Tomatoes – Patience, Patience

 Farmer MacGregor overseeing his estate while tending to his Red Flame Grapes.  Bed 1 = tomatoes, Bed 2 = watermelons, squash, Bed 3 = hot peppers, tomatoes, Bed 4 = tomatoes.

July  is here.  We’ve endured our 1st heat wave.  Around here, a heat wave is a cluster of days where the temperature exceeds 100.  Another definition is a cluster of days where you experience swamp pants.  The tomatoes have reacted in a variety of ways to the heat.  There is a push of growth in all the varieties.  Some varieties handle the heat much better than others.  Al Kuffa seems to be the champion so far.  They’re tough.  Every variety has some kind of pest munching on it – caterpillars & grasshoppers.  I spied a wasp in one of the Mule Team rows helping with the pest control by battling a caterpillar. 

There are companion plants growing amongst most all of the crops.  The radishes are bolting and I don’t care.  I’m leaving them alone.  I did notice something rolled up in one of the radish leaves.  Any idea what it could be?  I don’t want to disturb it if it’s beneficial.

I picked a couple of tomatoes for Farmer MacGregor to participate in a taste test in the kitchen.  Al Kuffa and Arkansas Traveler went head to head with no winner determined.  Farmer MacGregor instructed me to let them ripen a bit more before the next test.  Meanwhile, a few miles east of Maybelline’s Garden, my mother harvested her 1st tomato of the season from her Al Kuffa plant. She is very weak when it comes to tomatoes.  Right there in her garden she simple plucked the fruit, wiped it on her shirt and ate it.  She’s tough.  The review was “delicious”!

Arkansas Traveler – July 1, 2010 (Planted March 1, 2010).