The Tomatoes are Coming

Last week we picked a straw hat’s worth of dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes. It was a first sweep across the field and there are 10,000 plants. Starr and I were able to eat the entire crop over the course of several dinner salads and some lunchtime tacos. But when we make a second sweep this week we’ll have to graduate from a straw gardening hat to a ten gallon cowboy hat if we want to carry our harvest to the kitchen. After that, experience has shown that the tomato yield will grow exponentially and all the hats in Texas couldn’t hold the crop. I’m hoping we can offer the dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes in bulk by the end of July.

Every year is different because the weather conditions that push or stall the crop vary, but we always plant our tomatoes after the 15th of April and we usually have a nice supply of ripe fruit by late July. Cherry tomatoes are small and ripen quickly so they come first. Early Girls are called “Early” because they are quicker to ripen than some other varieties. San Marzano tomatoes have many virtues, including a rich, thick texture when they’re cooked down into sauce but they’re not “early.” It’s a lot of work to plant out the tomatoes in the spring and we can’t complete the entire task at once, so typically we plant the different varieties out in stages over several weeks. I figure that we’ll have a supply of San Marzano tomatoes starting in mid-August.

If field conditions are reasonable we should have a steady supply of tomatoes from mid-July  through early October. After the second week in October the days have gotten short enough so that the crop ripens more slowly than it had. By late October we have to worry that an early rain will spoil the tomatoes. Some years we have significant precipitation and the crop is shut down early. Other years, we wait and wait for any rain and the tomatoes keep coming. We’ve had ripe tomatoes for Thanksgiving dinner some years. Other years we’re done for the season by Halloween. If you’re serious about canning the best bet is to plan for doing the work in late August when the crop is reliably plentiful and flavorful.

This week we’re starting in on the earliest heirloom tomatoes. Of all of the varieties they’re the most vulnerable to extreme heat and sunscald, so I’m hoping the temps are moderate over the coming weeks. So far so good- the first fruit is always buried in green foliage and protected from the direct rays of the sun. I hope you are too, and I’m hoping you’re as hungry for fresh salsa and Caprese salad as I am.