Friday, October 2, 2009

San Marzano's Last Hurrah

I have been harvesting San Marzano tomato's all summer. They are a highly productive sauce tomato. Some say they make the best sauce in the world. My experience with them has been that they make great sauce! They grow in clusters of fruit that ranges in size from three to six inches long. They are definitely a sun loving tomato. While they seemed to be equally productive in different areas of the garden, those that got the most sun, got the most size.

Many of my tomatoes are done now. I had another huge harvest of 30+# of tomatoes a couple of days ago, before the storm and have continued to average 5-10 fruit a day. Really remarkable year. I definitely am putting down the composted horse poop again. I'm not sure if it is what has made such a huge difference for me with the peppers and tomatoes this year or if was just a better choice of heirloms but I'm not taking chances. Poop hauling is not fun, but it's so worth it.

Disease has come with the cool rains that started this week and Sungold, Dr. Carolyn, Cherokee Purple, and Amish Paste are all toast. It happened overnight but it's OK, they were declining anyway. Cosmonaut Volkov is still healthy but production is waning. San Marzano and Carbon are still blooming their little hearts out. They were all knocked down to half their height in a major storm we had this week though. They bent and didn't break, so I've propped them up in the hope the remaining fruits will ripen. I probably have another 30 tomatoes still out there. If not, that's OK. It's been a great year. I don't wanna be greed.