My New Favorite Tomato: Brandywine

One of my new favorite heirloom tomatoes that I grew this year has got to be the Brandywine.  Wow, is it ever a gorgeous tomato!  I am soooo going to grow this again for years to come.  I received these Brandywine seeds from EG over at Our Engineered Garden.

Isn't this just gorgeous?  I mean, wow, what a beauty!  This clocked in at half a pound!!  I gave this tomato to mom and dad.  They were amazed at how large it was.

This one was even bigger!  It's as large as my hand.  This tomato was 3/4 a pound!  Wow!!  This one, I gave to my neighbor.  She was shocked of the size!  The Brandywines were definitely not the most prolific tomato plant, there were only like maximum of 3 fruit per plant.  But what they lacked in quantity, they definitely make up in size and taste.  Therefore, these will definitely be a keeper!  I am saving some seeds to use for next year.  Hit me up if you want some seeds.  Since I got these seeds originally from EG, I figure it's my duty to pay it forward to other gardeners who want to try this gorgeous tomato.

Not all of my tomatoes faired well in the garden.  This Cherokee Purple was half eaten by a squirrel.  I didn't see that it was really ripe on the vine, it was hiding under all these tomato leaves.  Darn it!  For some reason, only one Cherokee Purple tomato plant survived, and there are only 2 tomatoes growing on the plant.  I had a few seedlings that didn't quite make the hot summer, so with only one plant, I was really bummed to lose a precious tomato.  With this one eaten, now there is only one remaining tomato.  I really hope it doesn't get eaten by a squirrel or bird.

This Roma tomato suffered the same fate.  I rather the squirrel eat the Romas since I didn't plant any Romas this year.  All of my Roma plants were volunteers.  I didn't plant any Romas because last year they were plagued with Blossom End Rot.  This year, I incorporated crushed egg shells into the soil, and only a few of the tomatoes suffered from BER. 

Here is my harvest yesterday.  This basket easily weighed 4 pounds! This is my best harvest yet this year.  Other garden bloggers will chuckle because this is small in comparison to their harvests.

In that basket was 5  Brandywines!  Since we have such a squirrel problem, I pick the tomatoes as soon as I see a blush of color.   These I'll turn into salsa!

Riding Out the Storm

It's about midnight now and the eye of the storm is inching closer and closer to us.  The outer bands are right below us now, and we are getting lots of rain and we are starting to get strong rain gusts.  On the news they were saying we could get a foot of rain!  That is a lot of rain.  The garden is definitely going to flood. :(

Since I was pretty much stuck in the house all day, I decided to take this time to make a batch of Sweet Dill Pickles. I went to the market before the storm and picked up dill, habaneros and onions.  The cucumbers, and garlic are from the garden.  I tried to grow habaneros like I did last year, but none of the seeds germinated.

Yesterday, in anticipation of the storm, I harvested some Heirloom Tomatoes, Isis Candy, Chocolate Cherry and Jaune Flamme.  Since I had a bunch of ripe tomatoes, I had an idea to make some fresh bruschetta. The rest of the ingredients, I harvested this morning. I picked some Italian Genovese Basil and got a bulb of homegrown Garlic that is hanging in the rafters of the garage.   Add a bit of olive oil and sea salt, and that's it! Everything everyone says about Heirloom Tomatoes are so true!  I didn't grow up eating Heirloom Tomatoes so this is a new experience for me. They are so tasty and flavorful, it's like candy!  No wonder everyone loves and raves about them.  Isn't this just gorgeous?  I am loving all the different colors of tomatoes.  As a kid, I only ate red tomatoes, so to know that they come in all these different shades of Orange, Yellow, Purple/Brown is amazing!!

I didn't have any crunchy loaves of bread at home, so I just toasted 2 slices of bread and scooped the bruschetta on top.  Oooooh is this ever good!  I could eat this every day!  I may be stuck at home during this Hurricane, but at least I am eating well!

Picking Tomatoes Before the Storm

This has been quite the interesting week for us.  First we felt the Earthquake that hit Virginia, all the way up here in NYC!  Now we are preparing for a Hurricane.  An Earthquake and a Hurricane all in the same week?  Talk about an eventful week!  Watching the news about Hurricane Irene barreling it's way up the East Coast is very scary.  Tomorrow I'll be going out to the garden and put all the lawn furniture and garden pots in the garage for safe keeping.  We haven't had a Hurricane like this hit these parts in some time, so I'm beginning to worry.  In anticipation of the Hurricane coming our way, I went out to the garden and picked some Heirloom tomatoes.  My favorite is Tiny Tim.  I see now how it got it's name.  It's as small as a dime!  Cute.

I was watching the news today and saw that I live in Zone A, a flooding and evacuation zone of the NYC area.  Mayor Bloomberg said he would announce on Saturday morning whether he will give the order for a mandatory evacuation for residents that live in the orange areas of the map below.  That big orange blob in Staten Island, that's where we live.  Crap.  Double crap!  Tomorrow, I have to go into the basement and move all the boxes to the 1st floor just in case it floods like it did 2 years ago when we got 24 hours of non-stop rain.  I'm thinking about all those people who live on the East Coast, hoping and praying that everyone stays safe and sound.

Update: I found this interactive map on Weather.com and it tracks the storm.  It's a good tool to use to see where the storm is heading.

Waiting for the Heirloom Maters

I've been anxiously waiting for the heirloom tomatoes to turn color so that I can taste these beauties. My plan this year was to grow as many varieties that I could so that I could zone in on the varieties that I thought tasted the best and therefore would make a return appearance in the garden.  I plan to save the seeds for the heirloom varieties that I think are the tastiest.  Here is Chocolate Cherry, they are turning into a cool brown color.  They should be ripe soon, and I can't wait to try these.  I originally received these seeds from Wintersown.org.  It's a great place to get tomato seeds.

This is a Persimmon Tomato, seeds given to me by Snarky Vegan.  This plant actually got a disease so this is the only tomato on the plant.  That makes me super sad.  I planted a few Persimmon tomato plants, it's now a waiting game to see if the other plants get diseased.  I hope not.  This tomato is finally showing a blush of color.  It sure is a pretty brilliant orange color and really does look like a Persimmon.  I see now how it got the name.  I put bird netting around all of my tomato plants because last year we were plagued by squirrels stealing the tomatoes before we got a chance to eat them. This year I proactively tried to prevent the squirrels from taking the maters, even though they stole my peaches and grapes.

This plant has Pink Brandywine.  I got seeds from Our Engineered Garden. I am amazed by how large these tomatoes are.  They will easily be 1 pounders.  I can't wait until the tomatoes turn pink.  They will be delicious I'm sure.

I plan to save seeds and start a seed bank so that I can share with fellow gardeners.  It was fun to grow so many varieties of tomatoes this year, it was so exciting to see how large each tomato got and what color they would turn.  I've never grown any of these varieties before so it was all new to me.  But I must say, it was also a lot of work.  We ended up having 75 tomato plants, much of which I didn't even sow, many were volunteer tomato plants.  Here is one of the raised beds with the tomato plants.  I packed 15 plants in here and it's a total tomato mess!  I definitely need to do a better staking system because the plants were drooping all over the place.  I put tomato cages around some of the larger plants and then tied the other plants to the cages.  Even though we had a whopping 75 tomato plants, a few died from disease, some were destroyed by storms, and others just never produced a lot of tomatoes.  Next year, I definitely want to limit the number of varieties that I will grow, because I was definitely overzealous this season with the planning.  Initially my plan was to grow as many different varieties to see what tasted good and continue to grow the ones I liked in the future.  However,  when it came down to organizing all the plants and seedlings, and isolating the blooms, for each plant it became completely overwhelming.  There are some plants in which I never ended up isolating the blooms, so I hope the seeds saved will be really true to parent.  With so many tomato plants, I actually didn't have time to devote to my other vegetable plants.  For example, I didn't grow enough Pepper, Eggplant, or Squash Plants.  And plants I didn't get a chance to sow properly were my herb plants, Chamomile, Sage, Cilantro and the some vegetables that I never ended up sowing at all were Parsnips and Kale. I wanted to try those this year, but the tomato frenzy took over my life.  Definitely next year, I will create an herb garden, and definitely less tomato plants.... I hope!

Update: Hurricane Irene is heading straight for the East Coast and everyone is preparing for the rough stormy weather.  I am beside myself with worry about my tomato plants, some are so tall and I don't know if they will survive the winds.  Hardly any of the tomatoes are turning color yet.  Ugh.  I'm hoping for the best.  I hope everyone who is in the path of the storm stay safe and sound.  And their gardens too. 

Get Bigger My Sweet

I'm growing Brandywine this year for the first time, from seeds given to me by EG at Our Engineered Garden. The fruit are forming and getting larger.  Get bigger my sweet.  I'm looking forward to eating you.  I plan to save some seeds to grow next year.  Any extras I'll give away to readers just like EG did.  Pay it forward, mater style.