They are here, the first tomatoes of the season.
It took a full ten weeks! Those are Sun Gold and Martina tomatoes, both early varieties, and it takes them as long as it would take a Brandywine to ripen fruit? My Brandywines are just starting to set fruit, though. Even the Early Girls still have nothing but green balls. It has been cold for a long time this spring and summer. Daytime temperatures below 60 and nighttime below 50 far more often than I care to count. Eventually summer arrived, for the last four days it has been hot, and today I got to pick the first tomatoes and make an insalata caprese for lunch. Finally!
Another first, eggplants. Those are Orient Express. The plants are rather spindly and so far they are mostly producing small fruit. Again, it could be that these past cold temperatures have weakened the plants or slowed their growth. Hopefully now that it is warmer they will grow fast and strong. We stir fried them Szechuan style for dinner on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed every bite of it after such a long wait.
On the flip side this cold weather has allowed us to enjoy peas, greens, carrots, lettuce for a lot longer than other years, so I’ve managed to keep the table well supplied with freshly picked vegetables all along. However, after months of greens and legumes, a little bowl of tomatoes and a platter of eggplants are such a treat.
I am so excited, summer is here and there are ripe tomatoes in the garden. Finally!
For more delicious pictures and stories of harvests and to add your own, head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions, host of Harvest Monday, and take a look at what other gardeners have been up to this week.
July 19, 2010 at 8:35 am
Nothing like the first ripe tomatoes! We had a cool and wet summer last year, and it took it’s toll on tomatoes. This year it’s been hotter than usual, and the peppers and eggplants are loving it. I guess as gardeners we have to learn to go with the flow.
That insalata caprese sounds good. I think we need to get some mozzarella and have some here!
July 19, 2010 at 11:29 am
Yep, we need to go with the flow and to cover all our bases, this way we’ll always have something to harvest.
July 19, 2010 at 9:04 am
Your first tomatoes look great. Mmm, Insalata Caprese, that’s on my short list now that the tomatoes are finally ripening in my garden also. And a BLT and Panzanella and . . . It is Summer at long last.
July 19, 2010 at 11:32 am
Oh, panzanella, great idea!
Glad your tomatoes are also ripening.
July 19, 2010 at 11:13 am
Beautiful tomatoes! I have never seen such small eggplants. I think that I would enjoy them more than big ones, just because the size is so interesting.
July 19, 2010 at 11:35 am
They are supposed to be long and thin, but bigger than the ones I got. Japanese and Chinese eggplant varieties are long and thin and have no bitterness. Some Mediterranean varieties are also longish, but not as much as the oriental ones.
July 19, 2010 at 11:24 am
Beautiful tomatoes, everyone is raving about Sun Gold, I’ll have to try this one next year. I would love to have a bowl of insalata caprese for lunch right now.
Tonight I’m cooking up a spicy Asian eggplant dish also, the bigger eggplants Rosa Bianca are sliced up and sun-dry for coming winter.
July 19, 2010 at 11:40 am
Sun dried eggplants, never heard of that before. Will you ever show us how you do it in your blog?
July 19, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Congratulations on your first tomatoes of the season! Boy those eggplant certainly look good….and insalata caprese sounds great
July 19, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Thank you! I hope those plants get productive now that we finally got warm weather.
July 19, 2010 at 9:18 pm
That large red tomato looks just about perfect. I generally refrain from growing cherry tomatoes but I may just have to add one plant of Sun Gold next year based on the enthusiastic reviews it receives.
July 19, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Sun Gold are as intensely flavored as cherries generally are, but also really sweet. They are delicious and you can fit one plant just about anywhere, they don’t use a lot of space for a tomato.
July 20, 2010 at 2:42 am
Those are great looking tomatoes! Worth the wait I hope.
July 20, 2010 at 8:18 am
Thanks, they were worth the wait. Now the rest of the plants should follow soon…
July 20, 2010 at 6:41 am
That’s the funny thing about growing and ripening times, I find, especially on tomatoes. Sometimes they ignore the back of the packet and listen to daylight/temperatures etc… I find that asian eggplants are slim, sometimes small depending on the variety and often quite early.
Nice looking harvest!
July 20, 2010 at 8:21 am
Realistically, with the temperatures we had in June no way the tomatoes could have ripened any earlier, regardelss of packet description. I hope those eggplants get a little bigger…
July 20, 2010 at 5:57 pm
Congratulations on your double firsts – tomatoes and eggplants! I’m still waiting for my first tomatoes, and will have to wait until next year for my first eggplant.
July 20, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Your tomatoes will be ripe very soon, and eggplant, if you put a plant in now, do you think you might be able to harvest something before your first frost?
July 22, 2010 at 3:30 pm
It is hard to equal the excitement of the first tomato.
visiting from MH
July 22, 2010 at 7:52 pm
What about the excitement of the first bushel of tomatoes?