Category: Tomatoes

As usual, the tomato plants in the garden have all fallen to late blight, but the tomato plants in the high tunnel greenhouse are still thriving. Here are some of our heirloom beauties.

The first tomatoes are finally ripening in my high tunnel. This is Slava, a dependably early variety.

The first fruit to ripen this year are Washington Cherry (left) and Bloody Butcher.

This year I produced over 120 different heirloom tomato varieties, and more than 1000 plants total, in gallon containers. I have sold almost 600 of them so far this year, at wholesale, to local garden centers.  I am attracting a growing customer base, who learn that my plants do better than plants from other growers. Commercial greenhouses are heated at temperatures that give fast plant growth, but produce soft plants that go into shock when gardeners put them out in the cool Puget Sound Spring weather. My plants are grown at cooler temperatures, so they are already well adapted.

Growing 100+ varieties of heirloom tomatoes creates such an amazing color palette!

Of the 124 varieties of tomatoes I am growing, these 4 were the first to ripen fruit.

[su_dropcap size=”2″]T[/su_dropcap]hanks to our exceptionally warm Spring, my tomato plants are three weeks ahead of where they were last year. The following varieties already have (green) fruit –

• Alicante
• Ananas Noir
• Bloody Butcher
• Buckbee’s New 50 day
• Burraker’s Favorite
• Carmello
• Napoli
• Coyote
• Earl of Edgecomb
• Eva Purple Ball
• Flamme
• Fred Limbaugh
• Indische Fleische
• Kellogs
• Kimberly
• Koralik
• Lahman’s Pink
• Marianne’s Peace
• New Hampshire
• Old Brooks
• Purple Russian
• Quedlinberger
• Riviera
• Sasha Altai
• Sunset Red Horizon
• Tondino
• Tommy Toe