The Most Interesting Tomato Plant of the Month! September!

Tomato Plant of the Month

I don't always grow tomatoes. But when I do? I grow some very strange plants that cannot be identified. This is what it is like to grow your own tomato garden, my friends. Sometimes you know what you are growing. Other efforts are complete surprises. That is the story behind the Tomato Plant of the Month for the month of September. I cannot begin to tell you what variety it is.

I've chosen this one plant for a reason. The picture located above right is an example of the harvest from this one plant. That is not the total harvest. It is just the harvest that came off this one plant on the day I took this picture. That's why I took the picture to be completely honest. This one plant, the plant of the month, has been churning out round and red tomatoes since early July. It is still churning out tomatoes in the month of September. I could have taken five more photos of the daily harvests from this one plant, but WHY?

Mystery Plant

I can tell you one or two things about the September Tomato Plant of the Month. It is not what tomato growers call a "Determinate" tomato variety. This list comprises a small number of varieties. They are marketed under names like Early Girl or Better Boy and a few others. These types of "Determinate" varieties, which also include some types of Roma or Paste tomatoes, will usually result in one large harvest. The plant might spit out a few more tomatoes as the season progresses, but the idea behind "Determinate" plants is one big harvest.

Indeterminate plants, which are also known as "heirlooms," are different. They will also produce one big harvest. They will also produce a second big harvest. If you're lucky, you might even receive a third big harvest. Indeterminate, or heirloom, plants take a bit longer to ripen than the determinate varieties. But, the advantage is they don't stop producing. They will keep forming new tomatoes throughout the growing season. I live in California. The tomato growing season here can be very long. It can start as early as March and keep right on going until the Thanksgiving holiday arrives in late November.

Plant of the Month

As much as I would like to tell you the name of this variety, I cannot. This is due to a gardening "accident" that took place earlier this year. The seedling plants that I received had been scattered about due to this accident. Which means every plant was a complete and total mystery. As these plants started to grow and produce ripened tomatoes, I could correctly guess the names of some varieties. The "Lemon Boy" variety was easy to spot because those tomatoes turn yellow when ripe. I could also spot the Kellogg's Breakfast plant, because those tomatoes ripen into a pleasing shade of orange.

However, most tomato plants produce round and red tomatoes. The vast majority of the tomatoes in this year's garden produced round and red tomatoes. How can you tell them apart? The short answer is: you cannot. You just enjoy them. You turn them into a lot of tomato sauce or canned tomatoes. You give them away to friends and neighbors. That is what I've been doing with the tomatoes from the September plant of the month since July. It started to produce early. It is still producing in September. It may keep right on producing through the months of October and November. I really don't know.

Tomato Sauce Project

I have been fortunate (lucky) enough to grow some varieties that have been as productive as this one plant has been. The variety known as Druzba comes to mind. Druzba is an heirloom that came to America from Bulgaria. This variety also produces a ridiculous amount of red and round tomatoes throughout the growing season. This variety produces tomatoes that ripen early. It also produces tomatoes that will ripen in November, provided the weather cooperates. But, the September Tomato Plant of the Month is not a Druzba. How do I know this? Because my tomato growing buddy who provided me with starter plants during spring planting efforts did not plant Druzba seeds.

So, while this plant may act like a Druzba, it is not a Druzba.

I suppose the name of this plant could also be Prarie Fire, Bella Trix, Say Brook or Original Blue Ribbon. These are varieties that produce red and round tomatoes. These are also seeds that my tomato growing friend DID plant. So, I suppose it could be one of these. Except, all of these varieties are listed as Determinate. This means one big crop of red and round tomatoes and not much else. That doesn't match what I'm growing.

Lots of green tomatoes

The bottom line is I'll never really know for sure. But it really doesn't matter. Because backyard tomato growers pray for production like this. It's a non-stop harvest so ridiculously large that you will never eat them all. You need help.

Thank goodness I have friends and family that love vine-ripened garden tomatoes as much as I do.

Grow Tomatoes, My Friends.

The HAUL

Heirloom Tomato Haul

I haven't been blessed like this for a very long time. Not since my gardens were located in North Natomas and I was using a different blog from a past lifetime. The haul of tomatoes, peppers, onions and basil currently coming out of the Citrus Heights garden is one for the ages.

The photo you see pictured to your right is just one part of it. I picked this for a canning project last weekend. This sink full of ripe heirloom tomatoes came from approximately half of the plants in the garden. I'm still harvesting from the other half that didn't get touched, hoping that my neighbors don't get tired of my never-ending gifts of vine ripened tomatoes.

I've stopped waiting for the 101st Airborne Rat Army to show up. It's nearly September now. In the past two or three years, this garden would have been decimated from top to bottom by now. Every tomato still on the vine would be damaged with large and disgusting chunks in the shape of large, sharp rat teeth. It was impossible to walk down the garden rows, unless you enjoy rats suddenly zipping across your shoes as this walk interruped their non-stop feeding regimen and garden destruction habits. It was really something to experience. Depressing too.

Single Plant Harvest

But the introduction of "The Mango" as my neighbors now call him (they did name him, after all), has meant all the difference in the world. I kept waiting for weeks on end for the 101st Airborne Rat Army to parachute in on any given night and lay claim to the ripening heirloom tomato crop. They never did. Not with The Mango, my tiny orange rescue kitten from the Bradshaw Animal Shelter, now patrolling the garden area.

His presence has resulted in what is pictured above left. That isn't a harvest from my heirloom plants. That's from ONE plant. Plus, that is just the harvest from that ONE plant on the day this picture was taken. I've been pulling tomatoes off this ONE plant for weeks. It's still loaded with tomatoes that are still green at the moment. Which means another monster harvest from this ONE plant is coming soon.

Processing Tomatoes

So, with heirloom tomatoes literally coming out of my ears, it was time to put some old gardening tools to work again. This would result in a project I had not undertaken for nearly a decade. I would turn a sink full of vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes, garden bell peppers and jalapeño peppers, garden grown onions and basil, and turn it into as many jars of spicy tomato sauce as I could get.

This was an all-day job for two people a decade ago. I'm alone now. I wouldn't be all that surprised if this job took me more than a full day. That did happen, but only because I ran out of canning jars and the all important canning jar lids. The lids are the one thing you cannot recycle. Once they've been used, you cannot use them again.

Simmering Sauce

I'm not sure why I chose to hang onto all of the old garden canning equipment when I found myself living alone again. Anyone who has been through this experience, and a lot of us have, will find themselves throwing away a lot of old and unpleasant memories. This I did through the years, but I kept the old water-bath and pressure-canning equipment sitting on a shelf in the garage. It had gathered a fine layer of dirt and dust through all those years of inactivity. But you know what? You can wash the dirt off. You can enjoy life again.

Turning a sink full of heirloom tomatoes and peppers into jars of spicy tomato sauce is a fairly simple task once you've done this a few times. The first step is to wash and core the fruit. It's then cut into chunks and liquified in a food processor. The amounts are then measured and added to a large pot. Once everything is added, you bring the mixture to a boil and let it simmer.

The Payoff

I wanted a thicker sauce this time. So, rather than just one hour of a hard simmer, I kept it going for two. It's useless to keep an air conditioning unit working during a project like this because the heat coming out of the kitchen is fairly intense. Of course I would choose the hottest day of 2022 to take on such a project. That only makes sense. I had forgotten about the kind of heat that comes out of a kitchen when a pressure canning unit is hard at work.

The end result is 13-pints and three quarts of the thickest sauce I've ever created. Do you really think I'm going to consume this much heirloom tomato sauce during the winter? Are you insane? That's what neighbors are for. The same neighborhood children who gifted my orange rescue kitten with the name of "The Mango" will get to enjoy the results of his non-stop garden patrol efforts.

The Mango

If "The Mango" enjoyed tomato sauce he would most certainly get his fair share. After all, he earned it. But, he's more than content with his kitten kibble. The only snack he seems to enjoy is the ocassional bug he hauls in from the backyard. This is one garden assassin who works cheap.