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Friday, August 13, 2010

Tomatosaurus Rex Waning

I have five one-gallon bags of tomatoes in the freezer. Most of my plants are petering out on production, there are a few Opalkas, Mortgage Lifters and Carbons I'm waiting on before I do my big canning session.

Plan is to thaw the maters and pull the skins off (they're already cored out), then make batches of sauce and diced tomatoes to can in quart mason jars. Gonna do a batch of all Limmony sauce because I have a bunch of that variety and I think an all yellow tomato sauce might be novel. Maybe make yellow ketchup or Goan chutney...

I also have a bumper crop of Kung Pao peppers drying and I'm starting to get some Thai peppers, too. Those dry well, but I see I finally have some fruit forming on my habanero, and those are so insanely hot, I'm not sure how many of them I can honestly use, so if anyone wants some home grown peppers hotter than military grade pepper spray, just say the word.
Disease is spreading in the tomatoes despite my efforts, and a couple plants (Tom's Yellow Wonder and Black Krim) are innocent of fruit or blossom and dying fast.

There's one Kellogg's Breakfast that's still green on the vine and other than that, that plant appears to have shot its wad as well.

Paul Robeson, though, not only still has flowers, he's still setting fruit. Little pale green orbs forming eight feet or more off the ground (it must not be so hot at that altitude).

Finally got a few bell peppers off my California Wonder. I didn't think they were anywhere near ready, I was picturing green bells like I buy at the store, and these guys would fit inside one of those. But when I noticed one of them turning a bit ride, I knew it had to be ripe.

Come to think of it, my jalapeƱos have been dainty in size, too. Not the smallest I've ever seen, but not the big honkers I sometimes buy. I wonder how much of that is the variety of jalapeƱo and how much of it is I need to learn the tricks of growing large peppers.

Be curious, too, to see if the little guys I started from cuttings are about to take off and grow, giving me a second little tide of tomatoes in late September/early October.

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