A very different view after removing plants today

Today (August 16) I yanked the dead or dying tomato plants from the straw bales and tossed them over the fence into our back woods. I still have 8 tomato plants growing in 5 gallon grow bags sitting on top of the front bales where indeterminate tomatoes resided earlier this season. Six are F2 generation from the Glory family (Dester X Dwarf Gloria’s Treat) - four are regular leaf, two are potato leaf. Two are chartreuse foliage Dwarf Jade Beauty, sent to me by a Growing Epic Tomatoes student - they appeared in a packet of Dwarf Jade Beauty from Victory Seeds. They may be a mutation or a cross - we will find out once fruits from the combined efforts of three of us begin to ripen. These plants are doing battle with septoria and early blight, so the possibility of them bearing ripe fruit is not assured.

The line of cherry tomatoes and other random varieties along the plant continue on. Two, from plants given to me by my garden friend Eddie at the Marion event this spring, will most likely provide ripe tomatoes. Tennessee Surprise will be a large bicolor, and the other is an unusually shaped tomato, a ridged plum shape, that is a mystery. I just saved a batch of seeds from Mexico Midget. The other of interest is from the Suzy family - it is indeterminate, the plant is dead, but a few fruit were appropriate for seed saving - very odd, matte/fuzzy skinned, and a green/pink mottled color. The flesh was very seedy. My goal are fuzzy dwarfs, so this is a dead end, albeit a curious one. Once we harvest the many cherry tomatoes present, these plants will be pulled, probably in a week or two.

bell peppers loading up - White Gold near, Fire Opal rear

I just harvested a load of eggplants from the still healthy, productive plants in straw bales, as well as lots of Shishito and Padron peppers. There are fruits on the bell peppers, and I am hoping some will ripen to the final color before they rot, so I can save seeds.

My next task are to plant spinach and lettuce seeds, so we can get salad greens throughout fall, winter and next spring. I will start those in small containers and transplant them into my two raised beds in a few weeks. I will also plant a few garlic cloves - perhaps aiming at a dozen plants. I overdid it last year, but we’ve enjoyed eating our own garlic. I’ve also got a very full plant of Greek Columnar Basil, which is soon to become pesto.

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Now on to the future. This coming Thursday - August 18 - will be my last weekly Instagram Live weekly ask me anything/garden update. It was great fun doing them between March and now, but it is time to bring them to a close. It is highly likely I will do one per month, just to keep connections going, before starting the weekly instances again next spring. So - one each in September, October, November, December, January, February - then regular weekly sessions starting mid March 2023. This matches the last of the Friday Office Hours sessions for Growing Epic Tomatoes, weekly Zooms done with Joe Lamp’l. He and I are both ready for a bit of a break!

I will continue posting blogs - there are lots of articles in Off The Vine to post, and I expect to finish that little project by the end of 2022.

In June, I suspended the review of my tomato seed collection, stopping at #250. I will restart this review in September, realizing that there will be quite a lot of filler - varieties that I never did get to grow out, or with little background info. We’ll see how it goes.

It is time for me to focus on finishing the Dwarf Tomato Project book. Reduced gardening activity and the Instagram Lives, as well as less frequent posts on Instagram and less frequent garden updates on my blog, will provide some of that time I need to do so. In addition, I will be reducing time spent on answering emails. My plan is to focus on responding to garden questions email on one day per week - to be determined. I will start this process on September 1.

Finally - about the Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project. It has been an incredible ride - begun in 2005, it is now 17 years later - with 145 releases in various seed catalogs. Efforts on this, particularly with regard to my role - making crosses, decisions, distributing seeds - will now reduce considerably. This project will likely never formally end - work will be devolved to those who wish to take responsibility for moving various parts forward. It simply is time!

In my next blog, I will start to post my ideas on what next year’s garden - including various mini-projects - might look like. It’s way too soon for me to know for sure, but I can share some first thoughts and options!