Hershel is my wonderful gardening neighbor. (I misspelled his name in my sign above. Note the Sharpie pen for size comparison....) He's been gardening in our neighborhood for about twenty years and his garden is fabulous. We often benefit from his ability to produce enormous quantities of the best green beans ever -- Kentucky Wonders. The tomato pictured is Hershel's own development and the one I photographed is not the prettiest or the largest he's ever shown me. I believe the parent tomato is a German Pink type. Hershel's tomato produces a slice for a sandwich that will overhang the bread! Really great flavor, nice firmness. To the left is one of the Cherokee Purple heirloom I grew from a transplant I bought at Old Soul Organics in Fayetteville. It is, hands down, the healthiest, lushest plant I've ever grown, incredibly productive and with a *perfect* tomato flavor in my opinion. Needless to say I'm saving the seeds on that one. It has a near potato type leaf. Here's a sliced one:
The other tomato tip I'll do again next year involves composted cotton burr compost. The bed where I was planting the tomato was too clayey so I added a half bag of the compost right in the end of the bed where the tomato was to go. I guess they LOVE this compost! I'll do this again for each tomato plant next year.
Here's a parting pic of Hershel's wonderfully huge tomato -- this one not completely ripe. I knew I'd lucked out when I moved to the neighborhood and after meeting Hershel he pulled a giant whole tomato out of the freezer to show me! This is my kind of neighbor! The tomato had been so huge and perfect -- indeed, it seemed half as big as my head -- that he'd frozen it so that folks would believe him when he told the story! Because we know that gardening stories and fishing stories can be similar in some ways...
Finally today some RAIN!! It smelled exquisite.
