First Ripe Tomato on June 5th!
The name of the tomato variety is July 4th, but here it can be called June 5th!
Only one is fully red but I guess it still counts as having a ripe tomato on June 5th.
My goal was to have a ripe tomato by June 1st but I didn't quite make it. Last year's first tomato was on June 15th so I beat that mark by 10 days. By June 15th I think we'll have lots of tomatoes ready this year. Last year's first was an Early Girl tomato. This year the Early Girls, New Girl tomatoes, and Orange Blossom tomatoes are all doing well and should be ripe in a week or two.
The first variety of course is the 4th of July tomato. In a week we should have many of them but for today we just have this one little guy.
Not big enough for a tomato sandwich but I bet it will still be delicious! After all it is home grown and organic! Yum!
11 comments:
I am happy for you! I came across your blog a week or so ago and read all your archived posts....must say all your triumphs felt like my very own :)
I'm jealous! It will be quite awhile before I have my first ripe one.
Enjoy it! :-)
How exciting...please report on the taste. My heirlooms are doing well but I am a long way off from fruit.
Can you recommend a tomato fertilizer to encourage blossom formation?
June 5th?!? INCONCEIVABLE!!!
I'm jealous and impressed at the same time. Well done.
Congratulations. That is so wonderful. And you will have to post how your Orange Blossom tomatoes taste when you get them. I'm growing them for the first time and have no clue as to what they taste like.
Congratulations!
I'm envious. I lost all my previously planted tomatoes (and that is bad, because it's getting too hot to hope for production), and had to replace the plants in new planters.
I usually have ripe tomatoes this time of year too, but I guess I'll have to wait till fall for the next crop!
I still remember the day i somehow inspire you to purchase this type of tomato plant and i am glad i was part of your sucess!.
I in the other hand, am not as sucessfull as you are so far. I know my target day is July 1st, however as i recall i started my seeds around the same week you did and somehow my plants did not grow as big an as vigorous as yours. They are about 16" high and i one of the plants have a tomato the size of a half a dollar coin and other plant with two the size of a dime.
Plants where yellowish color, but after night temps got up in the 50's they recover and turn green.
Slow grow, small tomatoes, but they should be fine from now on.
I am superly amazed to find out that the other varieties that i started two months ago already have flowers on them. This was a great surprised since this varieties are not supposed to flower until august.
I believe (from my poor tomato plants behavior knowledge) that the reason these plants are flowering is becuase i have the growing lights set at 18 hours a day, then i started to exposed them outside where they where only getting around 8 to 10 hours a day.
This theory might have caused they plants to believe that the short day time and the cool temps that fall experiences are already here and started their flowering stage a bit early.
Many say to cut those flowers off in the early stage to encourage the plant to use all the energy for growth. I say, i don't care about rapid growth, i care about having some good tomatoes when the plant wants to give it to me. Besides, This year i have a total of 17 tomato plants so obviously quantity is not an issue, it is the quality i care about. (I had six tomato plants last year and trust me, it was enought!).
Why so many tomato plants you ask?, I blame Marc from Gardendesk.
Marc congrats on your early tomato! I bet you will have tons of tomatoes a week from now to late fall!
I am jealous!
There is nothing like the taste of home grown tomatoes. Yours look delicious! Keep up the good work.
Wow, that's fantastic. All my maters just have a few yellow blossoms on them.
But there's the most important question yet to be answered...
How's it taste?
Thanks everyone!
Daphne, I will post about the Orange Blossom tomatoes when they ripen. I hope they taste good.
Kelli S. and Cultiv8 - It tasted like summer! It had the normal main season red tomato flavor - like an Early Girl or a Celebrity but a bit smaller. Cut up in salad will be a great way to eat them.
Kelli, I use mainly compost and eggshells as fertilizer but if you need more, Tomatoes Alive is an excellent organic fertilizer.
Johnnatan you are right! You were the one who inspired me to add the 4th of July tomato to my list of extra early varieties. That was way back in February - Thanks for the suggestion! My Early Girl and New Girl tomatoes were planted almost a week earlier that the 4th of Julys and they are still not ripe yet.
By the way, the 2nd 4th of July ripend today in our 95 degree heat and it is larger than the first one. Several more should be ready this weekend!
Wow - that's an early tomato. Well done. How did you do it?
I garden in the south of France and there's no fruit on mine yet, just blossoms. We've had a cold wet spring so they might get a move on now the weather has started to look like summer at last.
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