Heirloom Tomatoes!

Well...I did it (as I always knew I would).   I bought some heirloom tomato plants!  One day last week as I was driving home, I passed a little farm stand on one of the Farm to Market roads here in the hills.  I've bought beautiful summer produce from this guy before and he happened to be selling organic heirloom tomato plants.  I couldn't resist.  So I stopped to see what he had.  It didn't take long...I was hooked.

He told me he gets many of his seeds for his vegetables and seedling transplants from Seeds of Change.  I know this company as I've bought seeds and plants from them in the past.  They sell a good product.

Anyway, I had an empty garden bed and I decided its destiny this year was to nurture and grow my heirloom tomatoes!  Here's what I bought:

Rutger's Red - Large red globes; great for canning.

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 Hillbilly Potato Leaf - A beautiful slicing tomato that produces large yellow fruit streaked with red on the blossom end.  I can't wait for this one.

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Kellogg's Breakfast  - Produces large orange, beefsteak type fruit. 

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Specked Roman - Long meaty fruit with jagged orange and yellow stripes.

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White Currant - A cherry variety that produces tiny creamy white fruit whose skin has a faint yellow tint.  Supposed to be a superb producer.    

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Yellow Pear - Another cherry variety.  I've grown these before and the skins and flesh are yellow and resemble a small pearl.  They are delicious.  I used to 

toss these to Mo as he patiently waited outside my garden fence.  

Most of these are new varieties for me, except the Yellow Pear.  So I'm very excited to see what kind of fruit they produce.  We are right on the cusp of it being too late to plant tomato transplants, but I figured I'd go for it anyway.

I dug a deep hole for each plant, filled it with water, placed the plant in and filled in the hole with a mixture of good gardening soil mixed with Medina Growin Green granules.  I then hauled two wheel barrels of cedar bark mulch and heavily mulched that plant bed.  It's beginning to get very warm (hot actually) and I need to make sure the soil stays moist and doesn't dry out 10 minutes after being watered!

I also bought one heirloom pepper plant:

El Chaco -- a hot pepper that produces an abundance of 4-inch slightly curved pods.  The fruits start off green, turn yellow and then mature to a deep orange-red color.  New for me as well.

And look at this beauty who skirted about as I was working :)  These are the little guys that Mo used to try and catch.  He never got one, though.  They are *really* fast.  Neat, eh?

I'm so excited to have such a great variety of tomatoes in my garden this year.  I'll do my best to nurture the plants along and we'll just see how these fare for me this growing season.