Cresting the wave for 2017

They were beautiful once

Ugggggh bleaching

How fast July transforms a beautiful garden into a baked wasteland of dried branches, weeds and spotty fruit.   It's been very hot and dry for about 2 solid weeks and that is enough to do a real number on an unwatered garden. I saw a fair amount of sun-bleaching on tomatoes this time, which is something I haven't seen a lot of before.   I think it's the prolonged heat and sun during the ripening period.  Basically the hottest, sunniest part of the fruit turns white, and a week or so later develops dark purple fungus as it begins to decay.   So... too much rain, you get cracking.  Too much sun, you get bleaching.   More foliage up top would reduce the sun bleaching.
But it was past the main haul, and cracking was reduced thanks to the dry conditions.

Although I think I had a bit less fruit rotting on the ground this time - thanks to some good early twining - it still is an issue, and would be reduced by aggressive and proper pruning.  I just could not put in that amount of effort on 100 plants in the June time frame when it would have been required.  In other words, fewer plants might have had a better yield per plant.

Interestingly, I got a decent harvest of large, good quality MLs in the July 18 harvest.  But CP was on its way out.  By July 22 no decent CPs were left - CP got hit hard by rot.  Cracking may contribute.  Anyway , not a good year for CP. Perhaps it is too large, and a smaller similar variety like Carbon (or one of my new ones from the cross!) will be more productive to grow.

Awww yisssss July 18 2017

Yield data.
July 18:  SS+Roma: 15 lbs.  GZ+OS 15 lbs.  FL: 8 lbs.  ML+CP+RT: 18 lbs.
July 22: SS+Roma: 14 lbs.  GZ+OS: 14 lbs.  FL: 2 lb 10 oz.   "28D": 2 lb 10 oz. (58 might be in here too.)   This is about 90 lbs, almost all from the heirlooms.  I estimate about 3.75 lbs/plant from SS+Roma averaged; about 1.5 lbs/plant from Flamme.   ML, prob ~ 3 lbs/plant.

Green Zebra, toppling the twine

Green Zebra did quite well in contrast to last year.  Of course I had 6 plants this time vs 4 plants last year and 2 the year before, but, the past 2 years running GZ fruit seemed prone to disease?   Well this time I've got about 20 lbs so far from the 6 plants.  Enough to can 2 quarts of skinned fruit yesterday. Also canned 1 qt of romas.    Last week I also froze about 10 bags of puree for saucing.

Here's examples of well-pruned plants in my fellow farmers' plots.  Not all are immune to dying foliage.  Also, some of these may be hardy hybrids.  Food for thought anyway,