Ripe tomatoes at last

Tomatoes! We've finally got some tomatoes! If this were July, we'd be thrilled. But it has taken until September to finally see a ripe tomato. Well, better late than never. These black cherries will be sitting in a salad by later tonight.

Some of the beefsteaks are coming along too. Maybe by the time we're back from vacation next week, an heirloom Cherokee Purple (above) or Brandywine (below) will be ready to pluck. 

We're still waiting for Aunt Ruby's German Greens (below) to ripen. They get to be a deeper shade when they're ready to eat.

All told, we won't get much of a harvest, but for all the trouble of growing these puppies from seed to vine, at least we'll get a small taste of deliciousness for fall.

Sandy, Nor'easter knock out my garden

Last two bell peppers

After a hurricane and blizzard, I guess it's safe to say the harvest season is over. Just don't tell my lettuce or broccoli plants, they're still growing. Some of the herbs are plugging along too, though the basil was whipped away by high winds. I pulled the last two bell peppers from the vines before Wednesday's nor'easter, and frankly I couldn't believe they survived Sandy!
But all in all, it's time to shut down the watering system, clip the rose bushes and close up shop.
It was a tough season. Our tomatoes had too many problems to list. Okay, I'll list a few: Rust disease, blossom drop and all around lousy production. The broccoli, though still trying, never amounted to much. The cucumbers failed. Even the pepper plants were under-performers. Only the Japanese eggplants came through in a meaningful way.
So, what's an urban gardener to do? Why look forward to next spring of course. We've already decided to go back to our old faithful tomato varieties of Brandywine, Cherokee Purple and Aunt Ruby's German Green. Just one season without them proved how valuable those strains are, at least in this growing zone. The newbies we tried out -- the Azorean Red, Black from Tula and Green Zebra --  just hated the heat. We had an early spring harvest and then nothing until October! I may try broccoli again, but I'll wait until fall; it prefers cool weather. And I'll remember to plant Kirbies instead of cucumbers. The smaller fruit seems to do better in pots.
I know it seems like a long way to planting season, but it's never too soon to start looking forward to it.

Heartbreak garden: A summer to forget



Last of the red hot tomatoes - we picked these in late July

 Oh how I hate to admit it. How I wish it wasn't so. But this season is fast shaping up to be our worst ever! We have had terrible luck in the garden, no where more evident than with our tomatoes. The season started off well. Putting the plants out a couple of weeks early thanks to a warm spring resulted in ripe tomatoes in mid-July, a full two weeks before last season. But our plants have since punked out on us. Just when we should be getting a bountiful harvest, the vines are completely bare. Not a hint of red peeking through the green leaves.
Frankly, it's a depressing sight. The prolonged hot weather, with several weeks of 90 degree or higher days and nights, is surely a culprit. Tomatoes grow best when the temperature is 80 degrees to 85 degrees during the day and in the 70s at night I recently read. Prolonged heat waves like the ones we had this summer inhibit pollination, causing blossom drop - when the flowers dry up and fall off instead of producing fruit. A recent New York Times article throws cold water on this theory, quoting lots of local farmers crowing about their fabulous crops, but I'm sticking to it, since I have only my own garden to go by.
Our choice of heirlooms may have added to our woes. We experimented with completely different varieties this year, Black from Tula, Azorean Red, Green Zebra and Pantano Romanesco, buying our seeds from Tomatofest.com. Though they were highly rated on the site, maybe they aren't as hardy as the Cherokee Purples and Brandywines we've been growing all these years. Even the Kellogg's Breakfast, with its beautiful orange fruit, faded in July after a strong start. I suppose we should always go with what we know - experimenting is fine, but with one or two plants at most, not all of them!
There have been other problems in the garden this summer. I planted cucumbers when I should have gone for the smaller Kirbies, which grow better in pots. Somehow I forgot this after learning the same lesson two years ago. The broccoli seemed like a winner early on, but so far I've harvested only three florets. My lettuce was also overcome by the heat - though now I have new seedlings growing.
To top it all off, those clever mockingbirds took to pecking at the few tomatoes we had on the vines! They're probably pissed that we put nets around our blueberry bushes.
Is it too soon to pine for next summer???

Mockingbird's lunch

Tomato surprise



Seed packets from Tomatofest.com

 This is a season of experimenting for NYC Gardener. Every year for the past six seasons, we've planted Brandywine and Cherokee Purple tomatoes along with several other varieties like Aunt Ruby's German Green and Chocolate Stripes. Last year, we didn't even buy new seeds, opting to repeat 2010's choices. This year we're going rogue. We have skipped our standard bearers all together to try out six new varieties. We went to our favorite heirloom seed site TomatoFest and looked through dozens of descriptions for tomatoes that might be just as delicious but easier to grow. I do love the Brandywine and Cherokee beefsteaks, but they take a long time to mature, so the plants are not as productive as they could be. The fruit gets so heavy on the vines that they're at risk to the windy conditions we get on our terrace. Heavy rain often causes cracking. So, this year, we decided  to go for varieties that mature a bit earlier and grow a bit smaller. We love green heirlooms, so we chose Green Zebra, a tomato served at Alice Waters' Chez Panisse. We wanted a Roma tomato to make great sauces and the Pantano Romanesco sounded like a hearty and flavorful option. We also picked one of Tomato Fest's top 10 for 2012, the Black from Tula, a Russian import with a smokey flavor. We didn't entirely turn our backs on the beefsteak. We're trying out Neves Azorean Red, "the ultimate sandwich tomato," advertised as tasty, disease resistant and productive until a frost. The only repeat is the Angora Super Sweet cherry, which we planted a few seasons ago and very much enjoyed. Last on our list is Kellogg's Breakfast, an orange beefsteak that came as a bonus from Tomato Fest. It's said to be sweet, tangy and nearly seedless. If all goes well, we should have a bang up crop. Even more amazing, all our plants are out in their pots and basking in the fresh air, more than a week ahead of our usual schedule. So, here's to a season of change!

Tomato in the pot