Ripening is happening.

12 August 2007 by pat.

I went out to my plot today to water… there hasn’t been any significant rainfall in well over a week. But because I’ve been putting a gallon of water on each plant when I water, their roots are probably deep (because I only water once every week to ten days).My plants look as tall and healthy as anyone else’s, so I credit Marjory Mason with the story of her father’s vegetable garden, and how she planted tomatoes.She said that, when planting, she and her father would dig a hole; fill the hole with a bucketfull of water; plant the tomato and fill the hole in; put another bucketfull of water on the tomato. And didn’t water for the rest of the season. Now, we’ve had an extremely dry summer, so I’ve watered once a week to ten days.The tomatoes are growing, as is the basil, and as are the two birdhouse gourd plants. Here’s what the garden looks like now. You can hardly tell there are tomato cages… the tomatoes are growing wildly out of them, and some are crawling along the ground, like vines.I picked some. Here are a couple of photos before I picked. First, the San Marzanos. They’re an heirloom variety of paste tomato.And some Caspian Pinks! Warning: I used Autofocus (it was getting dark) and so the vine is in focus, not the tomatoes.So how many tomatoes did I pick today? About 1.8 kilos worth!I didn’t pick any of the black cherries today, because I think they need a few more days of ripening on the vine. I’ll have to go down to the garden mid-week to check on them.Cheers!p.s.: I just ate one of the Caspian Pinks as a Caprese salad (tomato, basil, bocconcini, drizzles of olive oil and Basalmic vinegar). ‘Twas yummy!

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