I made it outside for exactly 17 minutes this morning before humidity and heat chased me in. The heat index was already in the 90's at 6:30 am, ugh.
Today's harvest was a little different looking. I had the "winter tomatoes" I'll show you below, and also decided to pick a lucky few zinnias to spend their final days in the relative comfort of an 80º house!
They should cheer me up on another day with all the shutters closed up tight to ward off the 118º heat index expected.
On to the oddballs! This year I decided to try an heirloom called "Burpee Long Keeper". Touted as a "storage tomato" expected to keep through the holidays, I was skeptical, and still am. However, I was a complete idiot and planted these at the same time as all my other tomatoes, not thinking of course that I should have timed these towards the end of the season. Oh, well. I've been watching them "on the verge of ripening" for weeks now before I finally researched them - indeed they will not ripen on the vine, but should be harvested when they are a yellowish color, stored away and will ripen gradually over the next few months. Really? In this humidity I am not hopeful since I don't have a basement to store them in. Although they won't come close to a real summer tomato in taste, they are purported to be better than store bought in winter. Since we don't normally buy store bought anyways in the off-season, I thought they would be worth a try if just for pizza toppings. The vines are loaded with them now and I'm not quite sure what's going to happen here, it's only July!
I put them in cardboard flats and stowed them away in my new curtained "pantry", more on that project later...
Stored right next to my kitchen prep table where I do everything, so if they go bad, I'll surely notice! If these don't work for storing in my climate, I'll offer the rest of my seeds to someone who can store them in a proper environment like a basement or cool pantry - stay tuned to see what happens!
