High Dry Farm, Sultan, Washington….Certified Organic
Today I harvested the first cucumbers, and the first tomatoes from the hoophouse. Tomatoes included , Alicante, Flamme, Aunt Lucy Italian Paste, Coyote, Earl of Edgecombe, Baselbieter Rotelli, Beams Yellow Pear, Sebastopol, Indische fleiche, Slava, Bloody Butcher, Kimberly, Tigerella, Buckbees New 50 day, Amy’s Apricot, Amy’s Sugar Gem, Washington Cherry, Aurora and Debarao.
Our high tunnel is now fully planted with tomatoes, cucumbers and melons and plants are already sporting tiny fruit.
My goal is to produce 1000 plants – ten each of one hundred varieties.
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.
New varieties for 2017 planting – I just ordered these from Tomatofest.
| 1884 |
| Alaskan Fancy |
| Amy’s Apricot |
| Aurora |
| Black Zebra |
| Dicoff’s Yellow |
| Full Flavored Paste |
| Jaffa |
| Josephine Carter |
| Malinowski |
| Matina |
| Milano Plum |
| Pink Grapefruit |
| Ten Fingers of Naples |
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!
Last year on this date my tomato plants were already showing signs of late blight. So….this year I invested in a sprayer and an organic copper sulfate preparation to battle the blight fungus. But wouldn’t you know, here is today’s forecast of late blight danger in our area. Green = no danger. Yellow or Red would signal danger. Blight likes cool humid weather, but we have had hot dry weather.
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