This is Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye, an open-pollinated indeterminate beefsteak type.
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| Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye |
As with most non-standard-color tomatoes, I find it hard to know when they are ripe. I looked at reviews of this tomato, and the consensus was to pick them when they first start to show a blush of pink. So that's what I did. Inside for a few days, they turned to the beautiful color you see above. Inside, just as lovely.
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| Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye |
Another first harvest was this Brandy Boy tomato. It's a hybrid, with Brandywine parentage. This one resembled the trait you see with many heirlooms, catfacing. This is commonly caused when several fruits in a cluster merge together. It makes it difficult to slice and avoid the corky parts, so I carve them like a turkey!
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| Brandy Boy |
With these two beefsteaks, we had to have a blind tasting.
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| Ready for a blind tasting |
I ever-so-slightly favored PBTD, and The Kitchen Goddess slightly preferred Brandy Boy. Both were wonderful, and we gave them a 9 out of 10.
This is "Taxi," an open-pollinated determinate slicer I've grown for years. If you like tomatoes on the sweet side, this is a good choice. Although we prefer more acidic ones, this was a nice contrast, and we gave it a 7 out of 10. The plant does have a short productivity window, even by determinate standards.
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| Taxi |
In "saladette" tomato first harvests, I picked a number of Burpee's Early Treat, a hybrid indeterminate. We liked this one too, giving it a 7 out of 10.
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| Burpee's Early Treat |
Another first saladette of the year was Juliet. This tomato is one of our workhorses in the canning department, though it does not taste as rich for fresh eating as we like.
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| Juliet |
Another first harvest was a Diva cucumber. This is TKG's favorite, though I wish I'd picked it a few days earlier. Just didn't see it.
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| Diva |
Another first was a Ping Tung Long eggplant. This variety typically does quite well for me, last year being an exception (no eggplants did well).
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| Ping Tung Long |
For continuing harvests, we continue to take a few artichokes, which we adore.
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| Tavor artichokes |
And the shishito peppers are coming on strong.
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| Mellow Star shishito |
Here was Monday's harvest:
And here was Friday's:
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And on Saturday, TKG and her mom brought back this impressive haul from their community garden plot:
This week TKG cleaned and trimmed the garlic I pulled a couple of weeks ago. On the left is Katterman, which I think is a selection from German White. In the middle is Russian Red, a disappointment as I said before. And on the right, Georgian Crystal. These are all hardnecks, by the way. I'm looking forward to using each of these.
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| Garlic: it cleans up nice! |
That's all for this week. Thanks for reading, and thanks once again to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.
It looks like the summer garden is producing well for you, even if the tomatoes are a bit slow. I grew Brandy Boy several years here and it was always a favorite of mine. I've not grown PBTD, but I do like the purple/black tomatoes in general. I'm not growing any this year though. There's just too many tomato varieties to try!
ReplyDeleteLovely and varied harvests. I do like the purple tomatoes as well and find them useful in many ways besides eating. Cucumbers can become oversized in no time. I'm harvesting 2-4 fifteen inch ones every day and am popular with my neighbors. Even at a larger size the Chelsea Prize does not have many seeds and the skin is still thin and flavorful.
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