Well, the day of reckoning arrived a couple weeks sooner than I hoped.

The tomatoes have been under a poly tunnel for 3 weeks. It definitely made the difference and I credit it completely with why we have any red ones at all. At the same time, I wasn’t able to construct a real tunnel with supports for a multitude of reasons. Instead I simply pruned the plants back to the tops of the cages (leaving any big fruits) and then my dad and I put the plastic over. The disadvantage of this method is that it was difficult to vent, and also hard to keep weighted down for wind.

Yesterday we got some serious wind. The kind of gusty wind from the south that blows the hens skirts up, rattles the sliding barn doors, and whips plastic around. After a few hours of readjusting the rocks and wood scraps holding it down I called it quits.

We were at some friends’ housewarming party last night and I didn’t want to come home in the dark to discover the plastic in the back pasture. Especially since it’s real purpose is to make some poly tunnels over a couple rows this winter for greens and brassicas.

So off it came. And in the rain and wind, out came all the yellow, orange and red tomatoes. I would have picked the green ones too, but just as I started not only was my wheelbarrow pretty much full, but it started to rain REALLY hard and I was finally so wet I couldn’t stand it. So the green ones will get picked this morning.

That’s my haul of yellow, orange and red/purple tomatoes plus the green ones that I had just started to pick.

Once I was dry it was time to start drying the fruit. Since it still needs to be sorted into ripe and needs to ripen, I decided to just spread them out on a drop cloth and let them dry over night.

Today the great green tomato experiment starts. I’ll be taking all of the yellow and orange romas and putting them in cardboard boxes with the green ones and waiting for them to ripen. My friend Megera has been trying this in her garage and apparently it is working, and my experiment with it on the counter in a paper bag took about 3.5 weeks to work. So we’ll see.

In the meantime, here’s an inventory of what we have:

Principe Borghese - these little guys are gorgeous on the vine. When you pick them you take the whole set, anywhere from 6 to 20 little tomatoes. They’re about the size of an Italian plum. I decided to grow them this year because the idea reminded me of Italy and because they apparently make stellar sun dried tomatoes. Today I’ll put the first round of ripe ones in the oven to start drying. These guys really liked the poly tunnel - I didn’t get much splitting and they have pretty good flavor. There are about an equal number of green ones left outside, I’m going to pick them today I think.

These are my Viva Italia romas. We’ve had a few ripe ones already and made them into a quick sauce, they were great. I’m excited that I was able to get so many ripe and almost ripe under plastic. They as well liked the tunnel and we got minimal cracking. I’m going to cook the ripe ones down into sauce and can it today. Then go back out and pick the multitudes of green fruit to ripen in the boxes.

Finally, this is my sad harvest of slicing tomatoes. They did not like the summer AT ALL, and really didn’t care about the poly tunnel. They are stubbornly refusing to turn, no matter the variety. I picked the few ripe ones out there and then started picking green ones. I think I’ll pick the rest of the green ones today and then plan to can and freeze them this week. We’ll use them for fried green tomatoes and other cooking this winter - they’re good in eggs, hash and veggie sautes.

The cherry tomatoes didn’t like the poly tunnel AT ALL. They cracked, split and molded at about the same rate that they ripened. The only ones that seemed to do okay were the Chocolate Cherries. The sundrops, Mirabelles and others were a tragic loss. As I pull plants I’m sure I’ll find some more unrotted ones, but in the rain yesterday I declared them a total loss. Oh well.

If you’re interested, I’ll keep you posted on how the green tomato experiment goes…