Speaking of Tomatoes

Traditionally, January is the month of garden planning. However I began planning mine back in August, so by now the plan is pretty much done. I'm also using a spreadsheet to organize and calculate my choices. Spreadsheets are a very powerful tool, and one must be cautious that such power be used for good and not for evil. So far, 2009's garden will cost approximately $1,614 not counting the stone mulch, cubic yard of vermiculite, and lumber for the 15 new raised beds. Ok maybe that's a little extreme but I have been on gardening hiatus for about 6 years and I guess I'm just making up for lost time. Also the fact that the new house has about 1/3 acre yard with basically nothing except grass, Only 2 trees and is fenced in, makes me a little giddy. Included in that amount is 18 fruit trees and a hedge of Leyland Cypress so don't roll your eyes like Pakman.

I did narrow my tomato varieties from about 25 down to 11 finalists and feel very good about it. They are:

Regular Red Slicers:

New Big Dwarf: Only 60 days, determinant 2' tall plants, producing 12 to 16 oz fruit, going to grow this one in containers.

Stupice (rhymes with "eureka"): 55 days, smallish fruit but sets in cold weather

Longkeeper: supposed to be able to pull up the entire plant, fruits and all, right before a killing frost, and hang the whole thing upside down in the basement and have constant supply of vine ripened fruit through January-February. Cant wait to try this one!

Caspian Pink: Cooler weather plant supposed to rival Brandywine in taste.

Specialty cool colors:

Copia- Red/orange fine vertical stripes

Big Zebra- Green/yellow fine vertical stripes

Ananas Noir-Mottled rainbow colored, photos I have seen show mostly green/purple outside w/ red core

Carbon-purple tomato, supposed to less prone to cracking

Banana Legs- so I can make yellow spaghetti sauce to top red (tomato-flavored) pasta and a sprinkling blue cheese of course.

Currant tomatoes:

Matt's wild cherry- just to see what all the hype is about

white currant-so I can make a salad with tiny white tomatoes, pink fleshed radishes, giant purslane and Bull's Blood beet greens.

(pic of bananalegs is from tradewinds fruit, rest are from gettle.org)