Tomatoes are here!
Summer is still blazing on despite what these lovely, overcasty days might be trying to tell us. We have tomatoes and eggplants coming in now! It has been a long time coming but we now expect to start having tomatoes with us at market. Hallelujah! I am so happy to finally be able to have a BLT with our own tomatoes and lettuce. Now it truly feels like summer.
Tomatoes with amazing purple shoulders.
Since tomatoes are coming I think it’s appropriate to talk about the ones we are growing. We have 300 feet of tomato rows planted in the field. First row is cherry/salad tomatoes, the next two are both heirloom slicers. The tomatoes are trellised using the Florida weave with 6-foot-tall T-post staked between every 4 plants. In the future we want to change this to every 3 plants (the slicers are just too heavy). As for what kind of tomatoes they are, we are growing a few varieties that were bred by our late mentor Casey Piscura, one called Mountain Flair and the other Cosmic Purple Rain.
The Mountain Flair tomato is a beautiful red color with orange and yellow stripes. These tomatoes have a lower acidity and are excellent sliced for sandwiches and salads or just eaten on their own with some crunchy bread and salt. Cosmic Purple Rain is a cherry tomato strain that are yellow with dark, splotchy purple stripes. They add a wonderful splash of color and a delightful, sweet flavor to whatever you prepare with them. We are extremely excited to be growing this variety and cannot wait to share them with you.
Some of the first tomatoes we have harvested! Look at the variety!
The rest are heirloom varieties, the seeds were saved by Mark Gravel (Magda’s Dad’s neighbour) who has been stewarding these varieties for over a decade. Unfortunately the list what was planted has got misplaced in the mad ruch of pllanting. So we will ahve to wait until the tomaotes ripe and then cross-reference them to find out what was planted where.
Since this is our first time cultivating these varieties we will all be experiencing them for the first time together! When we were first deciding what crops and varieties to grow this season, I revelled in seed catalogs, circling all of my favorite tomatoes (with a few exciting new varieties to try just for fun) when Magda told me not to worry. She had all the tomato seed covered.
Fast forward to us planting in the field and not having a clue what to call the plants we were putting in the ground. I will admit that I was a bit concerned using a bunch of untested tomato varieties for our first season growing on this land. But now that they are all coming in I am excited to taste them all and decide which ones we like best. We hope that ya’ll will be willing to share your opinions on these tomatoes with us. There is a plethora of shapes and sizes, ranging from large multi-colored heirlooms to pear shaped cherries. Hopefully, a little something for everyone.
Little eggplant coming in strong.
Our eggplant deserve a little bit of the spotlight as well. We are growing a variety called Annina. It is an Italian eggplant with purple and white stripes. It is excellent in pasta dishes and we especially love to make eggplant parmesan with it. The plants themselves are large and resilient. They are particularly productive as well. We should have a few of these available at market soon.
More lovely tomatoes coming in. What variety is this? I have no idea!
That concludes our little tomato (and eggplant) round up! Look out for them at the upcoming Ypsi Farmer’s Market. As always we will be there from 9am-1pm so stop by and say hello. Cannot even begin to tell you how much it means to us.
Magda will giving a talk on seeds at the Belleville Library on August 27th 6:30-7:30pm. It will be a fun and informative discussion about the importance of seed and saving it. Otherwise keep up to date with all things Dog Star Farm on our Instagram and we will see you soon.
Peace!
Zach and Magda
