Roma Tomatoes | From Dirt to Dinner

From Sun Ripened to Sun Dried

I’m trying to remember this moment as the calm before the tomato storm. I have a feeling this nice hot weather is about to inundate us with tomato bounty. I have the drying screen, dehydrator and oven drying recipes ready to go. I’m still looking for the perfect catsup. Let us know if you have a recipe you like!

We will have quite a few of the Principe Borghese tomatoes ready to go first. They have been ripening one at a time here and there, but now there are suddenly *lots* of orange ones on the vines and the vines seem less robust, as if all their energy is going into the fruits now.

Shades of Genoa

I am really looking forward to tasting the Costaluto Genovese tomatoes. They look wonderful on the vine with their deep creases and funky shapes.

I tried to count the other day and I think there are at least a dozen varieties of tomatoes growing in the Dirt to Dinner garden; Principe Borghese for drying, Roma for sauce and cooking, three varieties of grape tomato for eating, the Orange German Strawberry tomato my mother-in-law sent over for fun, the Big Beef for burgers and other slicing needs. And the there are what I think must be the Crimson Carmellos, which grow like monsters! Green-Glory They are the most robust tomato vines I have ever seen. If you are out late in the evening watering too close to this thing, I swear it might toss one brawny arm over your shoulders and keep you there all night telling you its garden tales as the moon rises.

The fruits are a shiny deep green and I know the label for the plant is hidden down there somewhere, behind the lost shallots that I foolishly thought might actually enjoy a little shade provided by the tomato. Ha! They better be nocturnal to be surviving under there. At least the Edamame beans still get some light from the side.

I am also enjoying the dry farmed tomatoes planted outside the fence in the squash garden. The squash aren’t big enough yet to be much help shading the ground, but the tomato plants still seem happy.

Romas Getting Ready

Between drying, making pizza sauce, making catsup, whatever the kids will eat in salads and on sandwhiches, I think we’re pretty much set for tomatoes!

And the really interesting thing is the way the tomatillos have taken off! There are both verde and whatever purple is in Spanish varieties out there and they have taken over the corner growing bed to a slightly unhealthy extreme. Yesterday I found some kind of mold growing on one of their leaves. I may need to get out there and pick off the affected parts of the plant. It’s so dense in this patch that the air circulation can’t be good.

Not sure why I didn’t figure out that tomatillo plants got so big and spready when we planted them. They all seem so small and helpless in the beginning! :-)

Tomatillo-Twins

Potato Build-A-Bed

The vertical growing we’re experimenting with in the Dirt to Dinner garden includes lots of different trials. We have a bed of All Blue potatoes that started out in a shallow raised bed in 4″ of soil. We are hammering on new boards and adding more soil until the potatoes are eventually growing through 2′ of soil in a raised bed at least that tall, in hopes of a larger potato harvest.

Bamboo and Bandannas

We have the Three Sisters beds where the corn will grow to support the beans that will climb up the stalks and the squash will, ideally, cover the ground, shade everybody’s roots and help keep the whole thing stable in a headwind. Luckily, the beds are up against the fence.

We are also using several different vertical methods with our tomato crops. The determinate plants, like the Romas and the drying tomatoes, are staked with bamboo poles since they aren’t expected to grow much more than 3′ tall.

And then we have the fancy stuff.

Scared of Heights?

Like the four different varieties of watermelons we are trying to grow on trellising. (Ice Box, Yellow Doll, Tiger Baby and New Orchid) And the cantaloupe and Spaghetti Squash. And the dozen different winter squash from Italy with names none of us can pronounce that we are hoping to train onto netting strung between metal poles.

Some of it sounds crazy, I know. But vertical growing is hard to resist. The kids have 112 square feet in their individual growing boxes. When we add the trellising to the northern sides of the beds, that gives them, more or less, an additional 120 square feet of growing space on the vertical. The peas and the cucumbers will love it, maybe they will take their friends along?

Happy Climbers

If nothing else, the green beans will grow up the nets we have set out for them. They won’t be easier to pick this way, but we chose mostly drying beans to grow in this section so we don’t have to mess with them alot. And I did slip in some Kentucky Wonder on the end. I am hoping they will be worth the extra trouble to harvest.

From Dirt to Dinner

Learning in the Garden

Tag Archives: Roma Tomatoes

The Tomatoes Are Coming!

Growing Up