Woo-hoo! Tomato season is under way! For weeks I've been watching my eight tomato plants get loaded down with tomatoes of all shapes and sizes.
Three varieties of tomatoes we are eating now. Only one SunGold is pictured because the others were eaten before the picture could be taken.Last week we started eating our SunGold cherry tomatoes. Those little guys are definitely going on my list of tomatoes to plant every year. They are like little sweet fireworks in your mouth - the juice squirting out of their skins. Mmm... those aren't lasting long in our house.
Our three-year-old eats them faster than she eats the M&Ms out of her trail mix. We are working on teaching her which ones are ripe enough to pick. We've ended up with some rather green SunGold tomatoes! I keep intending to collect enough to make an arugula and tomato pasta, put alas, they are eaten too quickly.
We've also gotten a handful of Yellow Pear tomatoes. This is the first year I've grown them and I am still learning what color they should be when picked. The first we picked too yellow and I wasn't in love with the taste. However, the next three we picked were riper and the taste was much sweeter. I've learned that I need to keep my 15-month-old away from the Yellow Pear tomatoes. He thinks they are just the right size to squeeze in his little fist.
The Cherokee Purple is the first of our slicing/beefsteak tomatoes to ripen. We haven't eaten yet...it's on the menu tonight for supper with some of our fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil. There is no better salad.
We are continuing to watch our other varieties grow larger and larger and ripen; I think a good-sized Brandywine will be the next tomato on our menu.
Fresh tomatoes are so exciting!
5 comments:
Woohoo! Our tomatoes are still weeks away, but my mouth is watering looking at your pictures!
I'm always amazed at your seasons down south. You're like MONTHS ahead of us. And I understand your plants will be dead from the heat about the time ours start producing.
Depends on how much attention I give them. The past two years, I've nursed them through August and September. We enjoyed tomatoes again in October until the first frost killed them in late October/November from the same plants we got tomatoes from earlier in the season.
Hi! I just found your blog - I love reading about gardening. We had a yellow pear tomato plant last year and loved it. My oldest daughter would eat them right off the plant. I think the best time to pick them is when they start to turn from yellow to a yellow-orange color. We've left them on the plant for up to a week or two after they turned color and they were still delicious. Alas, this year my plant nearly died because the sprinklers weren't hitting it right and I'm not sure it's going to come back. =(
Look forward to reading more!
Funny, we've never grown a yellow pear tomato that tasted anything but insipid. I suspect we don't have the heat here to develop the proper sweetness in that variety.
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