Pics of recent harvest 7/18-7/20/14.

Pics of recent harvest 7/18-7/20/14.

Harvest time!

Here we go.   Friday evening I picked an awful lot. A few dozen Cherokee purple and Black from Tulas (which I can't tell apart),  plus orange slicer and KBs, some pasters.  Lots of black cherry - prolific!    Flamme, MLs too.   Green zebras not quite ripe .

Made 2 quarts of CP/BFT puree 7/13.   2 quarts yellow purée 7/19.  Then,   3.5 quarts purée from BFT/CP/mortgage lifter/pasters, which I simmered to reduce to 2 quarts, then made sauce with garlic and homegrown basil, salt,oregano.   On 7/20.

7/4/14 update

Happy 4th of July.  We picked a few ripe tomatoes today.  Just a few so far .  Here's a good BFT.  There was another enormous one that had a big bite taken out by a bird or squirrel but it was still huge.   A few other ripe ones had some end rot or were on the ground & gross.  However I think the twine setup is doing a decent job keeping things mostly off the ground.

   I checked the pollination attempts.  One or two fell off.  The BFT ovule looks the same.  A couple of the IRs are still intact and look like they are slightly swelling, so maybe some success there.

First cross attempts

Examples of very different pistil morphologies:  BFT (Black from Tula) is short and stubby.  Note lobate ovule.  IR (Indigo Rose) is long and thin. These are after fertilization attempts. (maybe those are specks of pollen on the ends?)  Photos taken with iPhone 4s with macro lens.

6/29/14 update

Good rain every few days lately so there's been no need to water yet. I picked a small flamme and one HC this week;   a few others are turning.   Won't be long now.   Today I forgot to bring the twine, but instead I did 5 cross attempts. Collected pollen on cut wedges of black paper plates - that worked ok for collecting.  I am pretty good now at talking apart the flowers by hand without damaging the pistil - 5 for 5 today.  So I did the following. All are recorded in format female x male.  1 & 2: IR X BFT.  not really sure if I got BFT pollen or just tiny dust? 3&4: IR X CP.  here I know I got a good pollen shake from CP.  5. BFT x IR, good pollen.  Not using bags or anything to cover the pistils as I think they are more trouble than they are worth .  

6/22/14 Update: almost harvest time

Another Sunday trip to the garden.  It's all growing well mostly- lots of tomatoes on the way.  And, the first fruit coloring up (a Flamme).  I weeded, and put up twine now up to my belly on rows 1-4.   I was going to stake row 5 - where mainly indigo rose plants are flopping around - but I forgot my stepstool and couldn't pound in the 8 foot stakes!! Maybe next time.

Generally, the Florida weave is keeping the rows 1-4 open and workable, and the plants are growing well - so far so good.