I told DH to keep his fingers crossed next year was a good one for tomatoes. The tomatoes alone would pay for the gardening year, especially if you raise all your own plants.

It will be cheaper to just buy a jar of spaghetti sauce.

We had a surpisingly good tomato crop and are still harvesting about 2 dozen regular-sized tomatoes a week and 100-200 bite-sized ones.

With all the rain in April and May, the plants had to fight to survive. Even though my plants are mostly in raised beds, a foot of rain in one day (April 29th, I think) was extremely hard on them and left them waterlogged for weeks and weeks. Since their growth stalled, the main harvest was later than usual, but once it started, it was great.

I have a lot of pureed tomatoes and stewed tomatoes in plastic freezer containers in the freezer, quite a lot canned as spaghetti sauce, plain tomato sauce, multi-purpose flavored sauce as a base for cooking, salsa, and thousands of bite-sized toms dehydrated and stored in the freezer in gallon-sized freezer bags. I have never worked as hard to put up tomatoes and peppers as I did this summer. In the past, I tended to give away most of the excess but this year I put most of it up for winter.

The grocery store prices on veggies are shocking. I haven't bought many veggies at all since the garden started producing last spring and had 'sticker shock' a couple of weeks ago when I picked up a few canned items to make a big crock pot of taco soup (I was in a hurry because it was for a bereaved family and I didn't want to wait to thaw out all my frozen veggies.). With prices like that, I'm glad we filled up our three freezers and root cellar. I hope to do a better job of raising even more veggies next year.

I think one of the factors driving veggie and fruit prices upward is the high price of petroleum and petroleum by-products. Since the average food item travels 1500 miles from the farm of its origin to our grocery stores, a lot of the price has to be transportation costs. Just one more reason to make us all want to grow more of our own.

Dawn

Lord.

I'm hoping next year is better!

Beth

I'm going to put in a BIG patch of Black Cherry tomatoes, in 2010! Our plants got a really late start. But once they got going, they have produced really well. And, that is the best flavored tomato I've ever tried.

George

I am planning big next year too. I may have to try substituting squash when it calls for tomatoes! (just kidding).

glenda

Isn't Black Cherry amazing? I remember when Vince Sapp introduced it. I was skeptical about it, and remember thinking that there was no way it would be anything more than a 'fad' because the black heirloom tomatoes were becoming so popular, and I felt like it likely was just an effort to capitalize on their popularity. Of course, I was 100% wrong! I just love Black Cherry. If the only cherries I grew were SunGold and Black Cherry, I'd be a happy camper because, at least for my taste buds, there aren't any better cherry tomatoes anywhere.

In a good year, my Black Cherries are producing ripe tomatoes less than two months after they were transplanted into the soil, George, but they were kinda late too in this year's horrible wet, cloudy, rainy spring. I'm hoping next year will be better.

Glenda, I do wonder if you had the true Black Cherry because ours have had amazing flavor every single year we've grown them, and we've grown them every year since they came out, I think. There are a couple of other tomatoes out there that look like Black Cherry, and I don't think they have as full and as rich of a flavor.

It might be that you had too much rain and too much cloudy, cool weather too. I have found that those conditions affect the flavor of some tomatoes more than others. The flavor of our Black Cherries was 'good' all season long, but it definitely got better and more rich and more intense as the weather got hotter and sunnier in July and August.

Raising and eating our own tomatoes has totally ruined me for eating grocery store tomatoes--I cannot stand them! It seems to me that the only qualities needed in order to qualify as a 'tomato' in stores nowadays is that they need to be sort-of-red and sort-of-round (many commercial ones seem more square every year...probably so they can fit more easily into shipping boxes) and it doesn't matter if they have good texture or good flavor. When people say they don't like tomatoes, I always wonder if they've ever had a real home-grown fresh-from-the-vine never-refrigerated fully-ripe tomato.

Dawn

If you have a Target nearby look for their brand Market Pantry Whole Peeled Tomatoes under a buck for 28 oz can.

George

I never have the abundance of tomatoes that many of you have. I have tomatoes to eat, and they taste good, but I have just not mastered tomato growing like I would like to. I would like to be a tomato princess like Dawn. LOL

George, How many beans did you plant to get the kind of harvest you had this year? I normally only plant pole beans so I can pick standing up and because they produce over a longer period of time, but I am thinking that I may do some bush beans next year for preserving since they make their crop all within a few weeks....and because I have MANY packages of bean seed to try.

We did have one Sungold, which didn't do well. I guess it didn't "ask" for salt either. But I didn't find myself searching for more and more of them, like I am still doing with Black Cherry.

Carol, when we have a normal year 32' of cattle panel, planted in pole beans, would probably do it for us. But I never do less than the equivalent of 48'. This year the early plantings didn't produce more than a couple "messes" for dinner. One whole panel of Tennessee Cutshort basically sat there all summer, producing a smattering of stunted, misshapen pods. Then, this fall, it kicked in and did alright, even though half the plants had already died.

I did one fairly large planting of Cherokee Striped Cornhill pole bean, which didn't even flower until the middle/end of July, and I planted it in April! But it redeemed itself at the end of the season, producing buckets and buckets of big beautiful string beans. I planted this one on about 12 poles and had a regular jungle.

The only bush bean I grew this year was Red Peanut bean, a half runner, from Sandhill Preservation. It is a tasty, very early bean, and did well planted alongside of our onions & garlic. But frankly, if I'm willing to wait a little less than two weeks longer, I can have Tennessee Cutshorts, which will produce so much longer and make so much more food!

George

So, based on the late bean production, do you think that Cherokee Striped Cornhill is a daylength-sensitive bean?

My fall beans are still producing. In fact, I picked a good-sized mess of beans Saturday and need to pick again today. If it weren't for good fall bean production, we wouldn't have enough in the freezer for winter.

Next year I want to plant a lot more beans because no matter how many we raise and put up, we eat them all long before the next year's crop is even planted.

I'd love to replace our entire lawn with nothing but beans and southern peas. Then I could spend the summer picking beans instead of mowing bermuda grass. I don't think I'll be able to convice Tim that we don't need a lawn around the house though.

Dawn

Dawn - I plan to plant more beans also and am trying to figure out how many I need to plan for.

No matter how many you plant, it will not be enough because home-grown beans are so good.

In the one year in which I had the best harvest, and we didn't run out of frozen beans until we were ready to pick fresh beans, I planted about 120 bush bean plants and probably 40-50 pole bean plants on tee pees.

In "How To Grow More Vegetables.....", John Jeavons recommends 224 bush green bean plants and 144 bush lima bean plants for a family of 4 if you were trying to grow a year's supply. Of course, some varieties produce more per plant than others, but his recommendations do seem pretty good to me. I get a backache, though, thinking about picking beans from that many bush plants....and I am not sure how to figure out how many pole beans to plant to replace part of the bush bean plants.

If you're trying to raise enough beans to feed all your summer visitors AND have some left to freeze or can for y'all to have all year, you might as well just go ahead and till up whatever lawn area remains and plant it in beans. On the other hand, if you could time the planting so that your bean picking period coincides with all the summer visits, you'd have lots of help picking all the beans!

Dawn

I have two DILs that would be more than happy to help with canning or freezing or whatever. One would help because she wants to learn to do everything, and the other would help just because she can't stop working. She has 6 children, all of which she home schools, and has just completed a bachelors degree and is working on a masters, while my son is getting a PHD. She is a dynamo. I needed a new stove top when they were here. I bought one and my son installed it and she wired it. She was a medical equipment repair specialist in the Air Force when they met so she has bo problem with electric things.

The other DIL is the one that helped me wallpaper an accent wall and also worked in the garden all day. She says she values "mother-in-law time" and loves to learn to do things. She watches me cook and takes notes.

The 3rd one will sometimes help with "projects" but some of that may be because she knows the other two do it. She has a maid. LOL

We had a lot of family visit this summer plus several friends. My neighbors said it was like a motel over here. I don't have company in October and November so I don't have an excuse now.....except for rain.

It sounds like your DILs would be a great help should you decide to attempt to raise a world-record amount of beans in the home veggie garden. Do they have their own gardens at their homes yet? I think it is perfectly lovely that you have a daughter-in-law who values 'mother-in-law' time--that is really sweet.

I cannot even imagine having a maid. Even though housework is not my most favorite way to spend time, I still cannot imagine paying someone else to do it.

The rain, I think, is a really great excuse. I don't know what it is like there, but it definitely is too wet here to do anything outdoors.

It is gorgeous and sunny here so maybe the mud can dry up a little before more rain falls on Thursday. It was unexpectedly cold here last night....was supposed to be 46 to 48 and instead it went down to 39. More odd weather...and I bet we'll see a lot more of similar weather the next six months.

Dawn

Dawn, Cherokee Striped Cornhill certainly acted like a day length sensitive variety. I'll have to see how it acts over another year or two. The first year, I got it in late, so I wouldn't have noticed. I wrote to Anthony West (a.k.a. blueflint), who sent me my seed, and he was surprised that it behaved this way. I believe he's grown it more than have I. So, perhaps it's an environmental thing. It's still a great bean. But the ideal "homesteading bean," in my opinion, produces quickly.

George

Not to get too off-topic, but isn't it great to have a daughter-in-law that you really like and respect. I already find myself thinking on a regular basis about the chances that all my kids will find good spouses, or at least better than their mom found!

I'm down to my last couple dozen tomatoes for the year (to keep a bit on-topic).

Scott

After your tomato experience, I made it a point to look at the canned tomatoes in a local store yesterday, and the 28 oz. cans were $1.28 for the store brand, and $1.64 for a major brand.

George,

Maybe the beans were late because of our odd weather? Everything in my garden seemed to cycle in-and-out of production this year, instead of producing regularly. The only exception was tomatoes and peppers, which mostly produced nonstop (and still are). The okra, beans, black-eyed peas, cukes, melons, etc. all seemed to stall during the frequent cool and cloudy spells, and then would produce like mad during the hotter, drier periods.

I'm thinking maybe the cornfield beans didn't get enough consistent sun/heat to produce earlier.

Even now, my beans and cukes will slow down during a cooler and cloudier period. Then, we'll have a couple of days of warmer and sunnier weather and they'll speed up again.

Scott, I am still picking tomatoes regularly, but the harvest has slowed down a whole lot and I am hoarding them and trying to make them last as long as possible.

Our son is married to a real doll, and I have to admit that there were times I worried he'd fall in love with and marry whoever he was dating at the time, and that particular person wasn't one I would have chosen for him if I could do the choosing. So, yes, it's a great relief that his wife is wonderful in every way and we're thrilled the two of them found each other.

I don't think your wife did too badly, by the way! LOL Since she decided to keep you, you must be a 'keeper' and I imagine she hopes the kids will one day find someone just like you.

Dawn

Dawn, it is possible that's what caused these beans to behave the way they did. They were planted through a thick oak/pecan leaf mulch, so during the early part of the summer, they would not have warmed up as quickly as the rest of the garden. Then, of course we had 9 weeks with almost no rain and above 100 F temps. That tends to make plants go somewhat dormant. They starting flowering just before the heat wave broke.

George

My wife and I pray for them daily and go through lists of important qualities occasionally. Our girls get it. The boys are pretty clueless, but they are still 8 and under.

I was mistaken about only having a few tomatoes left. A couple of beds that I picked pretty bare at the beginning of the month have some decent looking ones again. Not a lot, but a couple dozen at least.

I truly believe one way we teach our children to pick a good spouse is by being a good spouse ourselves and teaching by example. I hope that our children observe how their parents treat one another and then choose someone who will treat them with the same kind of love and respect.

Scott,

I've noticed the same thing with our tomatoes. Plants that I'd pretty much stripped of fruit now have quite a lot of green tomatoes that are a pretty decent size so we may get one more big round of tomatoes before a freeze hits, or at least we'll have a lot of green ones to pick and hopefully ripen inside well into November or December. It just all depends on the weather and who knows what it will do. If November and December are very, very rainy, we could get close to a record annual rainfall here (I think the current record is 58 or 59", and we're at about 47 or 48" here now), although I still don't think it will happen. Of course, I did not think a foot of rain would ever fall in one day either, and it did this year.

I also have black-eyed peas blooming, y'all, and that is just bizarre because it definitely is too cold here for that. So far, though, the blooms haven't set any peas.

Dawn

Speaking of tomatoes: I got Dr. Carolyn Male's book on heirloom tomatoes today.............already have 8 marked. I am looking for good leaf coverage and resistant to disease! One she really touts is Aker's West Virginia. I will not plant that many varieties so now I have to think about who will make the cut!

Barbara

George

I think Jay is our walking data base because he's grown far more varieties than I have. I'm just a walking list on notecards.

Barbara,

If you'll tell us what your criteria are for a perfect tomato, maybe we can suggest some varieties for you.

Also, if 2009 was your first year to grow any particular variety, I wouldn't judge a tomato solely on its performance in one year. I generally give a tomato variety 2 or 3 years to prove itself 'worthy' before I drop it. Because 2009 was too cloudy, too wet and too cool, the quality of many home-grown tomatoes suffered terribly.

I grow some tomatoes for processing only, some for dehydrating and some for fresh eating. My criteria for the three types varies.

Dawn