We're close, but now we have missed beating last year's July 10th tomato. I'm guessing this one will be ready to pick in two or three days, assuming the sun can ever burn its way through the morning clouds.
I have forgotten when the last time I was able to take a picture of a sunrise. I'm so out of practice that I'm not certain that I can get up that early these days though our young canine visitor, Dozer, and I did go on regular morning walks at or around 6 am each morning last week.
Dozer's gone home and with no sunrises to wake me up, I'm sleeping later and the tomatoes are taking forever to ripen. I'm ready for a week of drought, clear skies, and hot sun. Maybe it will even slow the lawn down a little. At least we've only had to water once this year during a brief dry spell in June. It's funny I see lots of evidence that the yards with sprinklers continue to receive water every day. You would think the 2 3/4 inches of rain we got with Cindy would be enough for a while, but grass is very funny. It can become addicted to shallow watering as the roots never take the time to grow to any depth. Long ago I learned to water heavily when need but not very often as you end creating a much stronger and healthier stand of grass than with continual light waterings.
My friend Mike from Lewisville, NC sent me a note that he got his first tomato on July 2nd and has been enjoying his favorite meal of tomato sandwiches. Lewisville is near Winston-Salem and doesn't get the cooling influences of the Blue Ridge Mountains so I'm not surprised Mike beat me. Everything has to go perfect up here in the mountains and things go a little wrong down in the Piedmont for me to beat them like I did in 2003. I'm sure there are some Yadkin County tomatoes ripe, but I'm keeping a low profile with my relatives there since I got my tomato plants in the ground before most of them, but I'm sure they're already enjoying those homegrown tomatoes that seem to like the red soil that runs through many of the counties down there.
There is a red tomato at the end of the tunnel, so I going to have Glenda crank up the bread maker so we can have some homemade bread for our first tomato sandwiches later this week. Hopefully no one but tomato growers either farther north or higher up on the mountains will read this post. If the folks in Floyd are getting tomatoes already, I may have to find an excuse to cut a tree or two to increase the sunlight in my tiny patch.
One last note, if these Jet Star tomatoes taste as good as they set fruit, this might be a great variety for small spaces. They seem unusually prolific. It could have been the weather but it will take a year or two to figure out a recommendation.
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