First Tomato

In my haste to pick the first tomato today, I now realize that it needed a few more days of sunshine. But the weather has changed. 

Tonight the winds are out of the southeast, gusting 17 miles per hour. It has been raining since mid afternoon and now, almost sunset time, the rain just keeps coming. 

That precious first tomato might not have survived several days of damp, rainy weather. It wasn't quite at that home grown juicy perfection stage when I picked it this noon, but it made a darn good tomato and lettuce on whole wheat toast sandwich today. 

Of course the side dish of yellow beans prepared with a smidge of dill and a smack of butter helped the tomato sandwich. So did the bowl of fresh Michigan blueberries. August is a great garden month, even when it rains and the tomatoes are slow to ripen. 

 

Tomato Stages

While pruning the completely overgrown cherry tomatoes, this vine came to my attention. In one fell swoop it illustrates stages of fruit set on this particular tomato varietal.

From the seven pointed blossom, to the withered petals, to the fruit appearing, this vine shows all the stages except for the ripened fruit, which, by the way, I am still waiting for.

Every year I experiment a little differently with tomatoes. This year's big guys are getting pruned so that the sun can reach some of these blossoms. So far, no tomatoes, but it is the first week of August, and I did set these plants during the first week of June.