The Last Tomato of 2020
Posted on October 11, 2020 Posted by John Scalzi 21 Comments
To be clear, not the last tomato anywhere in the world, here in 2020. Merely the final tomato from our tomato plants, this year. Krissy has pulled up and cleared out the vines as part of her autumn overhaul of the plants and gardens. It was picked green and is ripening on our counter. At the moment, it looks pretty cool.
Hope you’re having a lovely Sunday wherever you are.
— JS
Your tomatos lasted much longer than mine. But then, only one of my plants held up long enough to produce ripe fruits at all. I guess that was to be expected when growing tomatos on the balcony – living in a city I don’t really have a garden. Still, I had way enough tomatos during the two weeks I had tomatos, and they were delicious.
We have this mutant cherry tomato plant on the south side of our house (grew up to eight feet high–we have no idea where it came from) here in Portland that is still producing new blossoms and has no intention of ever shutting down.
We had a feral tomato that covered a whole rose garden.
I am indeed having a lovely Sunday, thanks, and I hope that you are likewise. At the moment, I’m fighting with an insistent cat who is FAR too interested in my chicken salad (after having turned his snooty nose up at the premium cat-food I served him for breakfast, the ungrateful brat).
We harvested our final tomatoes a couple weeks ago, although still haven’t gotten out to tear down the vines and put away the cages for the winter. We seem to be having a locally heavy outbreak of inertia around here. I blame the plague.
I did manage to put up a display of autumnal decor by the porch, a deep crimson chrysanthemum, a pumpkin, and assorted squashes of varying sizes, shapes and colors. I enjoy doing that every year, and every single year, this asshole of a squirrel in the neighborhood chomps big bites out of my decorative squashes and pumpkins, leaving great holes in them and scattering the seeds and innards all over the yard.
This year, that little bastard is in for a surprise, though, because each squash and pumpkin has been liberally anointed with chili oil, and then covered all over with a generous sprinkle of cayenne pepper. The scurvy knave might take ONE bite. But I’m betting he won’t be back for a second one.
You squirrel there, get offa my yard! And offa my punkins!
I’m from a different world (Florida), so your problem does not compute here. I had some volunteer cherry tomatoes that have been producing well.
I planted some Beefsteak tomatoes as my summer crop, exotic tomatoes happen in our winter. Those beefsteaks just stared back at me all summer and have just started to flower, so we will have red tomatoes soon..
I also have some Jubilees (yellow) tomatoes started, they will probably fruit around Christmas
“The Last Tomato” made me think of the title of a 1940s detective noir paperback. Some kind of mysterious moll hires Sneed Falcon to trace her skipped lover who has the key to a stolen fortune, yadda-yadda.
I live just to the south of you and we still have a plant with a ton of green tomatoes on it. Hopefully we are going to get a few more days on the vine then pull em all.
You (and Mike) should think in North Carolina terms and make fried green tomatoes, an excellent way to consume tomatoes that haven’t had a chance to ripen.
Awwwww! Wonderful! I miss my Mom & Dad’s tomato plants!
The last tomatox, obviously.
I really miss growing tomatoes in a real garden. I’ve got a balcony, and grow some plants in containers, but it’s not really enough sun for tomatoes to be happy, so while I try growing small ones, it’s hit or miss, and the squirrels generally get half of them. The probably-last tomato is about an inch across, and still green; it might or might not get ripe. The previous one was about twice that size, and was starting to change color a bit, but a week ago it mysteriously vanished. The cucumbers have been done for a month or so, having produced some good cukes and a few weird-shaped little ones. I tried growing okra for the first time, because it and some squash were the only seeds left in the store earlier in the pandemic; they’re kind of fun.
I have planted some fall crops – radishes and cilantro – and the basil’s doing pretty well, though it seems to be a bit more Thai-flavored instead of the Italian-flavored I prefer. The morning glories did amazingly well, and the fencepost cactus which doesn’t usually bloom most years was happy enough that it produced three big flowers a few weeks ago.
We get both gray squirrels and black squirrels here (Silicon Valley.) I haven’t tried to identify the hummingbirds that use our feeder, and we’ve got a few junco or finch sorts of birds that occasionally also use the hummingbird feeder.
Mmmm, looks good! My dinner tonight consisted of BLTs with the last of my tomatoes. (Portland, OR)
The final Scalzato.
In the Pacific NW, you are SOL unless you have a very good southern exposure or a greenhouse. I Years ago, I tried Big Earlies and Early Girl–no luck at all. That’s one thing I miss about the midwest..
So begins the epic tale of the quest for the last tomato, and it’s retrieval from the lair of the dread scamperbeasts.
That’s a beautiful photo!
hmmm… for a brief, horrid moment I did indeed misread “The Last Tomato of 2020” as “The Last Tomato RIP 2020″… just one more bit of nastiness inflicted on a weary continent… huh… that’s gonna be my next video game pitch, “Tomato Quest” in which a rag-tag team of misfits seek out any remaining tomato plants whilst dodging QANON, neo-nazis and divorce lawyers — how’s that for an unholy trinity of malignant monsters — across a bleak post-apocalyptic post-election Trumpian dystopia
And just as I plant out 30′ of strawberry bed…
I’m in Seattle and for reasons I do not understand I am still eyeball deep in tomatoes.
I thought, oh, it’s mid-October, I’ll pick the last of the green ones and pull up the plants. Half of one plant later I had completely filled my basket (so at least 10 pounds of tomatoes).
I tried canning green tomato pickles, but then one of my jars had the bottom shear off. Hopefully the other two jars processed OK, but I won’t find out for 3 weeks.
The green tomato mock-apple pie was OK, but needed more care with the sugars/spices. It’s not bad, and you wouldn’t think tomato from the flavor, but it wouldn’t be good if I’d made it with apples either.
The fried green tomato experiment was decidedly meh.
So I sure hope the rest of them ripen on the counter or I don’t know what I’ll do with them all.
I just bought, at our local Farmers Market, what I am sure is the last quart of tomatoes I’ll see until next year. I mean, I could buy tomatoes at the store, but let’s be honest: store tomatoes in the off-season are…unsatisfying. Once more into the BLT breach, my friends!
(And if I may ask a technical question: You said in a previous post that your blog photos are hosted on Flickr. Does Flickr allow hotlinking then, since you don’t appear to use their embed code? Just wondering for my own purposes. Thank you and enjoy your tomato!)
When everybody was scrambling in March and April over Covid to try to figure out what they should do, my sister decided it would be a good idea to plant a garden. Her impressive haul consisted of exactly 1 ocre pod and 2 cucumbers and we had a good laugh about it. Meanwhile, my father can spit a seed in the yard and the seed will grow and produce 2 bushels of produce with no effort on his part.
A somewhat OT question about blog policy: Do old threads get closed by default after a few days? I read this blog, but not religiously. I check in once every 10 or so days and find an interesting post but it seems like the comments are already always closed.