Paste Tomatoes!

My paste tomatoes are starting to blush! If you lose tomatoes to animals, pull them as they just start to blush red, and ripen them on the counter. Then you won’t have to share!

There’s tons more in the garden that aren’t ready to bring in. Great year for tomatoes for me! That’s super unusual.

However, these are all paste tomatoes (that I bought a flat of this spring.) The beefsteak tomatoes I started from seed have big plants but zero tomatoes and no flowers. There’s a reason to buy tomato plants from stores, or start them super early inside!

My heat is going to stop all tomato fruiting progress. However, I have found that since my season is so long: even determinate tomatoes will fruit twice, if you keep the plant healthy through the summer. We’ll see what happens. It’s past time to put in my winter squash. I need to clean out the corn bed and get going on that!

As far as the hydroponic buckets. Those plants are slowwwwwly making progress. The reason I grew them on my porch was not because I wanted a bumper crop, but because I wanted some tomatoes through the summer. I have grown tomatoes, through our summer, on the porch before. The peppers are growing well in the buckets. If you want a lot of tomatoes, hydroponic buckets should be skipped and you should plant them in soil, in raised beds, with irrigation. But if you get night time temperatures that are too hot for tomatoes: I think these buckets will get you where you want to go.

Meet you out in the garden to savor the sweet summer flavors of home grown tomatoes!

Crazy Green Thumbs