blushing.' However, on the end of the string was a little yellow tomato raisin, a fruit that managed to covertly ripen and shrivel before I noticed it. So rather than throw it straight on the compost, I decided to bring them in and see if any of them turn yellow.