Our 2008 Tomato Garden

Sorry it's taken so long to get around to this, but without further delay, here are some photos of our 2008 North Natomas vegetable garden!!!

We start, of course, with my favorite summertime vegetable of all -- home grown tomatoes. And who can't resist home grown heirloom tomatoes?

These plants were put in the ground about a month ago -- the last weekend in April. And, as you can probably tell from the photos, they are growing great guns. This bed contains planter mix that I purchased last year, and I recharged it this year with two bags of Steer Manure compost. So far, that appears to be a great move. All of the plants in this bed are growing great guns. I have eight plants in each 4X8 bed. Four to a row.

Here is a photo of the most productive plant by far, the Bloody Butcher. Grown from seed by Farmer Fred Hoffman, of KFBK-KSTE "Get Growing With Farmer Fred" fame, this little starter is just loaded with tomatoes. I have two of them planted. One is a little more productive than the other, so far, but both are growing great guns. Between the two, I probably have about 20 tomatoes. All of the plants in this bed are fruiting at the moment. Some have one or two tomatoes, while others have much more. I just noticed about four or five new itty bitty green tomatoes on the Celebrity yesterday, which makes me very happy. The Celebrity is a very productive plant, and that tangy taste makes for great tomato sauce. I would say that we're at least another two to three weeks away from getting ripened tomatoes on a regular basis, but the early returns so far look pretty good.

Here's a list of tomatoes we're growing in the garden this year:

1. Bloody Butcher (from Farmer Fred)

2. Celebrity (from Farmer Fred)

3. SunGold (from Farmer Fred)

4. Lemon Boy (from Farmer Fred)

5. Green Zebra (nursery purchase)

6. Pruden's Purple (started from seed)

7. Caspian Pink (started from seed)

8. Costoluto Genovese (volunteer)

9. Marianna's Peace (from FF)

10. West Sac Crack (seed)

11. Andrew Rahart's Jumbo Red (started from seed)

12. Dominic's Paste (started from seed)

13. Margherita (from Nels Christensen)

14. Omar's Lebanese (from Nels Christensen)

15. Pineapple (from Nels Christensen)

16. Hank Shaw's Brandywine (started from seed)

17. Campbell's 1327 (started from seed)

18. Cherokee Purple (purchase)

19. ACE (purchase)

20. Rainbow (from Jeff Clarke)

There are a few I'm forgetting of course, since there are a total of 24 plants in the main garden. But, as you might be able to tell, we have "enough" to serve our tomato tastes this summer.