Introducing Burpee's, La Roma's, and Hints of Malady

200 plus tomatoes!! The basket that I am using to collect these vegetables each time I go to the garden has started to be full when I am finished. So here we have 9 Green peppers, 215 Juliets, 3 Burpee's, 8 heirlooms, and 3 La Roma's. More on the first Burpees and La Roma's below.


This is the La Roma tomato on the right. The La Roma tomato is known as a "paste tomato." I didnt quite understand what this meant until I pulled the first ripe one off the vine. This tomato is so light. I couldnt believe how light it was. I would venture to guess that if weighed, one of the Juliet's, which are half the size, would weigh as much or more as a La Roma. Essentially, there is little to no juice to the tomato.

Its going to be interesting finding a use for these. I think we may be making some tomato paste.


This is the Big Boy or Burpee tomato. This is a medium sized tomato compared to what I am seeing growing on the plants right now. The quarter doesnt do a very good job of giving you the scale, but I would be this tomato weighs over a pound. I ended up cutting this tomato up on Saturday night for a sandwich, and let me tell you, it was a good tomato. Nice and juicy, and fairly firm. This was the tomato that I was most worried about, as its easy to get dry, or mealy tomatoes from this breed.



I have seen a few spate instances of maladies in some of the tomatoes. This is whats called cracking in tomatoes. Generally this happens when the tomato is left on the vine too long and becomes over-ripe. I am not sure that is the case here, but its very possible that because this tomato was so low on the vine that it cracked due to the breed being very juicy. The heirlooms are pretty much done with the exception of a few, so we will see if the trend continues.


This is a little more disconcerting. It seems that there are a few La Roma's with this problem in the garden. I spent a considerable amount of time on the web researching this, and the best I can come up with is that this is the result of a Tomato Fruitworm. I have not been able to find an exact match for this look (as it seems to look on all of the afflicted fruits) but it seems to fit the general description of "boring" into the fruit. For now I am leaving it be as it seems to be afflicting a scant amount of the fruit. However, if it gets worse, I will have to take action.

I have been seen a bit of Tomato Blossom End Rot in a few of the Burpee's, but this is to be expected with a large volume of tomatoes in such a dense area. There are going to be spots that just dont dry out right as the flowers slowly converts to fruit.

I had a HUGE harvest on Monday with the girls, but am out of town until Friday and cannot post. By then I will have gotten another large one. I will update then.