Volunteers' Verve: Surprise Tomatoes Thriving

To briefly recap, I wasn't going to grow any tomatoes this year. I spent a lot of money last year on twenty-four organic heirloom plants. I had 6-7 different varieties. Most withered and died. The plum tomatoes did really well, but it was too much work for too little reward. Now I hear we had a tomato blight last year. Oh, well! Back to this year—ALL sixteen of my current tomato plants came up on their own, right in the middle of where they were last year. Only problem was I had already planted 12 dahlias, 24 zinnias, a few Celosia, black-eyed Susans, cosmos, morning glories, and sunflowers. Most of the latter annuals were decimated by the spring rabbits and chipmunks, but the zinnias and dahlias remained. Above, San Marzano plum tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness.

Plum tomatoes taking on colors. Looks like a traffic light with red on top, yellow in the middle, and green at the bottom.

I call this my "wall of tomatoes." I pruned most of the lower leaves on all the plant a couple of weeks ago. I prune to just about the 4-foot level, allowing the fruit to get the most sun, The leaves at the top get plenty of sun to generate growth down the stems.

Beautiful San Marzano tomatoes best suited for sauce in my opinion. I don't find plum tomatoes that delicious raw. Big, fat, juicy Cherokee Purples, Brandywines, Celebrities, all delicious garden fresh and raw. But the sauce is just wonderful from plums.

The flowers at the top are still giving off new fruit. There are tomatoes from the 1-foot to the 5-foot level on every plant. I have eleven San Marzano plums, one yellow cherry, and four of the mystery round green tomatoes. I'm hoping they're Green Zebras, a variety that died early last year, only giving me one tomato.

This is the latest dahlia to bloom, "Midnight Dancer," a beautiful dark purple and dark red multi-petaled variety. It's just gorgeous. I'll have lots of photos of this plant in the future. Look at the clumps of green tomatoes in the background. Veggies and flowers grew together next to each other this year.

This is the mystery tomato variety. I have four of these plants, all clustered around where a Green Zebra was last year. Here's hoping! It's one of the sweetest tomatoes there is, but it's already late September and they're barely ripening. They still may be red tomatoes. We'll know soon enough  if they have another couple of weeks without a frost! I count more than one hundred green tomatoes.

Bonus Photo

This is a good view of Midnight Dancer, a dark red/dark purple, multipetaled dahlia. It has purple stems, too. I hope we have a few more weeks without frost so these dahlias can give some great flowers! They take so long to mature in Connecticut that they only have a few weeks of actual blossoming.