The Trouble with Tomatoes

Here is Tricia's Mother's Day bench.  She wanted this bench placed in this very spot so that she could sit in the shade, drink coffee and watch the garden.  It is a peaceful spot, for sure.  If you could add audio to this photo, it might not seem quite so peaceful.  There's a goat that's not quite weaned that's hollering for a bottle, roosters are crowing, cows are mooing, dogs are barking.  But you know what?  It is still a peaceful, nice spot.

The garden looks nice from that serene, pastoral spot.  But just beyond the picket fence, there's a sinister plot brewing.  Annie, the Nubian goat, despite my best efforts at barricade building, has been successful in a scheme of craning her neck over the garden fence.

She's snipped off three branches of a Cherokee Purple tomato plant and devoured it!  Annie's antics cost us in tomato production.  I'll be fashioning yet another panel to thwart her from doing it again.  You've always got to be thinking three steps ahead with these goats!

If we are successful keeping the goats out of the garden, we still have quite a time with worms and bugs.  That's why I've started to pick our tomatoes when they just start to turn a pinkish color.  I put them on a platter inside and let them ripen indoors.

The label you hear about "vine-ripened tomatoes" sounds great, but I've found that if you leave them to ripen on the vines, the bugs and worms (and goats) will get far more fruit than we will.  Here's one of the culprits I'll introduce you to: The Stink Bug!  It's called that because if you squash it, it emits a nasty odor that really stinks.  These boogers will sting the tomato and cause scarring and discoloration.  Bringing them inside before ripening betters your chances.

Let me introduce you to another villain: The leaf-footed bug.  See him on top of the green tomato?  He stings the tomato and causes scarring to the tomato.  Secondary pathogens enter the opening in the fruit where the leaf-footed bug damaged it and causes the fruit to rot.

There are things to kill these bugs, perhaps, but we don't want to spray poison on the food we'll be eating.  Harvesting early seems to be the trick.

Another thing we have to watch is growth spurts after rains.  After a rain, and the sun warming things up, the tomato will grow so fast that it rips the skin open.  The fruit grows so fast that the skin can't keep up.  Look at an example of this below.  Can you see the long cut?  That's from rapid growth.  

We're picking 8 to 10 tomatoes a day right now.  They turn red quickly indoors and then those we don't eat or cook with, we put in the refrigerator.  Pretty soon, we'll be canning them and drying them.