L'orto di Bruno [Bruno's Vegetable Garden]

For analysis purposes, I kept track of the tomatoes picked in the 2006/2007 season. All up, I picked 1312 "good" tomatoes this season, weighing in at about 61.4 kg. The first table below summarises the "good" crop, excluding the tiny Cherry Ripe tomatoes.

In addition to numbers, I've included the total weights of fruits picked from the individual plants. I also kept count of the number of "bad" fruit - i.e. those that were diseased and thus picked early and discarded.

"Good" Tomatoes

Plant ID	Total Weight (grams)	Number picked	Average Weight (grams)
A1	270	3	90.00
A3	3395	14	242.50
A4	1900	7	271.43
A5	905	7	129.29
A6	2310	19	121.58
A7	835	5	167.00
B1	6180	71	87.04
B2	5335	61	87.46
B3	3325	47	70.74
B4	1363	51	26.73
B5	460	18	25.56
B6	1520	57	26.67
C1	425	16	26.56
C2	4125	270	15.28
C3	535	20	26.75
C4	920	29	31.72
C5	1835	61	30.08
C6	420	3	140.00
D1	4003	96	41.70
D2	2073	62	33.44
D3	2364	100	23.64
D4	2060	48	42.92
E1	410	5	82.00
E2	3810	46	82.83
E3	495	16	30.94
E4	370	8	46.25
E5	465	15	31.00
G1	800	3	266.67
G3	700	2	350.00
G4	920	4	230.00
H2	675	2	337.50
H3	1010	3	336.67
H4	885	4	221.25
H5	1600	5	320.00
H6	1100	3	366.67
I3	1325	20	66.25
TOTAL	61123	1201	50.89

I've excluded the Cherry Ripe details since they would distort the average too much. More importantly, I couldn't weigh each individual tomato accurately enough anyway, since the fruit was so small. I ended up picking 111 of the tiny cherry tomatoes. Assuming an average weight of 2.5 grams, that would make the total yield 277.5 grams, which is only slightly more than the average weight of a single beefsteak tomato from plant A4!

"Bad" Tomatoes

Plant ID	Count
A3	2
A6	1
B1	12
B2	10
B3	2
B4	1
B5	1
B6	3
C2	24
C3	6
C4	7
D1	5
D2	10
D3	21
D4	5
E1	3
E2	4
E3	37
E5	1
G1	1
H1	3
H3	1
H6	1
I3	1

Yesterday I finally took the time to apply mulch around the tomato plants. This should help keep the soil moist and cool, and help limit weeds. I also did a bit of pruning and tying of the plants that needed it.

The hot weather has helped the tomatoes mature. In the past week I've picked 7 tomatoes. I will keep a summary of tomato pickings for this season. I hope to prepare some statistics later on, and maybe compare the yield to the reasonably good harvest of the 2004/2005 season.

Here's a rough plan of the tomato plants in bed #2 (refer map).

   [South]
[East] [West]
   [North]



      +-----------------------------------------------+
      |                                               |
      =                                               =
      |                                               |
Row E |  E1          E2         E3       E4       E5  |
      |                                               |
      |                                               |
Row D |  D1          D2            D3             D4  |
      |                                               |
      |                                               |
Row C |  C1      C2      C3      C4       C5      C6  |
      |                                               |
      |                                               |
Row B |  B1       B2       B3     B4      B5      B6  |
      |                                               |
      |                                       A6      |
Row A |    A1     A2      A3      A4      A5      A7  |
      |                                               |
      +-----------------------------------------------+

Legend

Variety	Location(s)
Beef Steak	E1
Tickled Pink	E2
Super Roma	E3, E4
Pot Roma	E5
Acid Free (Roma)	D1, D2, D3, D4
Grosse Lisse	B1, B2, B3
Costoluto di Marmande	A1
Unknown/Various (supplied by Zio Pasquale)	C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, B4, B5, B6, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7

This morning I transplanted some rockmelon seedlings that I had grown from saved seeds. I put three seedlings in the middle of bed #5 (refer map).

Some similar looking seedlings have already been growing in bed #5. I didn't deliberately plant them, and I can only assume they have grown from discarded food scraps. I eat a lot of watermelon, so hopefully I can get some "for free" soon :)

I also transplanted three punnets of basil seedlings that I had started from seed in October into garden beds #3 and #5.

Another week another transplantation of tomato seedlings :) Today I transplanted four more in the middle of bed #5 (refer map).

I also planted two more in the narrow beds along the eastern fence, near the apricot tree.

I'm hoping these seedlings will produce fruit late in the season. The first seedlings that I planted in September are already producing fruit, and so I hope to have fresh tomatoes from late December until March.