During our several days of 80-plus degree heat last week, a single cherry tomato ripened. And nearly midway through July, that has been the extent of our tomato harvest thus far.
To be fair, the harvest generally doesn’t begin in earnest for another two to three weeks, but the ultra-early varieties I plant (Stupice, Sungold, and the Sweet Million above) usually produce a scattering of offerings by now. More disturbing, while the foliage is lush, very little fruit has set thus far; only three clusters between my two, always reliable Stupice plants, a couple clusters on the Sweet Million, and the first hint of fruit on the Sungold and Yellow Pear. My Ispolin, a Siberian beefsteak variety I’m experimenting with, has tons of flowers, but only a single, thumbnail-sized fruit.
Unless it’s hot and dry in August and September, this is shaping up to be a pretty crappy tomato year in Seattle. Depressing.
Funny Goldy-
We just harvested our first Cherry tomato last week here in The Treasure State and have several more ready to pick. Interesting because our season is usually waaaaay behind Seattle with the weather & elevation (5000′). We did start ours in our greenhouse which helped a lot.
We have 6 big Stupice Plants. They are huge & heavy with tomatoes. Kind of hard to stake up.
We also have 6 Roma’s and 6 of a couple other Large Tomatoes (Mrs. C bought them so not sure what they are…they have some fruit on, but are far from ready).
See Goldy…we have a new common bond!
Tomatoes cross all ideology boundaries….gardening in general does.
Yep!
I live in Seattle. My parents lived in South Jersey. One year, we both grew tomatoes. My mother proved that her climate was better at tomato production by mailing me her first ripe tomato way before I had anything to show.
Last year our cherry trees had a bumper crop, far more than we could use or even give away. I didn’t even try to harvest the top half of the trees, I left those to the birds.
Cherry trees tend to have an on-off cycle – a good year is followed by a “recovery year”, se we weren’t expecting much this year. I used the opportunity to prune the trees way back.
But this year is far below even my diminished expectations. The Eastern Washington cherry harvest has already come and gone – our freight forwarder reports it was a pretty poor harvest this year from Eastern Washington.
Looking at our trees at our home in Everett, I can hardly count a handful of cherries per branch, all very small and nowhere near ripening. Right now it doesn’t look like it’s worth even breaking out the ladder to collect them, assuming that they do eventually ripen.
I think the problem wasn’t the recent rains so much as the rain and windstorm which hit just as the trees were blossoming. The wind and rain tore off most of the blossoms, reducing pollination and even taking away some of the fruit buds.
I just got the first bloom on my tomato plants. My harvest doesn’t look very encouraging. My blueberries are doing well, though. They don’t seem to have minded our spring.
Emily @3,
As a Philly native, I can attest that there is absolutely nothing like a Jersey tomato. Big, squat ugly beefsteaks that taste like pure summer. I hope to be gorging on them when I head back East in a few weeks.
And as someone who grew up in South Jersey, passing the Campbell’s Soup plant hundreds of times, I couldn’t agree more with Emily and Goldy.
Westerners simply do not have any idea how wonderful it is to eat a ripe Jersey tomato, still warm from the vine.
Emily @ # 3: Well, the don’t call New Jersey “The Garden State” for nothing.
British soldiers who camped there in the summer of 1776 in preparation for the assault on Washington’s forces at New York City described it as a paradise, noting with some displeasure the relative wealth of the colonists with that of the average British citizen. They seemed to think that the colonists weren’t sufficiently thankful for their lot and were spoiled brats for causing the King (and themselves) so much trouble.
Trenton, NJ is located at 40 degrees latitude. Seattle, on the other hand, is located at 47 degrees latitude – roughly the same latitude as New Foundland. Tomatos love sunshine and warmth, which is why they grow so well in the south. Our late weather here, with the rains often ending sometime in mid-July, don’t give the plants a lot of time to get going. I’ve never had success growing tomatos here at all, as I’ve recounted in earlier posts. I’ve got to tip my hat to those who are able to accomplish that feat.
I blame Obama.
Tomatoes grow well in AZ — and there are plenty of Mexicans to pick them.
I had great luck with tomatoes the few years I lived in a nice little microclimate in the CD. It stayed a few degrees warmer than most of the rest of the city. It didn’t hurt that the yard had excellent Southern and Western exposure.
My dad long ago gave up on trying to grow tomatoes outdoors here in Western Washington. He now keeps a rotation of plants in his greenhouse year round.
You might check and see if these are genetically modified tomato seeds.
Apparently in their scramble to control all plant seeds on earth, Monsanto accidentally added some unacceptable features and then sold these with absolutely no testing. If something that looked like a tomato came up, then they shipped the seeds.
Ain’t unchecked predatory capitalism great?
@5
My blueberries look great, except for the not starting to turn the slightest bit blue part. I think they’re just running a couple weeks late, like everything else.
This is exactly the condition of my tomatoes: enormous, lush foliage, and barely any fruit. Alas.
I’m thinking the volcano eruption in Iceland may be killing us this year.
I normally get about 3 gallons of these great wild black raspberries and the little wild blackberries from my place. I’ll be lucky to get a gallon this year.
The bears will be hungry (also not a good thing for hikers or people who live near bears).
i waited forever for someone to post on this…
how come someone will blame a cold wet summer on global warming?; while if we were baking, they would never suggest its cooling…
Dipfuck @ 16
Climate change predicts unpredictable weather. We’re getting that in Spades. Including a record high the other day. We had a very warm winter, a very shitty spring, and, as every Seattleite knows, summer doesn’t start until after the Fourth. When and why did your aversion to reality develop?
I grew up back east abd have those wonderful summer memories of wonderful tomatoes from our backyard crop. Hpwever I have decided that growing tomatoes in Seattle is a recipe for a broken heart. But I ain’t moving back east and that definitely includes New Jersey.
ah proud leftist..
if its warm..= global warming
if its cold = variable weather
if its variable weather = global warming
all weather now means global warming.
talk about aversion to reality
(ps, you should stick to facts…yes temps rising..you just sound stupid when youre types try to say some cold weather is also proof of global warming).
righton @19,
That’s why climate scientists refer to the phenomenon as global “climate change,” not “global warming,” for while average global temperatures are increasing, the models predict increasing climate variability, disrupted climate patterns, greater severity of weather events, not just an a steady, even rise average daily temperatures. This is what happens when you plug more energy into the climate system.
So yes, even the snowstorms that hit the East Coast last winter are predicted by the climate change models: warmer ocean currents mean more moisture in the atmosphere, thus more snow.
We planted earlier this year than we usually do. The tomato plants are flowering, and maybe we’ll see some tomatoes before the time we usually do, which is mid to late August. Meanwhile, we have zuchinni coming pretty soon, and we’re positively swimming in lettuce and chard.
Wonder if the honey bee plague is a factor?
goldy; pretend you are a scientist. you fear global cooling.
would you
a) watch for cooling
b) watch for any weather change?
c) ignore warming, becasue its actually a weather change.
I doubt you would be honest. None of your gore/climate nuts talked about “change” or variability until we poked holes in your religion (green/warming)
@19
hotter than normal temperatures = globull warming!! globull warming!! bush killed the world!! globull warming!!……etc….
cooler than normal temperatures = its just weather, not climate…variable weather…pay no attention…etc..
the scam continues…..
@20
sounds like “new speak” or language correction to me….
globull warming is now “climate change”…..all straight-up language manipulation and propaganda ala orwell and goebbels….