Cherry tomatoes, summer veggies ripening in the heat

The heatwave we are having may not be ideal for us but the tomatoes are enjoying it as they are ripening much faster.

The amount of cherry tomatoes harvested yesterday is three times as many as last Friday so we can’t wait to see how many are ripe on Friday.

Most of the ones that are ready to harvest are the Sungolds with some Sweet 100s also ready along with mixed ones starting to come in.

This heat leads the fruit to ripen much faster but it also kills the flowers that are in the critical stage before the tomato begins to form so hopefully as many as possible of the flowers already have tiny tomatoes so they survive.

We are starting to harvest our first few Early Girl tomatoes and are anxiously awaiting the many fruits on the plants ripening. There even is one Cherokee Purple tomato that we picked.

Another summer veggie that we are starting to harvest are cucumbers which are trickling in. Hopefully in another week or two we will have a good amount to harvest since they go so well with all the other summer veggies.

While the cucumbers are trickling in, the summer squash is coming in strong with lots of the Magda variety being ready to harvest. To prevent them from getting too big we are picking them six days a week so even if we miss one we should have picked it doesn’t get too big before we are picking it 24 hours later.

Just this week we were able to get our winter squash seeded into the field. It is a pretty big task to seed by hand as we don’t have a seeder that works for that seed.

We are growing the same three varieties we have for the past the years with the most being Honeynut and then Delicata and Butterbaby in third.

After growing slowly since we planted them last November we have harvested the Red Burger onions and started to cure them.

These mild onions are more flat than the typical onion and they can grow to a massive size. They will need a few weeks to dry and they we will start to bring them to market.

The hot days means the plants need more water to keep them growing and producing veggies but also leads to more weeds. Those weeds are not only stealing the water from the veggies but also causing them stress.

We don’t want too much stress on the plant while they are still growing. For tomatoes we do water them less as they start to ripen to help develop the delicious flavor of them.