For the last few years I’ve gone overboard with growing many different tomato cultivars. I like the idea of taste-testing different types and also making sure we have a good crop for many months. It has probably been a blessing that chipmunks tried to eat the majority of them in past years, or we may have drowned in tomatoes.
This year I was wasn’t going to grow any at all, but I fell victim to impulse shopping at a garden center in May. It’s now October and there are still plenty of ripening fruits on the 3 plants I purchased. We’ve had a row of tomatoes ripening on our kitchen windowsill and a bowl of cherry tomatoes on our counter every day since July.
‘Rose de Berne’ is a dark pink Swiss heirloom tomato with 6 to 8 oz fruits. I always thought ‘Cherokee Purple’ was my favorite heirloom until I tasted this one. I’ve plucked scores of ‘Rose de Berne’ fruits off two plants from July now into October.
Tomato ‘Sun Sugar’ started providing us with ripe fruit ripe around the 4th of July, and there are still scores of unripened fruits hanging from the overloaded branches. This is a hybrid orange cherry tomato with sweet fruits. My husband likes to pop them in his mouth like candy. I need my tomatoes to be on something (like say a BLT or a leaf of basil and a blob of fresh mozzarella—yum!).
With the drought conditions continuing through the summer, I thought for sure both squirrels and chipmunks would appreciate the liquid content of those tomatoes and give me a run for my money. But curiously I’ve only lost a handful of fruits.
