Harvesting Heirloom Tomatoes and Digging Potatoes

Dan‘s Almost Daily Journal-Volume 63-The Garden is Winding Down

Well, it’s been a while since my last gardening article. If you follow my writing you know about our trip to Maine, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. I hope you have enjoyed those articles, some links are posted at the end of this story. My last gardening article was written on July 21st, prior to our trip:

Regaining Control of the Garden After Vacation

We all love vacation. It's fun to get away. We all need and deserve it, even if we’re retired. A break from the normal routine does a soul good and makes us appreciate our routines once we return home.

However, if you're a gardener you know where I’m heading with this. We work hard to keep our gardens neat and tidy. Mine is far from perfect, but you know what I mean. After being away for 2 weeks, it's amazing how much things change. Especially the weeds!

I must admit it took some work to get it back in shape. Mostly pulling weeds and crops that have died off. First of all, I cleaned the lettuce box as the romaine lettuce had bolted. I left the kale (trimmed it back) as it will produce up until and even after frost.

The cucumbers and squash had pretty much run their course also, so I pulled them and cleaned up the Hügelkultur bed. Pulled the snap peas. There were still beans but they were past their prime and tough. Turns out I missed the bean harvest this year. It’s hard to time everything perfectly.

Garden Cleanup-Making Room to Replant

Cleaning up the garden in August serves several purposes. First, if you keep up with it now, it makes it easier at the end of the season. We all tend to lose interest as the season progresses. You all know what a mess the garden is come October. Now that I am retired, I have more time so I try to keep up with it.

Also, garden cleanup also makes room to replant some veggies that are cold tolerant or for those for which there is still time for them to mature.

I will be writing an article soon about replanting for a Fall harvest. Stay tuned.

It’s Heirloom Tomato Time!

It’s that time of year! If you’re a tomato lover you know what I mean. When we got back from our trip I was wondering if I would have ripe tomatoes. Well, the timing for those was perfect! When I checked the garden I saw that the cherry tomatoes were just starting to ripen. But these aren’t just any cherry tomatoes.

Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes are one of my favorite heirlooms. Since I discovered these I have been planting them every year. You just can’t beat the flavor. I even wrote an article about them back in 2021:

The only downside is that they are very delicate. If you pick them from the stems they will not last long. The best way is to cut the clusters off, leaving the tomatoes on the stems. This way they hold up well until you’re ready to use them.

The yields from these are outstanding and the plants are disease resistant. At this point, these are the only healthy tomato vines still in my garden as the others have succumbed to blight.

And Then There Was Blight

Even though the other varieties of tomatoes have gotten blight, I still have been getting a decent harvest. We have been enjoying some of the other varieties I planted such as Caspian Pink, Cherokee Carbon, Old German, and others. For a list of what I planted (8 varieties), check out this article:

Blight continues to be a problem for me as it is for others as well. Luckily I still am able to get decent harvests although they would be better without the blight. Even the potatoes were affected. It’s difficult to get rid of; probably the only way is to not plant for a season. I don’t think that will happen. I do rotate my crops but it doesn’t seem to help.

Digging Potatoes-The Results Were Mixed

Overall it has been a good gardening season thus far. As I mentioned I did have some issues with blight that affected not only the tomatoes but the potatoes as well.

Following are crops that did/are doing very well: Pak Choi, lettuce, kale, radishes, snap peas, Swiss Chard, beans (even though I missed the harvest), onions, leeks, and sunflowers. Also, veggies that did/are doing fair to good include cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, strawberries, and one variety of potatoes thus far.

• Eva Potatoes-This was a new variety for me. I found the sets at a local farm store and decided to give them a try. This is a mid-season white potato from the Cornell breeding program.

The first thing I noticed when I returned from vacation around August 6th, was that all of the potato vines (both Eva and Yukon Gold) had died off. As I stated above, I think Blight was somewhat involved in this process. The other thing I noticed with the Eva potatoes was that a lot of them had pushed to the surface and turned green. This was surprising since I hilled the dirt around the plants as I always do.

This was disappointing since many of the surface potatoes were of decent size but not usable since they were green. As I dug the hills, most of the spuds below the dirt were rotted. This trend continued for all of the hills. Therefore the yield was very low. The potatoes I did get seemed to be of good quality, but I don’t know why so many were pushed above the dirt.

I doubt if I will grow this variety again.

• Yukon Gold Potatoes-This is an old standby for me. Normally you can’t go wrong with these. This proved true again this year.

Unlike the Eva potatoes, none of these were above the ground. As I stated digging I could tell right away that the results would be good.

I haven’t weighed them yet but if I had to guess I would say around 40 pounds of Yukon Gold and about 5 pounds of Eva.

I also planted Banana fingerling potatoes which I have yet to dig. The vines are still growing so I will wait a few more weeks.

Stay tuned for more gardening articles, including replanting for a Fall harvest. As gardeners, we try to get the most out of the garden as possible.