Tomato tales

 

I finally processed the tomato seeds as well.  You can see my post on saving seeds from tomato plants here on my old blog.

 

It hasn't been a good tomato season for me.  This year I grew five varieties, and the most successful were my V. B. Russians from Sandhill Preservation.  A tempered 'successful', however, since I had a lot of problems with splitting.  And though all the tomato varieties had cracks and splits this season, these problems were most pronounced on the plum-shaped Russians, which split up the sides.  Spherical tomatoes tend to split around the top.  The chickens were the recipients of a lot of split fruit this summer.

I also grew WI 55 tomatoes from Johnny's Seeds, Moonglow from Seed Savers, and a few nursery-started hybrids including Sungold Cherry.  The WI 55 plants suffered a setback in June (rabbits? deer? cutworm?) and never really recovered.  The Moonglow were an experiment, grown in large totes to see if container-grown plants would be successful.  They were not.  But I did manage to save a few seeds.

My container-grown Sungold Cherries usually do all right.  Second to the V. B. Russians, these produced the second-highest number of fruit.  I never bother saving seed from these, because seed from hybrid plants won't breed true.  But I buy a plant or two each spring, and set them in large half-barrel planters near my front door.  Right where I can grab a few when I leave to go to work.  So sweet and flavorful, it's a nice start to the day.