Category Archives: ‘THE TOMATO LADY’

Produce for sale from the Tomato Lady-Friday August 21

Jannine's bean tee pee

Hi folks.  I know many of you locals follow my blog. I have 125 tomato plants and 3o heirloom varieties this year.  For some unknown reason my tomatoes are taking their time turning red (or orange or striped or black or purple). This is weird as I would have thought that they would all be kicking ass by now and I would be at the Farmers Market. The weather has been nice and warm, the rain wonderful and the tomatoes look great-just still green. Ah mother nature! Whata ya going do? I’ve learned years ago to just surrender to her. So…

Since I don’t have enough tomatoes ready (I need boxes and boxes of them) for the Farmer’s Market this Saturday, I do have some heirloom tomatoes to sell plus I have LOTS of other heirloom veggies—Shishito peppers, wonderful varieties of french and Italian green beans—Rattlesnake beans, Italian Romano beans, Trionfo Violetto beans, Royal Burgundy beans and some french filets, tasty sweet cucumbers and fantastic huge ruby red chard that melts in your mouth when steamed and drizzled with a fine balsamic vinaigrette.

I will be selling them from 2 -4 pm this Friday August 21 at our studio:

Liquid Light Glass
926 Baca Street #3
Santa Fe, NM
Call me if you have questions. 660-4986

I will be starting at the Santa Fe Farmer’s market Saturday August 29th from 7 am-1 pm. But don’t be late as I will sell out probably by 11 am. You can find me inside the building-just look for my ‘TOMATO LADY’ SIGN above my booth.

So come catch up with me and get some fantastic veggies for yourself this Friday without the parking hassles! Hope to see you here at the studio!

Home Grown New Mexico Kitchen Garden & Coop Tour this Sunday July 26

In case you were wondering why I haven’t written on my site for a while it’s because I’ve been crazy busy
in my garden getting ready for the 2015 Home Grown New Mexico’s Kitchen Garden & Coop tour. I’m on the tour with 4 other great places this Sunday July 26 from 9 am -3 pm!  Come check us out! Read on for details of how to attend this great event! All this info is also listed on Homegrownnewmexico.org


2015 HGNM KItchen Garden Tour_ad _green

Sunday, July 26—OUR MAJOR FUNDRAISING EVENT!
Kitchen Garden & Coop Tour
Time: 9 am-3 pm
Cost: $25. children under 12 free. You can pre-pay below or pay at the tour at any of the homes. Cash, Check or credit cards accepted.
Locations: see below

The 5th Annual
Kitchen Garden and Coop Tour
Sunday, July 26, 2015 from 9 am to 3 pm

See five kitchen gardens in Santa Fe. Pick up ideas that you can use at your place or just enjoy these beautiful, edible and functional landscapes.

The properties on the tour this year will feature many gardening ideas—beautiful vegetable gardens, herb gardens, fruit and nut trees, backyard chicken coops, goats, beehives, composting,  green houses, a neighborhood community garden, edible landscapes and rainwater harvesting systems.  Master Gardeners will be at each location to answer gardening questions and support the event. Pre-purchase tickets here on the eventbrite button or buy them at the tour at whatever house you first go to.

Eventbrite - 5th Annual Kitchen Garden and Coop Tour

5 Properties on tour-get the Home Grown tour_map (revised Jul 18)
#1 • Lisa Sarenduc, Suitable Digs
712 Chicoma Vista
Santa Fe, NM

#2 • Amelia Moody
1951 Osage Dr
Santa Fe, NM

#3 • Deb Farson
2215 Paseo de los Chamisos
Santa Fe, NM

#4 • Bert & Mari Tallant
2389 Camino Pintores
Santa Fe, NM

#5 • Jannine Cabossel, ‘The Tomato Lady’
56 Coyote Crossing
Santa Fe, NM

Garden Tour Bios
Lisa Sarenduc-owner of Suitable Digs. This property has unique green vacation lodgings on her sustainable property where she lives. Her property features a greenhouse, fruit and nut trees, raised vegetable and berry garden, greywater system, a dome greenhouse with fig trees, another greenhouse with olive trees, a large rainwater catchment system, 1.5 acres of native grasses and flowers lining her driveway using key line design, a swimming pond and is completely powered by solar energy.

Amelia Moody has been gardening at her home in Santa Fe for 10 years. Her lovely garden is continually evolving, as she acquires “gift plants” from her friends. She has mature fruit trees and bed with mixed plantings of vegetables, flowers, medicinal plants and cacti, keeping a constant supply of flowers pollinated by her own honeybees. A giant Saguaro Cactus skeleton dominates her back yard. She also catches water from her roof, storing it underground in a 1000gal tank. Chickens will supply her with eggs through the year. A well tended compost pile rounds out her very balanced landscape.

Deb Farson lives in a townhome with her cat Charley in town. She has been a master gardener for 5 years (in fact, she is the president of the Santa Fe Master Gardeners Association). She has been a Master Composter since 2002. Her property has a small footprint, but she has been able to pack in a lot of sustainability. Her perennials are xeric and include many native plants and shrubs in beds, pots and planters. She connects with the National Weather Service daily – measuring precipitation in Santa Fe. She catches rain from her roof to water her landscape – including raised vegetable beds. She fosters community – cooperating with neighbors in a truly neighborhood community garden. She crafts some of the best compost in town with the help of her neighbors, who contribute their food scraps all year round and get tomatoes in the summer in return.

Bert Tallant and his wife Mari have been gardening in Santa Fe for over 25 years. Their garden showcases many of the sustainable features that can be accomplished in an urban setting. They converted almost half of their property into a vegetable garden. In the compact garden, they grow a substantial portion of their food for the year, including tomatoes, chile, corn, squash and raspberries – lots of raspberries. Bert has experimented w/ espaliered apple trees along the walls that enclose the garden. They use water captured from their roof and piped to the garden underground. A newly captured swarm of honeybees buzz about pollinating and making honey. Eggs are gathered daily from their chickens. They make their own high quality compost gathering materials from neighbors and the city.

Jannine Cabossel-The Tomato Lady
Jannine can be found selling her heirloom tomatoes at the Santa Fe’s Farmer’s Market in the summer and features her artisan farm on the tour this year. She strives toward sustainability. Her 6.5 acre property includes 3000 sq ft of raised vegetable gardens that supply her with food year round, garden art and flowers that feed her soul, over 30 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, fruit trees, strawberries, grapes and raspberries, 2 busy beehives, many drought tolerant, bee friendly gardens, chickens that give her eggs daily, Koko the horse and her buddies-the goats, a terraced herb garden, an unheated greenhouse full of tomatoes now and greens in the winter, a cold frame for fall/spring gardening, composting systems and even a resting hut fondly called the Tea House. Be prepared to wander and get lost on this lovely property that will surely inspire gardeners.

Identifying Tomato Curly Top Virus (CTV)-more info

Photo credits: curly top disease - photo courtesy of http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=3352

Curly Top Virus (CTV) on tomatoes
Last year, the Beet Leafhopper which transmits ‘Curly Top Tomato Virus’ was rampant in our gardens and devastated many of our tomato plants. I lost only 4 plants out of 74 to it but only because I take extraordinary measures to protect them. Here is some information on the beet leafhopper., how to identify it, symptoms and how to protect your plants.

The Beet Leafhopper flies in on the winds in early June through July, jump on the tomato plants and taste them. It is a big problem in the Southwest and inland in California where it is hot. They don’t even like to eat tomato plants but sample them, transmitting the disease in the process, then fly off to visit other plants.

Identifying Beet Leafhoppers
The beet leafhopper is very small-about 1/8 inch long, pale green to light brownish green and has wings that look like a tent when folded up vs spread out like a moth. See photo on left. They come when conditions are dry, hot and windy. Sound familiar? This is typical June weather here in the greater Santa Fe area.

I notice they leave after the monsoons come in July when it is cooler and wetter. You will know if they are in your garden as they come in and when you walk around your garden, you’ll see jumping little green bugs that fly off when you walk by. Then they leave—flying to the next garden. Because of this, you can’t really spray anything to get them because they hop so fast and only stay in the garden a short time—here today, gone tomorrow. By the time you notice something is wrong with your tomato plant, they are long gone. It takes about 2 weeks for symptoms to show up.

Symptoms

closup of leaves of curly top virus

Your tomato plant leaves will start to curl and the underside of the leaves and veins will turn a purplish color as pictured above.

 

curly top virus_helthy plant

Tomato Curly Top Virus-beginning stages and advanced stages


The leaves then start to wilt and the plant will look stunted. You might think it needs water but it doesn’t, it is sick and won’t recover. ‘Curly-Top Virus’ is only transmitted from bug to plant and is NOT transmitted from plant to plant hence you will see a healthy plant next to a sick plant. The pictures above show 2 plants with curly top. The first one is beginning to be sick with curly leaves and the veins will turn purple.  The second plant in the picture is advanced.

Now there are three cases where you may think you have curly top virus but may or may not have it.

Denver Downs Farm, Anderson, SC; High temperature on black plastic; lower leaves only.

Physiological Leaf Roll-Photo courtesy Clemson University

The first condition that may not be Tomato Curly top Virus is Physiological Leaf Roll that can happen on some tomatoes and could be caused by various factors including stress and that is not necessarily curly top-if you plant has rolled leaves but no purple veins as shown above, it possibly has physiological leaf roll and look for why it may be stressed. It is getting enough water, too much water, too much nitrogen? Also drought, pruning, root damage and transplant shock can all be reasons for leaf roll. For more info on this condition go here.

purple tomato_purlple leaves

Phosphorus deficiency in tomatoes happen when the weather is still cold-not in June.

The second condition is early in the season, sometimes the leaves turn purple when it is still cold outside. This is a phosphorus deficiency. This never happens in June or later when it is warm but more in May if you plant early and it is still cold outside.

The third condition (no pic) is if you are growing a purple or black variety of tomato your plant may have purple veins so don’t pull it unless it start to looks sick with the curly leaves and looks like it needs water.

Remedies
There is NO CURE for this virus and if your tomato (or pepper for that matter) shows signs of the disease, you should pull the plant. You could leave the plant in BUT if another wave of leafhoppers come by and a healthy leafhopper bites your sick plant, it only takes 10 minutes in 90°F weather for it to be able to transmit the disease to one of your healthy plants. The best thing to do is pull any sick plant and dispose of it. I don’t compost ANY tomato plant that shows disease.

Here are some remedies:
• Leafhoppers do not like shade and if your plants are partly shaded, that may help keep them off but since most of us grow tomatoes in full sun that might be difficult.

Create a physical barrier with row cover

Put row cover over tomato plants

• The main thing I do is create a physical barrier between the bugs and the plants.  I now cover all tomato plants with row cover until the bugs pass. Wrap the row cover around your tomato cage and put a piece on top of the cage BEFORE they come.

• Lastly you could put out some tomatoes later in the season after the bugs leave but you’ll have to put in early season varieties so you can still harvest before the season ends. I buy gallon size at that point so as not to be too far behind. A couple of years ago when I was out at the Santa Fe Community Garden, I noticed many rows of sick tomato plants but one row of perfectly healthy plants and when I asked about them, it turned out they were put out about a month later than the rest of them and by then the leafhoppers were gone.

Dry, sunny, windy weather are perfect conditions for the leafhoppers so look out this summer-conditions are ripe again!

I remove the row covers after the monsoon season comes. They usually leave or are suppressed by then. Monsoon season historically comes in early-mid July.

May 21-ALL TOMATO PLANTS IN

growfood,not lawns

It’s time to get growing!

Now is the time to seriously get into your garden. This is the busiest time of the gardening season with everybody wanting to get everything in their gardens. The day temperatures are now in the mid-high 70’s and the evenings are in the mid-high 40’s. PERFECT PLANTING WEATHER! Here is what’s been going on at my place. I feel I’m ahead so I actually have time to post something.

May 21-I waited to plant till after that last snow right after the May 15 date. All 120 tomato plants were in the gardens by May 21 with the help of Elodie Holmes, Lava Ewersmeyer, Mernie Ellessner and Janet Hirons and of course me! Many thanks to all my friends for their help! Boy, was I tired by the end of last week. This is the most tomato plants I’ve ever planted-hopefully it will be a great year and I will have many tomatoes to sell at the Farmer’s Market later this summer! I have 31 varieties this year. My favorites plus many new varieties. They are all in Wall of Waters (WOW) and I wouldn’t attempt to plant them at this date at our 7000 ft high altitude without them. Later the WOWs will be removed once the tomato plants reach the tops of them which will be sometime in June.

May 24-Meanwhile I’ve already put SEEDS in for Atomic Red carrots, Cosmic Purple carrots, Cylindra beets and Craupadine beets, transplanted broccoli-raab, Lacinto kale, Ruby chard, Argentata chard, Burgundy Amaranth and Zino fennel bulbs as of this week. All got row cover over them to give the transplants time to adjust in their new environment.

May 25-The peppers and eggplants are still inside, the little finicky darlings, basking in the windows as the nights are still too cold to plant them yet. If it stays warm I will put them in by the end of the first week of June.

May 26-I will NOW plant bean, corn, cucumber seeds, many flower seeds AND my giant pumpkins. I will also put row cover over them till they come up about 4 inches to keep the birds from eating them.

HAPPY GARDENING!!

2015 Santa Fe Seed Exchange

hg-seed-exchange

Santa Fe Seed Exchange-TODAY!
Tuesday, March 10, 2015

If you are looking for seeds and ideas for your vegetable garden, come to the Santa Fe Seed Exchange on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 from 4 pm-7 pm in Frenchy’s Barn on Agua Fria and Osage Ave. The City Parks Division and Home Grown New Mexico are hosting this event for all community gardens, school gardens and home gardeners. Agua Fria Nursery donated over $750 of seeds so there are plenty of seeds available. Come even if you do not have any to share. Bring flower, herb, vegetable and other seeds if you do.

The Santa Fe Master Gardeners will be at the event with an “Ask a Master Gardener” table for gardening questions and will have seed starting handouts to give away.

SB_BusinessCard_Back_photoThe SeedBroadcast organization will have their seedbroadcasting station to answer questions about saving seeds and seed story recording equipment.  Tell your story about the seed, where you got it, how you planted it and more.  See their website for stories across America.

Poki from Gaia Gardens and The Tomato Lady will be there with seeds also.

If you have questions, please contact: homegrownnewmexico1@gmail.com  or leave a message at 505-983-9706 and we will return your call.

2014 garden-then and now

long shot of garden

The Tomato Lady
Tomato Lady’s mini-farm

My tomatoes love the sun and warmth!

tomatoes ready for market

Tomatoes ready for the Santa Fe Farmer’s market

Last week was warm and sunny-just what tomatoes need to ripen. Temperatures in the mid 80s. It’s a little cooler this week but still nice. Suddenly I have all kinds of tomatoes ripening-yea!

tomato lady at Santa Fe Farmer's Market

Up till last week I’ve barely had enough ripe ones to go to the Farmer’s Market much less make tomato sauce but now I have plenty to sell-just get there early as I sell out pretty early even with all these tomatoes. Here’s my booth at the Farmer’s Market. It is located inside the big building. Just look up for a big sign that says, ‘Tomato Lady’ to find me.

I noticed the number of ripe tomatoes have been growing here at my little farm and now they are exploding! Yea! I’m hoping for an Indian summer-that means the rest of September will be nice and warm which should keep them coming.

2014 Tomato Season in Santa Fe

closeup of virginia sweet

My all time favorite-an heirloom-a ‘Virginia Sweet’ tomato-a super sweet tomato worth the wait and weight.

Every year I try to get to the Farmers Market EARLY to sell tomatoes. Early to me would be end of July. Actually I would be delighted to even get to the market the first week of August. But no. Never. It’s not me I swear-I do my job. I get the tomato plants in the ground early enough. It’s THE WEATHER! Every year someone will ask me at the market how come they:

1. Don’t have any tomatoes or

2. Only have lots of green ones.

This year it’s the later because of THE WEATHER. So let me explain-No. 1 and No. 2 above and how both relate to THE WEATHER. This year we didn’t have a super hot June which was great because our tomato blossoms were able to set fruit in June. (If it’s really hot in June, then we experience blossom drop. Tomato blossoms won’t set fruit in temperatures 92°F and hotter.  They would have all dropped off all their little blossoms in our stinking hot Junes – hence no fruit and they grow more blossoms and set fruit up in July when it’s cooler but that puts us behind-see no. 1.)  But that’s not the case this year.

So on to no.2-we got LOTS of fruit now but they are mostly still green so we are still behind. Why? THE WEATHER! Now I don’t mean to pass the buck here as they say, but it’s true. July and now August this year has been delightfully cool and rainy. Daytime temperatures are cooler and nighttime temperatures are definitely cooler. Just like the old days with a real monsoon season. Now those of you new to the area (meaning you have moved here sometime in the last 12 years) have not really experienced the monsoon season, so enjoy it. Who knows when we will get another since we’ve been in drought like conditions the last 12 years.

Ok, back to why it’s THE WEATHER’S FAULT! So what’s happen is we have lots of green fruit but now we need some WARM SUNNY days to ripen the fruit. Even though the fruit can’t tolerate too hot of weather when trying to set fruit, after it’s set, they need warm sunny days to ripen up. All we’ve been mostly experiencing is very cool weather. Ah, what are we gonna do? It’s either too hot when they set blossoms or too cool to ripen.  Both scenarios make for a very late tomato season. Ah crumba!  I hope we get the warm days soon before fall comes as I have a ton of tomatoes on the vines! I sometimes wonder why I even bother and then I remember! I love tomatoes! I love trying new varieties! I’m a tomato addict!

Tomato Lady will return to SF Farmer’s Market this Saturday!

first tomatoes

Here are some of my tomatoes of the 2014 season. I’ll be back at the SF Farmer’s Market this Saturday, August 16th from 7-12 noon inside the building. Just look up high (above my booth) for my Tomato Lady sign to find me. I don’t have a ton of tomatoes yet and so they should go pretty quick and then I’ll be out but have many other items to sell like rhubarb, green and purple beans, Shishito peppers, various eggplants including the infamous fairytale eggplant and maybe some Kale. Hopefully next week I will have more!

But if you want tomatoes-come early!

Tomato Snob!

tomato snob

This says it perfectly! Some of my tomato seeds came from Secret Seed Cartel this year. Can’t wait to try them out!

Here they come-FIRST TOMATOES!

 

FIRST TOMATOES 2014

Ok, I have something to confess – I’M TOMATO ADDICT!! I need my fix! Here are the first organic tomatoes of  2014 season. I got 5 Sungold and Black Cherry tomatoes during the last week of June. That is the earliest I have ever gotten tomatoes ready to eat. Sungolds are one of the few hybrid tomatoes I grow because they are soo sweet and Black Cherry tomatoes are an heirloom tomato that is fantastic as well with it’s sweet earthy flavor. I have gotten more little tomatoes since then that are eagerly eaten-sometimes right off the vine – if I can’t wait. I HAVEN’T HAD A TOMATO SINCE LAST OCTOBER! I never eat the ones in the restaurants or buy any from a grocery store-I just patiently wait until my tomatoes get ripe during the tomato season. It’s been about 9 months since I ate a real tomato!

FIRST CAPRESE 2014

Here is a mini Caprese without the basil. Of course I had to go get some fresh mozzarella to go with those first tomatoes! I don’t have any big Italian basil yet to add to my Caprese but gobbled them up with the mozarella and 18 yr old balsamic vinegar and olive oil over them.  The sweetness was divine!

jc baby pic2_FB

 

And to think I HATED tomatoes as a kid – couldn’t stand those slimy seeds! My how things change through the years! Of course all I ever got were those store-bought tasteless tomatoes. It wasn’t until I had a REAL tomato ripened on the vine that I became a tomato addict!

Why else have a vegetable garden in the summer if not for the tomatoes!

69 tomato plants in the ground! 5 more to go

IMG_3912

The tomatoes in their Wall of Waters to stay warm at night. Doesn’t look like much now but come July the tomatoes should look like a jungle.

What a whirlwind week. Elodie Holmes and Mernie Elsesser helped me plant 35 tomato plants on Monday and on Friday Janet Hiron helped me plant 24 more tomato plants for a total of 59 in the main garden. Great to have such good friends help with what would be an overwhelming task for one person! Thanks to all!

Sunday I planted 10 more in the greenhouse and still want to plant 5 more in the raised beds by the house but the bulk of the work is done with the tomatoes. There will be a total of 74 tomato plants this year for the Tomato Lady. We put wall of waters around each plant. Even though we are past freezes at night here in Santa Fe, tomatoes (and peppers) do not like the cold nights and 45°F is cold to them right now. They don’t like any temperature from 55°F and lower and it will be a while before we get above 55°F at night. The wall of waters act like little greenhouses keeping your tomatoes and peppers warm at night after absorbing all that sun in the daytime. By the time the tomatoes outgrow the wall of waters, the night temperatures will be warmer and we can take them off.

This week: Planting giant pumpkins and the start of the rest of the veggie garden

Make tomato sauce the easy way!

2tomato sauce-making sauce

By now you’ve probably finished harvesting and making your tomato sauce but I have to share how I do it.

I grow many tomatoes each year and make LOTS of tomato sauce as a result. But canning it doesn’t happen until late fall after harvest season is done.

I use to make it the old fashion way of putting the tomatoes in boiling water until the skin splits, then putting it in ice water to stop cooking, then peel off the skin and squeeze the tomatoes and juice in bowls to freeze. Tiring—very tiring and it takes lots of time.

Now I make tomato sauce the easy way. I finally got a food strainer (sometimes called a food mill) that separates the skins and stems from the pulp, juice and seeds making an uncooked tomato sauce in record time.  My food strainer is from Victorio. It comes with one screen that is fine mesh. I also got the salsa screen because I want my sauce thicker. I can process about 20 lbs of tomatoes in 10-15 minutes. But let’s start from the beginning.

1tomato sauce-tomatoes ready

First you’ll need some tomatoes. Good and imperfect blemished tomatoes are perfect for making sauce. These had hail damage but tasted good.

4tomato sauce-tools

Here are the tools-a plunger to push to tomatoes through (comes with the food strainer), a ladle, and a serrated knife to cut the tomatoes in chunks to fit in funnel. This process is messy so cover your table!

3tomato sauce-putting tom in mill

Cut up and put the tomatoes in the food strainer funnel. No need to take off skins, the strainer will do it for you.

5tomato sauce-partially done

Here is some sauce partially done. The food strainer has separated the sauce out into this green bowl. You crank the handle and push the tomatoes into the funnel using the red plunger. The strainer reminds me of a meat grinder except it grinds up tomatoes instead. It also can be used to make grape juice from grapes and applesauce or apricot sauce.

6tomato sauce-skins out

The other side of the food mill spits out the skins. I also cut off the stems shown in bowl. The chickens will love getting this bowl!

7tomato sauce-finished in bowl

Here is the bowl full of rich raw tomato sauce ready to bag with more tomatoes in the background ready to make sauce.

8tomato sauce-in bag

I put about 12 cups of raw tomato sauce in a gallon size freezer bag. I don’t like to overfill them. I also squeeze out the air while I ‘zipper’ them up. Be sure you zipper it well or it could leak out when you lay it flat.

9tomato sauce-finished in bags

Here is the raw tomato sauce—bagged and ready to freeze. Notice I have different colors of sauce coming from different colors of tomatoes. Later I either cook the bags of raw sauce up for a recipe or I end up canning them when my freezer is too full and I’ve recovered from harvest season!

Tomato Tasting Contest

tomato contest1

Today I held a tomato tasting contest with some of my friends. I have to say I was very disappointed. Not with my friends but with my tomatoes. I went last to taste them and could not believe how many of the tomatoes were either bland or watery. Some seemed weak in flavor. I’ve eaten them all summer and couldn’t remember them like this. They were not at all like the sweet flavorful tomatoes I ate last month.

Then it hit me-the 3 inches of rain we had this past week really weakened the flavors. I have had many split their skins this week from taking on so much water and that explains why so many of my favorites were rather bland vs a month ago they were very flavorful. They say if you want the flavors more intense, cut back on watering during harvest time which I did. Usually we don’t have an over-abundance of rain, but we have this year. I haven’t had the drip system on in 2 weeks but mother nature choose to give us more rain than I can ever remember getting at this time of year.

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Never the less there were some outstanding tomatoes. Below is the ranking of the ones we tasted. There were many ties. I found it amazing that 7 of the tomatoes in the top ten were black or purple tomatoes. 6 were yellow and only 1 red tomato in the top ten. (Remember there were some ties which is why we have more then 10)

Many of the rest of the tomatoes were red which is interesting as most of us like to use red tomatoes for sauce where cooking brings out the flavors but don’t like to use other colors for sauce.

I think if I had had the contest 2 weeks ago before the rain, the results may have been very different but still feel the black tomatoes would have outshine the rest. Can you tell I’m partial?!

Thanks to all for helping out with the tasting and grading!

 

2013 TOMATO TASTING CONTEST

TOP TEN

1st place-Paul Robeson-black tomato

2nd place-Indigo Apple-black tomato

3rd place-Brandy Boy-black tomato

4th place-Black and Brown Boar-black tomato

4th place-Big Sungold Select-yellow cherry tomato

5th place-Cherokee Purple-black tomato

5th place-Southern Nites-black tomato

6th place-Sungold-yellow cherry tomato

7th place-Juane Flamme-orange tomato

8th place-Ananas Noire-green/black tomato

8th place-Virginia Sweet-yellow tomato

8th place- Porkchop-yellow tomato

9th place-Galon De Melon-yellow cherry tomato

10th place-Bloody Butcher-red tomato

———————————————————————————

11th place-Marmande-red tomato

12th place-Big Zac-red tomato

13th place-Costoluto Genevese-red tomato

14th place-Pantano Romanesco-red tomato

14th place-Green Grape-green cherry tomato

15th place-Cour Di Bue-red tomato

15th place-Gold Medal-yellow tomato

16th place-Orange Wellington-orange tomato

Biggest tomatoes 2013

tomatoes_biggest_2013

Here are the two biggest tomatoes so far this season. The yellow one on the left is 1 lb 11 oz Gold Medal and the red one on the far right is a 1 lb 10 oz Big Zac. I got second place at the State Fair with a little smaller Big Zac tomato but if I had found this Gold Medal I would have had first. It’s ok though as I took 5 first places, 1 second place and 1 third place at the State Fair. Can’t be too greedy.