The Merced Tomato is my favorite...

Here are a couple more views of my favorite tomato plant. I also love the flavor of this wonderful producer.

Solar Set

Good taste, count the seed sacks...

Huskey Cherry Red

The Merced Tomato is "King Producer"

Year in and year out the highest producer in my gardens has been the Merced tomato. Nothing else comes close. I get great production from several other varieties but the Merced beats them all. Over the last four years I have raised thirty varieties of tomatoes. Each year Merced comes out "King Producer".

Toms, maters, or tomatoes

Whatever you call them they just keep coming! I am in Heaven. I love eating them, shareing them, growing them and just looking at them. They are something else all together... a marvelous obsession.

VERDURA (Vegetables Italian Style)

1 fennel bulb, trimmed and diced
1 1/2 lbs. diced fresh tomatoes
1/3 small red onion, diced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
small handful basil leaves, coarsely chopped
small handful mint leaves, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine in bowl and toss with cooked pennette or other small pasta. Top with grated Parmesan cheese. I used Whole wheat Blend Pasta (Penne Rigate). Let the fun begin!

Roasted Tomato Sauce I

4 lbs. Tomatoes - stemmed and quartered.
1 lg. red onion
2 jalapeno peppers (seed removed)
16 cloves of garlic (cut in halves)
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbs. dry oregano

Roasted Tomato Sauce II

Cooked at 450 degrees for 1 hour and 30 min.s. Cooled and ready for the Food Mill.

Roasted Tomato Sauce III

Here is the finished product. Hummmmmmmmm! I added some mushrooms and a label to the jar.

Gift basket for work.

As I picked these tomatoes in the garden today. I labeled each one. A=Ark. Traveler, C=Celebrity, Mo= Momotaro, Me= Merced, S= Super Fantastic, E= Early Girl, J= JS 2000.
This way people at the office could do their own taste test. Which we did with gusto!!!! The mandate was to get them coming...

Ark. Traveler tomato

Most Ark. Travelers are coming in a little smaller than this one. Several are this size however. I noted one last year at 8.15 oz. So about the same.

Mr. Mo or The Inner-Mo...

Mr. Mo was all that was promised and more. Wow what a wonderful tomato flavor! I was not disappointed. The momotaro is a world class tomato. I place it's taste on a par with the Red Brandywine . Plus no BER problems I had with the Brandywine tomato. I will know more as the season goes on. Notice the many seed sacks. Very juicy tomato!

Mr. Mo on the scale

This is Mr. Mo (Momotaro) on the scale. 10.60 hummmmmmm.
Note to self: must go on a diet.

Mr. Mo

This is Mr. Mo awaiting his fate on the plate. I have waited for two years for this moment. I first read about the Momotaro tomato in 2005 and ordered the seed in 2006. Plant popped up ready to be planted in the garden and then came the 3-day freeze. I though all was lost. But Mr. Mo's plant brown to the ground came back to life. The rest is history, as they say...

Early Girl Tomato plant

The tomatoes from this plant are very sweet. She is a very generous plant having provided many tomatoes already. As you can see she is not slowing down.

First Garden Gift Basket

My brother-in-law made a request for green tomatoes for "Fried Green Tomatoes". So I put together this basket. It contains several green tomatoes all JS 2000. Two ripe full size tomatoes, one JS 2000 and one Early Girl. The two small pink tomatoes are Porter Dark Cherry. They will turn much more red in a day or two. The other small cherry tomatoes are Huskey Cherry Reds. To date I have never tried, Fried Green Tomatoes'. Folks that eat them rave about how good they are. I guess I will have to try them someday.