Benefitting from multiple successions of tomatoes

When harvesting tomatoes there is never a consistent amount picked every single weeks no matter what we do.

There are always some weeks that produce way more than you expect and other weeks where the production drops off sharply for some reason.

To help us avoid such large difference in between the peaks and valleys of the tomato harvest every week we plant multiple successions so that we have new plants ripening around the same time the older ones are slowing down.

Right as our first and second planting of cherry tomatoes are producing less and our third one is towards the end of its peak we are beginning to harvest the fourth planting of cherry tomatoes.

Each of the different varieties of cherry tomatoes has a few days difference in ripening so we have a decent amount of the purple bumblebee but all the other varieties that make up the mixed baskets are not yet ready to harvest.

Additionally, the first few harvests of a new planting of cherry tomatoes produce much larger fruit than the ones later on in a plant’s life.

It is the same with the heirloom tomatoes and early girls which have larger fruit at the start and then they get smaller later on even if they have a second flush of tomatoes.

We planted five different successions of heirloom tomatoes this year to have a more consistent harvest and not have a few week period where most of the tomatoes in one planting all are ready and its slim pickings afterwards.

Even though we’ve had tomatoes since early June we are still less than halfway through the tomato season for us as it will likely be sometime in mid or late October when it wraps up depending on the weather.

Last week writing about peppers we incredibly forgot to mention the Jimmy Nardellos that we grow and have the most plants of out of any pepper variety.

The long and slender red peppers look like they would have some kick to them but in actuality that are so sweet and delicious we just bite into them out in the field.

They are incredible to be pan-fried and also can be added to any dish to boost the flavor.

The fall veggies we have in the greenhouse are growing at a rapid pace after they germinate. From our first to our second succession of Cherokee lettuce that was only seeded seven days apart there is a massive difference in size of the plants and the more leaves they have the quicker they will.

Once we transplant the lettuce and all other fall veggies into the fields they will grow rapidly and hopefully it won’t be too long before we begin to harvest some of them. The lettuce will have a short window for us to harvest before it starts to bolt and if planned correctly the next succession will be ready to harvest at that point.

Just on Monday we seeded around succession of lettuce along with more broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. We also seeded a new crop we are growing this fall which is radicchio. There are two different varieties of it we are trying out to see how it grows and how people like it.