Close call, that, with the knee - examination showed that it is still attached (!!) - actually, the mishap and buckle caused my knee arthritis to be tweaked, leading to significant fluid build up (=pain!). Going slow, keeping off the knee for a bit, is the ticket to a more mobile me. No knee replacement in my imminent future, which is good news!

The driveway garden is now significantly different. Dead, dying or no longer expected to produce dwarf tomatoes in grow bags are no more, and those that still have some fruit were moved to more secure locations. Next task will be spacing out the peppers and eggplant, after which I can do a full assessment, including a video update and pictures. The pepper and eggplant plants are loaded!

Somehow, despite this difficult season, I've managed to save seeds from most every tomato grown in the driveway - and the side yard garden is now beginning to bear some ripe fruit (Ferris Wheel, Cherokee Chocolate, Tiger Tom, Whopper, and the early dwarfs in particular). We won't get a heavy yield - the sun exposure just isn't sufficiently significant any longer - but it will provide some good eating once the driveway tomatoes are long gone (which will happen soon).

We also just did another round of tomato canning - we now have 24 quarts put down (which exceeds my mid summer expectations by...24 quarts!). If the side garden decides to really kick in, I'd love to do another 7 quarts - one can never have enough canned home grown tomatoes over the fall, winter and spring!

A few things - I am getting ready for the Monticello Heritage Harvest Festival, over Labor Day weekend. I've submitted a blog entry, and have a few more ready to go. My knee issue left me unable to attend the final Zely and Ritz tomato dinner. After Monticello, there is a West Point at Eno program (Sat Sept 14 at 10 AM - I am doing a season assessment and wrap up, with lots of Q and A). 

Once things settle down I will look back and assess the garden in this most busy and complicated season. One thing for sure is that the tomato flavors have been, for the most part, quite spectacular!  I hope you are all eating well from your gardens!

I really don't mind doing internal painting - really I don't. Sometimes I make iffy decisions, and my mind rambles elsewhere. Saturday, as I was on the top step of a step stool (not ladder), barefooted (not in sneakers) sanding some crown molding, I stepped down - but missed the step. I tried to catch myself with my right leg, but my already damaged knee (torn ACL) buckled....after a few minutes of writing in pain on the floor, I realized my painting time was done for the day (week...). So, I am off to the orthopod today to see what I did to my poor right knee. Sue has been great taking up not only the painting, but garden picking and watering slack. I am no stranger to knee injuries...but experiencing them at 57 is a bit different than at 37, it seems!

On to better things....yesterday's tomato spot on Niki Jabbour's Year Round Gardener radio show was really fun - and the podcast of the spot can be found here. 

Yesterday I managed to hobble to the sink to sieve the seeds of over 100 cups of saved, fermented tomato seeds. It took hours, but it is satisfying to know that the majority of the tomato seed saving work is nearing completion. Soon I will attack another 40 or so varieties. 

And now on to early thoughts about next year. Our seedling sales method has been pretty much unchanged for over 15 years - I pick out varieties, start seedlings, and we bring them to the market for a few weekends in April and May. This ends up in significant seedling overage for many varieties, and with the cost of materials (and time), combined with a big increase in other heirloom tomato seedling vendors, I just feel it is time to ratchet things down to a more manageable (and less wasteful) process.

I haven't through through all of the details, but it is likely to entail a far more customized, targeted approach. I will likely come up with a selection of potential offerings, post them on my webpage (and perhaps email them out to those customers whose email address is known) - and grow to the proposed orders. I may reduce my Farmers Market days to just a single weekend - or not at all, instead scheduling pick ups here, at our house, or at another agreed to, convenient location for all concerned. 

This will also be well aligned to my plans to significantly reduce my garden size and complexity for next year. I need to provide much more space for plants (less density - less disease), and start moving from indeterminate varieties toward our new Dwarfs. All of this is preliminary thinking - but thinking out loud, so that all of you have plenty of opportunity to provide feedback, either through comments or email.

I am someone who loves change - and it feels like it is time to change a few things about our springs, and my gardens.

We are in the thick of it - over the last few days, we've canned 17 quarts of tomatoes, and this is far better than it looked like we could achieve a few weeks ago. Just as in recent years, the approaching end of July signifies the end of our tomato season.....maybe! The side yard garden is coming along very slowly, but a few varieties - the three Cherokees, in particular - seem pretty loaded up with green fruit. Fingers crossed that we can get a second wave of ripe fruit...24 quarts sounds better to me for surviving the fall/winter/spring tomato-less seasons!

Tomorrow at 10 AM EST I will be on the radio with Niki Jabbour for a 30 min slot discussing tomatoes - live link is here. 

With all of the ripe tomatoes coming in, seed saving is a major current activity - there are probably 100 plus cups of fermenting tomato pulp in my garage that need sieving tomorrow. It is amazing to think I may end up with saved seed from just about everything I grew.  

We are eating a lot of tomatoes, and they've been wonderful. Some of the dwarfs - Summer Sunrise, Dwarf Sweet Sue, Dwarf Mr. Snow, Summertime Gold, Dwarf Emerald Giant - are spectacular. Many of my old favorites grown for the book are superb - Brandywine, Lillian's Yellow, Hugh's, Ruby Gold, all of the various Cherokees - we are in tomato heaven right now!

First, an apology - doing regular updates is now a challenge - the book stuff sucked a lot of time; watering takes more, and now we've added some home improvement work (meaning....painting some rooms!). Plus, it is just so miserably hot and humid out there, and it really depresses me to spend much time around diseased tomato plants.  
I think that there are lots of interesting things going on with the peppers and eggplant; we need to harvest, I need to assess the ornamental hots - probably within the next few days.

The following tomatoes are tasting great and bearing well - Mexico Midget, Tiger Tom, Sungold, Little Lucky.  And that's pretty much it in terms of good yields.

These are yet to really come in, but the flavors are just fine - Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Green, cherokee Purple (what else is new...that trio always tastes great to me), and Polish.

And these dwarfs equal in flavor or nearly so to the indeterminate varieties - Perth Pride, Dwarf Emerald Giant, Summertime Gold, Sleeping Lady (best it's ever tasted to me), Dwarf Beryl Beauty, Rosella Purple, Adelaide Festival, Rosella Crimson, Dwarf Golden Heart, an unexpected green heart F2 from Fancy, Dwarf Lemon Ice, Dwarf Pink Passion, and Bundaberg Rumball.  Many of them are having a hard time with disease.

I've got three trays of dwarfs yet to be tasted.....

The big question - will the indeterminates and dwarfs in the big garden (in dirt) eventually produce - or will disease get them first (the trees around the garden are much taller and this is likely going to be the last year for tomatoes in that area - it just isn't worth the effort - not enough sun, and soil increasing in disease and decreasing in quality).

How are things tasting (and yielding) for all of you?

Random thoughts this morning....

I am tired but satisfied - Stephen and I had a productive, busy week, but a second major milestone is now as complete as possible...the book text draft 1 is submitted, and photographs for the book are taken.  

It was hard to pay much attention to the garden last week with all of the chaos of slicing, photos, labeling and tasting. The driveway, frankly, looks awful - lots of disease, sun-baked, askew - it is hard for me to even look at it, never mind continue to water and tend and pick...

The endless plethora of rain has been replaced with searing heat and sweltering humidity - it is hard to get enough water into the containers - at one point the eggplant looks worse than half dead!

This morning's haul at the Farmers Market was a nice orange fleshed seedless watermelon (from Cox Farms), Canary melon (from Naylors), blackberries (from John Farmer's family), along with peaches and zucchini.

Today's must do list - sieve the seed that's been fermenting, perhaps far too long, in the garage, and save seeds from tomatoes that have been sitting in the same area for far too long!

Dive into the tangles that represent the dwarf tomatoes, record observations, pick, seed save and taste (there are ripe fruit on most of them, and likely, some surprises) - and then do the same with the indeterminate tomatoes.

Catch up on what's going on with the sweet and hot peppers, eggplant and experimental peppers - pick some Padrons and eggplant

Roast coffee!

I probably won't get through it all, but that's where things are - it is about catching up on lost time (and hoping I have the energy to do so....the Red Sox are on at 4 - a significant distraction!).

Tonight - tomato bisque!

This has been a really productive week already, and it is only half complete. Stephen (my book photographer) and I have been at it pretty much non-stop since Monday, and it won't end until Friday. (I won't be able to attend the Thurs PM Zely and Ritz tomato dinner - too much work to do while Stephen is in town).

Today was our "tomato day on the road" - we got to visit (thanks to the warm hospitality and generosity of some of my friends and tomato seedling customers) a selection of local gardens, as well as the Raleigh State Farmers Market and the garden at West Point on the Eno, for pictures and a few of the "missing" tomatoes. We put about 200 miles on the car making the rounds, and it was fun and productive (and HOT!).

I am not sure if seeing how other gardeners are struggling makes me feel better...or equally distraught. The season began with so much promise, but it was washed away in seemingly endless rain and clouds. It is hard to tell exactly how many and which diseases are hitting my plants - I think I've got early blight, septoria, fusarium, bacterial wilt, perhaps even late blight - it is depressing, and fairly unprecedented. To me, figuring out what exactly is causing the problems is secondary to thinking about what to do next year to avoid a similar situation as best we all can. 

And so, hang in there, friends and fellow tomato growers and tomato lovers. As I always say, one of the truly great things about gardening is that seasons eventually come to an end and we get to do it all again next year.

By the way - I will be returning to Southern Season on October 16 (Wednesday, 6 PM) to do something new - participation in a cooking class focused on different Chiles. More info will follow - I will be there along with Alex Hitt and the lead instructor, Charis West. It should be quite fun (and something completely new for me!).

Final words - once again, thanks to the many of you who are coming to my tomato rescue this week!

Today was a good day - I was honored to again have the opportunity to help deliver a Southern Seasons Cooking School course on everything Heirloom Tomatoes, alongside Alex Hitt of Peregrine Farm, and main instructor Charis. Stephen Garrett, my book photographer, also was able to attend and took some great shots of Alex's wonderful tomatoes and Charis's delicious dishes. We are pondering a fall course on various Chili recipes!

Stephen will be here all week, into next week, and we hope to complete all book photography. I still have a need for particular tomatoes (and some of my blog readers and seedling customers sent me emails to offer assistance). I will contact all of those who responded to my SOS individually - Stephen and I will likely schedule visits to some of you to capture your growing technique and gather some of the my missing tomato varieties - watch your email.

Some others have offered photographs, which is generous and appreciated. I asked Stephen to produce a brief guideline that I will post in my next blog (and at Tomatoville as well) so that those who offered pictures of some specific varieties can decide if their pictures can meet our needs. (It really is about having to match Storey - the publisher - spec request for pictures, in terms of size, background, etc).

I am reiterating the varieties that I most greatly seek:

Most critical (my plants are either dead, diseased or have no or just small fruit) - Lillian's Yellow, Green Giant, Lucky Cross, Little Lucky, Yellow Oxheart, Nepal, Brandywine, Cherokee Chocolate, Lillian's Red Kansas, Golden Queen, Favorite, Magnus, Matchless, Giant Syrian, Anna Russian, Yellow White, Bisignano #2, Abraham Lincoln, Mortgage Lifter, Ferris Wheel, any of the released Dwarfs (Sweet Sue, Summertime Green, Emerald Giant, Rosella Purple, Wild Fred, Summertime Gold, Mr. Snow in particular).

I think some of the above may make it from my garden later this week, or even in a few weeks when my side yard, dirt planted garden begins to produce (it is running far behind!).

Stephen and I will be attending the Zely and Ritz tomato dinner on Thursday night, July 18....we hope to see some of you there!

And as always, thanks in advance for anything you can do to help out in this rather (unexpectedly stressful!) time!

At some point mid-next week, my book photographer will be paying me a visit so that we can wrap up the necessary photos. This most challenging gardening season is proving to be a bit problematic; my plan of two plants each of a set of varieties to be featured is proving to be only partially successful. I've got a driveway garden that is struggling the most with disease that is very close to having ripe fruit, but I've lost a few key varieties. The big side yard garden is moving really slowly; cloudy days and taller trees (since I've planted tomatoes in that area) mean spotty or late fruit set. 

And so, I will be seeking ripe examples of particular varieties, most of which I carried as seedlings this spring. Once I nail down the exact photography dates, it would be wonderful if any of you with varieties listed below that will be ripe during those dates could contact me; I'd be happy to buy the tomatoes from you so we can photograph and use them in recipes.  ([email protected] - email me). I may luck out and have more of these than it currently looks - but as we all know, gardening is unpredictable!

Here is the list - 

Most critical (my plants are either dead, diseased or have no or just small fruit) - Lillian's Yellow, Green Giant, Lillian's Red Kansas, Golden Queen, Favorite, Magnus, Matchless, Giant Syrian, Anna Russian, Yellow White, Bisignano #2, Abraham Lincoln, Ruby Gold (Gold Medal), Mortgage Lifter, Ferris Wheel, any of the released Dwarfs (Sweet Sue, Summertime Green, Emerald Giant, Rosella Purple, Wild Fred, Summertime Gold, Mr. Snow in particular)

I think I will be OK, but would love to know if you have any good specimens, just in case:  Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Chocolate, Cherokee Green, Lucky Cross, Little Lucky, Coyote, Big Boy, Yellow Oxheart, Nepal, Brandywine (I am good with Tiger Tom, Mexico Midget and Sungold)

Some of you also sent me notes on different growing methods - I am particularly interested in Florida Weave techniques or other clever raised bed tomato support methods, or straw bale growing, just to have examples - also classic tall tomato caging.

Thanks - more info to come - out to slog into the wet to see what's going on out there!  And thanks in advance for any help you can provide with ripe tomatoes!

Last night, my wife Susan and I enjoyed the first Zely and Ritz tomato dinner of the summer. As always, it was wonderful - you can find the dates and menu at the link here. 

Yesterday I showed you the latest with eggplant - today, the latest with peppers (the large grow bag peppers - I will do a collage of the small pot ornamentals some other time).  Today I actually picked a selection of tomatoes (mostly dwarfs) - and was distressed at the poor condition of some of the fruit (blossom end and other types of rotting) - though there are a few near perfect specimens. I've got pictures to take, and will provide an update soon. 

Without further delay - peppers!

Top row:  Amethyst - 2011 selection; Amethyst - 2012 selection; Candy Corn
next: Chocolate Bell, Cubanelle, Etna
third: Fire Opal, Fish, Garden Sunshine
4th: Gemstone, Kalman Hungarian, Oda
5th:  Orange Bell, Padron, Pinata
6th: Red Belgium, Red Corno di Toro, Royal Purple
7th: Sunrise, Sunset, World Beater

Some of these will be changing into final colors soon....then seed saving begins.

By the way - we finally discovered why people love Padron Pepper tapas. I picked a handful of smaller ones the other night - heated a bit of olive oil in a heavy pan, added the Padrons, and let them char on all sides - sprinkle with some sea salt, eat them whole.....so delicious - and the heat varied widely (the bigger ones got quite hot!). Positively addictive - we can't wait to do it again!