Fall Gardening Roundup

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How did you all do?

Here are some chile peppers I harvested this morning:

Chile Peppers.jpg

Also, still have plenty of tomatoes but its getting to the point where the are splitting and need to get the rest harvested soon.  Tomato sauce on the horizon.  Plenty of kale and greens too, which will over winter fine.  Just got put some cauliflower and favas in the ground and the rototiller is in the shop in anticipation of pre-winter prep.

 

Lots of herbs, my tomatoes are pretty much done, just a few unripe fruit still on the vine. Enhancing my garden harvest with the Farmer's Market scores. Aleppo peppers were my find today.

I’ve got a few weeks till I harvest.  I’ll have a bunch of peppers and a few zucchini’s.  Tomatoes got dust mites so I pulled them.  Need to clean up the herb garden.  It’s a little unkempt.

The predators have been doing a great job of harvesting flies, spiders, sugar ants, gnats, etc

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CDD900BE-82B2-43A3-AF32-5F40E6C40D09.jpeg39EF6A15-DF75-4FD7-9603-7F4DAE6F5261.jpegI Tried the “atomic cherry” from Wild Boar Farms this year.  Anyone familiar with Brad Gates? He breeds tomatoes  for crazy color characteristics and flavor.  He’s created all sorts of really beautiful varieties from organic heirlooms.

Brad Gates is awesome! While I'm not a fan of the blue varieties, I really like the rest. Green Berkeley Tie Dye (not to be confused with Burpee's flavorless orange copycat Tie Dye) has been my favorite for years now. Barry's Crazy Cherry is tasty if you like yellow cherries.

 

Try Atomic Tiger next year if you like strong tomato flavor with a good dose of acidity! Really pretty grape-sized fruit with flame orange and red streaks over green.

The Berkeley Green Tie Dye was actually what got me into his tomatoes.  I've noticed the last couple years that I lose a lot of them to cracking and to insects compared to other varieties, but I love them and will keep trying them in VT. Very cool looking with great flavor. 

 

I'll give the Atomic Tiger a try next year, always fun checking out his strains.  I tried the "Blueberries" cherry last year and didn't care for them. The Pink Boars were awesome though, very productive, tasty and picture perfect. 

The blues have a strong, astringent flavor I dislike. Gates partnered with a gardening startup I worked with a while ago and we grew 28 of his tomato varieties, couldn't find one blue/purple that I liked. I'm not a fan of the Rose/pink TieDye. It lacks depth and the fruit is not nearly as pretty sliced as the Green Berkeley Tie Dye. To be fair, I don't count sweet as tomato flavor, folks who like candy sweet tomatoes will probably enjoy Pink TD. Almost everything else was good to great.


Pink Boar is definitely one of the top for flavor!

That's awesome you got to test out that much variety for work. Did any of the other seeds stand out?  

Yeah supposedly those purple/blue ones are high in anthocyanin, but I agree as far as flavor.  The Atomic Cherry while having hues of purple, definitely has a sweet tropical fruit flavor when nice and ripe and little astringency as far as I could tell, except when they weren't fully ripe.

 

Do you like Sun Gold? They're extremely sweet, probably one of my favorite cherry varieties.  They're like candy.

Ken Those Peppers are Beauties  ! Lovin It ! yes

I liked Barry's Crazy Cherry, Pink Boar, Dragon's Eye, Boar's Tooth, and Pork Chop but my favorite is Atomic Tiger (not sure if it's out of seed trials yet) tied with the Green Berkeley Tie Dye.

I don't really like most cherry tomatoes because they tend towards sweetness and I prefer more savory/herbal/acidity. Sungolds have more flavor than most cherry tomatoes though and heavily produce up to Thanksgiving here.