Tomatoes

Warning: Boring tomato post. If you couldn't already tell that from the title.

Bill and I usually have three tomato plants in tubs in our backyard, at least two of which are heirloom. This year we have Bull's Heart (my favourite - we grow it every year), Belgium Giant (Bill picked it out), and Jetsetter (which, contrary to the name, was the last to ripen yet again this year). This usually means we have so many tomatoes we can't eat them all before they rot, so I can many of them. Last year started out promising, but ended up being a dud. I canned 4 jars of Bull's Heart, and we easily kept ahead of them and ate the rest as they ripened.

This year:
First harvestA few days later it had grown into a big scary pile. Time to can:After the massacre:Done deed:This year they are very juicy. I usually use a slotted spoon to spoon them into the jars, and that only leaves a little liquid at the bottom. Usually. I actually canned 3 more jars after this photo was taken.

When you grow tomatoes, tomato hornworms often show up eventually and can do some major damage. I call them an attractive nuisance. They're really quite pretty.(click to embiggen) Bill called me outside to see a small black wasp "stinging" this one. I ran out and there was a pitched battle going on. The wasp was landing on the hornworm's back, and the hornworm was flinging it's head and upper body violently around at it. I said, "Um, no. It isn't stinging. It's laying eggs."

Then I wouldn't let Bill kill the hornworm (what he normally does when he finds them) because I thought we should allow the parasitic wasps to survive to adulthood. The hornworm hung around in the top of the Belgium Giant plant for about a week, and then disappeared yesterday. I didn't see any signs of wasp infestation (it is apparently fairly obvious when they pupate). Now I don't know if it died due to the infestation, or has gone further down into the plant to pupate and metamorphose into a moth.