Midnight Sun

   A few of the Midnight Sun tomatoes I grew have finally ripened!  Find a description of these tomatoes, as well as a link to the woman who developed the variety on THIS post.

Forget the Tomatoes, Tickle My Belly!

Monday morning (October 7th), I woke up around 6:30am to the sound of hail hitting the windows.  It came down hard for five minutes or so, then gave way to big, fluffy, wet snowflakes.  Snow fell for an hour or two, and has remained on the ground due to cool temperatures (it was -10 yesterday morning).  It has just started to melt this afternoon.  I'm glad to see the sunshine again!

The Work Release Paste tomatoes are nice and ripe now, so I took a picture to add to my notes.  I take a lot of pictures in the plant room, as the light is bright in there.  I snapped this picture, looked up, and...

...discovered Bea, waiting to be adored and photographed.  Belly tickle not optional.

Here are some of the tomatoes ready to go in the freezer.  Once frozen, running hot water over them makes the skins come off easily.  Then into the pot to cook down for sauce.  If I'm up to another step (usually, I am not!), the sauce is run through a little tomato press to remove the seeds.  So far, 14 L of sauce has been canned this month.  I think when all is said and done, we'll have about half the amount we did last year.

Ripe Tomatoes, Canning Underway

    The tomatoes have started to ripen in their boxes, so prep for freezing and removing their skins has begun.  In terms of ripening, Scotia, Early Annie, Brad's Black Heart, Black Sea Man, and Hungarian Heart are in the lead, Black Prince and German Striped are somewhere in the middle, and Midnight Sun, Coastal Pride Orange, and Dwarf Roza Vetrov are trailing badly.  I cooked down some tomatoes yesterday and did another batch this morning. That sauce filled five 1 L jars, which are in the canning pot now.

Update:  Done!  One batch down.

Hungarian Heart - most looked more like beefsteaks than hearts.  These two were the closest to a "heart" shape in the bunch.  LARGE, pink, and the taste was a wonderful surprise.  I found them mild and yet very flavourful!  Easy to peel when processing for sauce.  I would grow these again.  Indeterminate.

Black Prince - Produced fairly well despite the cool, overcast weather.  I would love to see how it does in a "good" year.  These are very easy to peel when processing for sauce and they have a nice, smoky flavour.  Love black tomatoes.  Indeterminate.

Striped German  - large and beautiful when ripe!  Warm yellow/orange and blush red.  They almost glow.  They appear marbled when cut through the middle.  I liked how compact this variety was for an indeterminate plant.  I posted a similar picture on a gardening forum and was asked how much these tomatoes weighed.  I weighed these, and three others from the box:  1 lb 1.6 oz - 1 lb 6.7 oz - 1 lb 3.8 oz - 8.5oz - 9oz - 11.6oz.

Scotia - prolific, tasty, and early.  Determinate.  Very juicy with lots of seeds.  This is a small drawback for making sauce, but Scotia produces so dependably that it is a variety worth growing.

Early Annie - lived up to it's name.  Prolific, early, determinate, and easy to peel when processing for sauce.

Black Sea Man tomato -  The flesh of these is almost mahogany.  Average production, but oh, the flavour!  Compact, determinate plants.

Brad's Black Heart - I wish I'd taken pictures of some of the first ones that ripened.  Several were monsters, twice the size of the one below.  It's a variety that started ripening early and produced quite well.  Unfortunately, the excessive rainfall caused many of them to split, and once indoors, mould quickly developed along the cracks.  I had to process them quickly.  Some of the larger ones were so far gone (cracks/mould) that I just collected seeds from them and composted the flesh.  I would like to grow this variety again, though.  Gangly indeterminate.

Work Release Paste - I grew these for the first time last summer.  They were among my favourite tomatoes of the season, and they performed well again this year.  Productive, indeterminate, and easy to peel when processing for sauce.  Meaty and mild tasting.

Midnight Sun - This was my first time growing Midnight Sun, a variety developed by Karen Olivier of Northern Gardener.  This was a dismal growing year for a variety I think would have much preferred a longer, hotter season.  I have a boxful of still-green tomatoes that look like they are too immature to ripen.  I did, however, get 4 medium-sized Midnight Suns that ripened, so I will be able to save seeds from them to grow another year.  This is a heart variety that is truly shaped like a heart!  Most had very defined, pointy bottoms and rounded "sweetheart" tops.  Pretty orange/yellow and blush marbling, too.  A gangly indeterminate.  More pictures here.

The Garlic's In!

It is a cool, overcast day.  I got outside first thing this morning to turn the area I chose for next year's garlic, pick out the weeds, and mark the rows. 

A total of 114 cloves of various sizes were planted in the North Garden near the rock wall.  No bulbils or rounds were planted this year.  From the back of the plot to the front:  

40 Red Russian - four rows

15 Baba Franchuk’s - one row. This variety is one I started from bulbils in 2016.

24 Northern Quebec - two rows, plus 3 cloves at the end of the row of Kiev.  The Northern Quebec wrappers are white.

8 Kiev  - one row. This variety was started from bulbils in 2016.   I only had 5 bulbs from last year’s garden, and 3 of those bulbs ended up too mouldy to use. 

17 Central Siberian - one row, plus 4 cloves beside container of Brown Tempest.  These were small cloves. This variety was started from bulbils in 2016.

10 Brown Tempest - small cloves. They were planted in a plastic container, which was placed at the front of the plot, in the ground.  Another variety started from bulbils in 2016.

Baba Franchuk's and Kiev are big, beautiful varieties of garlic, but the wrappers were so papery and fine that the cloves practically peeled themselves as I split the bulbs open!  We might be having roasted garlic later today.  About 20 cloves lost their wrappers when bulbs were being broken apart for planting.

Most of the varieties I have grown have purple stripes on the wrappers, or a light purple hue.  Northern Quebec wrappers are white.  Kiev, though, had beautiful brown, gold, and amber tones to the wrappers that I hadn't seen before.  So pretty.  

This season, Northern Quebec, Red Russian, and Central Siberian made it through the wet weather the best.  Even so, some of the Red Russian were mouldy inside when I broke open the bulbs.  Red Russian usually dries down very well and stores for many months (we are still eating Red Russian garlic that was harvested last August).

Northern Quebec dried down the fastest this year, and the most thoroughly.

In the next day or two, I'll mow some leaves and put the mulch on the plot. It will be nice to have the garlic patch "tucked in" for the winter.  :)