As I sat down on my haunches and appeared beneigth the canopy of tomato vines, I got the first glimpse of a monster crop. I crept further down the row, now examining a new location on my back, “Man, that’s a lot of fruit.” Walking through the whole trellised area where the 3,000 plants grow, I surveyed nothing but really healthy leaves and a lot of green tomatoes. I’m pretty sure that we’re looking at the biggest tomato crop I’ve ever seen. In saying that, I feel like some old miner who came across a huge gold vein. Eureka!
Now, however, the question is whether this is a blessing or a curse. Only now are we starting to get just a touch of color on the tomatoes, a time we call ‘break’ as in ‘the tomatoes are starting to break.’ It would be best if we have some gentle weather…mild and with small swings in temperature. This will allow the fruit to ripen slowly and we can keep up on picking tomatoes as they go from green to orange to red. IF we find ourselves at 90 degrees during the day and 50 at night, these puppies are going to go fast and we’ll be running to keep up. Also, there are only so many tomatoes we can sell use each week in the CSA boxes or sell at the market or farm stands.
Let’s see what happens. One thing I know for sure is that tomatoes are in our future.
In the box:
- Tomato mix
- ‘Trinity’ sweet corn
- Fresh Oregano
- Radishes
- Bunch of Carrots
- Red Onion
- Fresh Garlic
- ‘Norland’ Red Potatoes
- Japanese Eggplant: https://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/grilled-japanese-eggplant-73586
Lida Farm 