{"id":882,"date":"2011-09-04T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2011-09-04T15:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/?p=882"},"modified":"2011-09-05T19:34:03","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T02:34:03","slug":"tomatoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/?p=882","title":{"rendered":"Tomatoes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Early Girl Tomato<\/p><\/div>\n

Tomatoes are an essential part of my garden.\u00a0 I can whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, salsa, and spaghetti sauce.\u00a0 So I have to have tomatoes growing in my garden.\u00a0 We planted\u00a0 8 tomato plants.\u00a0 Two of the plants are a cherry tomato.\u00a0 So far my favorite has been the early girl variety.\u00a0 It’s a smaller tomato but ripens pretty early which is necessary for this climate.\u00a0 Every year I’m on the search for a new favorite variety.\u00a0 I would like the tomato to be a little bigger.\u00a0 I planted 5 varieties.\u00a0 There are 4 early girls, 1 super fantastic, 1 Sophie’s choice (heirloom), 1 currant cherry tomato, and 1 sungold cherry tomato.<\/p>\n

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Currant Cherry Tomato<\/p><\/div>\n

First I’ll discuss the cherry tomatoes.\u00a0 I plant at least one cherry every year because I like these in salads.\u00a0\u00a0 This way I don’t have to use my bigger tomatoes for my salads.\u00a0 They also produce a lot sooner and you are able to have them during the summer.\u00a0 I usually plant a sweet 100 cherry tomato.\u00a0 I thought I would try something different this year.\u00a0 Wrong idea.\u00a0 I got the currant cherry tomato.\u00a0 These are super small and don’t have a lot of flavor.\u00a0 They are also difficult to pick.\u00a0 They grow like a currant in big clusters and really close to the center of the plant.\u00a0 The tomatoes on the bottom of the plant were the first to ripen.\u00a0 In order to get to them I had to crawl on my hands and knees and stick my hand all the way in the plant to pick.\u00a0 Even then you couldn’t tell if you were getting the right tomato because they were so closely clumped together.\u00a0 Many times I would end up picking a green tomato instead of the red one.\u00a0 So frustrating.\u00a0 I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t even care if they get picked or not.<\/p>\n

The other cherry tomato that I picked is called Sungold. This is a small orange cherry<\/p>\n

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Sungold Cherry Tomato<\/p><\/div>\n

tomato.\u00a0 We love this one.\u00a0 It is so sweet.\u00a0 This is the variety that we got a few years ago when we first started gardening and it single handedly convinced my husband that tomatoes aren’t gross. Sophia, my three year old, loves this one and we have to act quickly if we want any before she picks them all.\u00a0 Definitely one we’ll do again.<\/p>\n

The Super Fantastic variety was a mothers day gift from church.\u00a0 I actually like this one.\u00a0 It produces a lot of large tomatoes and taste terrific.\u00a0 The only problem I have with this one is that it splits easily.\u00a0 I think all the tomatoes that I’ve pulled off of there so far have split.\u00a0 That’s okay if you’re using it for salsa but not okay for whole tomatoes.\u00a0 This might be a variety I’ll try again since I do like salsa.<\/p>\n

Sophie’s Choice variety I got on a whim.\u00a0 I was looking for just one more tomato to plant and one that produces early and is larger than the early girl.\u00a0 Saw this one and got it.\u00a0 It was a little more expensive because it’s an heirloom tomato but so far it has done great.\u00a0 The tomatoes are larger and don’t seem to have any splits but they are taking longer to ripen then my other tomatoes.\u00a0 I just hope they ripen before the first frost in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n

Tomatoes are pretty easy to plant.\u00a0 They are very frost tender so if you live in a cooler climate like I do you’ll need to have your tarp ready to cover them.\u00a0 Tomatoes are also very easy to can and great to have in the pantry.\u00a0 We use our whole tomatoes in soups, stews, casseroles, and even chili.\u00a0 The key is to find the right variety that works for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomatoes are an essential part of my garden.\u00a0 I can whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, salsa, and spaghetti sauce.\u00a0 So I have to have tomatoes growing in my garden.\u00a0 We planted\u00a0 8 tomato plants.\u00a0 Two of the plants are a cherry tomato.\u00a0 So far my favorite has been the early girl variety.\u00a0 It’s a smaller tomato […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,38,58,33,16],"tags":[55,28,59,25,17],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canning","category-garden","category-health","category-hobbies","category-projects","tag-canning","tag-fruits","tag-garden","tag-health","tag-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karin.zmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}